We Stripped the Prices From Our Homepage
Our homepage had two offer cards. One said "Free" in a large number with "30 minutes" next to it. The other said "From $4,500" with "7 days." The guarantee copy read: "If the AI Sprint doesn't move the needle in 30 days, you don't pay the second half."
We removed the prices. We rewrote the guarantee. Here's what was wrong.
The Problem With "Free"
Putting "Free" in a 40px font on an offer card is meant to lower the barrier. It does. The wrong barrier.
The people who will stop and call because the audit is free are often not the people we want to talk to. Someone running a real business, trying to figure out whether AI can save them time, doesn't need "free" to take a 30-minute call. They're evaluating fit. The price of the call isn't the question in their head.
The word "free" also poisons the object it describes. A "free audit" reads as a free gift, a loss leader, something done to earn the right to sell. We're not doing the audit to earn the right to pitch. We do the audit because mapping a business's workflow gaps is the actual first step of the work. It has value on its own. Calling it "free" undercuts that.
The "From $4,500" problem is the same one we documented when we pulled pricing from the /ai service page. A visitor reads the number before we've had a conversation. They run math on a scoped engagement with no context, conclude it's expensive or cheap based on nothing, and close the tab or lower their expectations before we've talked. Neither outcome is good.
What We Changed the Guarantee To
Old: "If the AI Sprint doesn't move the needle in 30 days, you don't pay the second half."
New: "If the AI Sprint doesn't move the needle in 30 days, we keep working until it does."
These look similar. They're structurally different.
The original guarantee is financial protection. It tells the buyer: if this fails, your downside is capped. That framing assumes failure is a real possible outcome and asks the buyer to evaluate how protected they'd be if it happened. You're inviting them to price the risk.
The new guarantee is a commitment to the result. It doesn't entertain the scenario where we ship something and walk away. If it's not working, we stay. That's a different kind of promise. It doesn't ask the prospect to think about partial payment scenarios. It tells them we don't exit until the thing does what it's supposed to do.
The original version also required the prospect to understand that the engagement had two halves, that there was a first payment and a second payment, and that the second one was contingent. That's a lot of contract structure to process on a homepage before you've even had a call. The new version is one sentence with one idea.
"No Pitch. No Upsell." Was Also a Problem
We had a bullet on the audit card that read: "No pitch. No upsell."
That's a defensive concession. It's us preemptively apologizing for every bad service-business call they've ever been on. Fine as a signal, but the signal it actually sends is: we know you're worried about being sold to.
We replaced it with: "A clear read on what's worth doing."
That's an asset, not an apology. They're not walking away relieved that we didn't pitch them. They're walking away with a deliverable.
The Pattern Underneath All of It
Every change here is the same move: from transactional framing to professional framing.
"Free" + "From $4,500" + "don't pay the second half" all put price at the center of the relationship before the relationship starts. "Book a call" + "we keep working until it does" + "a clear read on what's worth doing" put the work at the center.
Small businesses hiring for complex AI work aren't buying a line item. They're deciding whether to trust someone with their operations. A homepage that leads with prices asks them to evaluate a transaction. A homepage that leads with outcomes asks them to evaluate a partner.
We want the second conversation. The prices come up when both sides know what the work actually is.