An instructor put his policy in a forum thread like this:
"To be honest, I don't give tuition info to people on the phone or email. Come try a FREE class and I'll give you every detail."
You might read that and nod. He isn't hiding anything. He has a free trial, he answers every question, he just wants to do it with the family in front of him. He is also right about the thing underneath it: the best way to sell a martial arts school is face to face, once somebody has stood on the mat and watched their kid's face.
The part he can't see sits one step further back, before anybody rings him.
Should I put my prices on my website?
Usually no, and we'd say the same thing to any school we work with.
A monthly fee sitting on a page with nothing around it invites one comparison, and it's the wrong one: you against the leisure centre, two numbers side by side. Nobody buys a black belt on price. Parents buy the change they're hoping to see in a quiet kid, or a kid with too much engine, and you can only show them that in person.
So the instinct is sound. What it costs him happens earlier, to people he never meets.
The family you never heard from
Every family you have ever talked about tuition with is a family who contacted you. They rang, they booked, they walked in. Whatever you do on your website, it worked on them, because they're the evidence you have.
The ones who didn't aren't in your enquiry log, your booking calendar or anybody's report. They're on Reddit, and they're unusually direct about it.
One said he immediately ignores gyms that don't have prices displayed. Another wrote that he had written schools off simply based on their refusal to give prices remotely. A third wrote that spending 45 minutes and his petrol to collect information a school could have given him on the phone feels humiliating, and said the school would never hear from him again. A fourth, with social anxiety, said the whole thing felt like a used car dealership and added a barrier that shouldn't need to be there.
Four people on the internet, not a survey, and not your town. None of them sounds like a tyre kicker though, and none of them shows up anywhere in the numbers you look at on a Sunday night. You end up judging the policy by the families it works on, because those are the only families it lets you meet.
That doesn't mean putting your fee on the page. It means the price shouldn't be the only thing on the page worth looking for.
What goes where the price would have been
A parent sitting on your website with her thumb hovering is either weighing a commitment she can't see the edges of, or looking for a way in that doesn't involve phoning a stranger and feeling sold to.
Give her the second one and the first stops mattering tonight. The only decision that page should ask her to make is whether to come once.
Three things do that work, and they go above where a price would have gone.
What the first class is actually like. Not your syllabus. Where to park, what she wears, what happens in the first ten minutes, whether she stays and watches, how long it lasts. A parent who can picture the room has already half-arrived. The first ten minutes decide more than the hour that follows, and it costs nothing to describe them.
Reviews from parents who have already been in. Not testimonials you typed up. The ones with names and dates on them, that she can go and read herself. If your newest Google review is from two years ago, that's doing more damage than any missing price.
A trial you don't charge her for. Make it free, or as near to free as you can stand. It answers the price question without answering it, because there's nothing to weigh up and nothing to take home and think about. If you do charge for a trial, take the money at the class, never online. A payment form in front of your door is a wall, and you'll never meet the people who turn around at it.
Then make booking foolproof. Every button on the page should lead to the same place, and assume anyone who leaves isn't coming back.
There's a name for what those three things are doing, and you already use it at the desk: pre-conquering. You answer the question before anyone has to ask it. On a website it's the same move, except the person you're answering would never have asked.
- Open your school's website the way a parent would. Google your town plus your style, then tap your own listing.
- Try to book a trial class. Count every tap from landing to booked.
- Count how many of those taps asked for money, a commitment, or a phone call.
- Without scrolling, write down what the page told you about what a first class is like.
- Tap your reviews. Read the newest one. Check the date on it.
Won't I just attract price shoppers?
Some of them, yes. People who care about the number are not the same as people who only care about the number, and the two get muddled together.
The stronger move sits upstream of either. Sell on value rather than price and the number becomes secondary, so give her something to judge besides the number. A school becomes a premium service when it can't be compared with the place down the road on price alone. While the price is the only thing anyone can find out about you, price is the only comparison on offer.
Secrecy is a thin defence against price shopping. Having more on the page than a secret is a better one.
And when the conversation does get to money, it gets to money in the room, with you, where you can answer it properly. That conversation has its own craft and we've written it up separately: what to say when a parent tells you it's too expensive.
What this won't fix
It won't fill a class if nobody knows you exist. A frictionless booking page with no traffic is a frictionless page nobody has opened. That's an audience problem, and it sits before all of this.
It won't rescue a trial that doesn't land. Make the first class easy to book and you'll find out quickly whether the first class is any good.
It won't settle the argument online. Owners have been arguing about posting prices on forums since at least 2015 and nobody has shifted anybody. The families aren't in that argument. They are on your site to find out whether there's a way in, not to settle an argument.
It isn't about being cheap. Nothing here says drop your tuition. What a student is worth to you is its own question and this doesn't touch it. The part worth changing is how many families get as far as finding out.
The thing to do Monday
Fifteen minutes, your own phone
- Run the phone test above. Write down the two numbers: taps to book, and taps that ask for money or a commitment.
- Add what a first class is like to that page. Six lines, parking to pick-up. Write it the way you'd say it to a nervous parent at the door.
- Put your three newest reviews on the same page, or go and ask three families for one this week if the newest is older than you'd like.
- Cut one step out of the booking. One. The form field you never read, the "call us to confirm", the choice between four class times when two would do.
- Leave your price where it is. It was never the thing standing between that family and your door.
Start with step one tonight. It's quick, and you'll know straight away whether the rest is worth doing.
The short version
The policy of keeping tuition for the desk works on everyone you've used to test it, which is exactly why it's hard to see past. A family that crossed you off doesn't ring to say so, so they won't appear in anything you measure. Publishing your fee isn't the answer, because the number was never the point. Give a hesitant parent something to do that isn't phoning you: a first class she can picture, other parents she can read, a trial that costs her nothing. Then the price goes back to being a conversation you have face to face, which is where you win it anyway.
If you'd like more families getting as far as that conversation, bring your class times and the number of spaces you can honestly take this month.
Questions owners ask
Is it a red flag that a martial arts school doesn't list their prices?
Some families treat it that way, and they say so plainly in public. Others never think about it. You cannot tell which kind landed on your site, and that is the whole problem with the question. What you can control is whether the page gives a cautious family something else to act on. If the only way to learn anything is to ring you, the cautious ones ring somebody else.
Does your school advertise prices? Most schools near me don't.
Plenty don't, and owners argue about it constantly. A British owner in one of those threads said he puts his monthly fees on the front page of his site because he prefers being upfront, and that if somebody can't afford it, fair enough. Other owners in the same thread said the opposite just as firmly. The habit on its own proves nothing either way. The schools that fill classes are the ones a parent can book with in two taps, at a price of nothing, before deciding.
Why are martial arts schools so protective about their prices?
Because the number means very little on its own, and they know it. A monthly fee next to no context invites a parent to compare you with the leisure centre down the road. Face to face you can show them what their child actually gets. That reasoning is sound. It only fails for families who never reach the conversation.
Will putting prices on my website attract price shoppers?
It will attract people who care about the number, which is not quite the same thing. The bigger risk is the opposite one: a page that gives a hesitant parent nothing to do except phone a stranger. Sell on value rather than price and the number matters less either way, because a parent who believes the class will help their child will usually pay a premium for it.
What do parents do when they can't find a price?
Mostly they move on to the next school and you never hear about it. Some of them are blunt about it in public: they ignore gyms that don't display prices, or write them off for refusing to give one remotely. One wrote that spending 45 minutes and his petrol to collect information a school could have given him on the phone feels humiliating. None of those people ever became an enquiry you could count.