Why a hidden rate costs you the booking
A parent comparing tutors is doing arithmetic. Not the hourly rate on its own, but the rate multiplied by a school year, against a household budget that already has swimming and a phone contract in it. Until they can do that sum, they cannot say yes.
Tutors hide the number for understandable reasons. Rates vary by subject and stage. Group work is priced differently from one to one. Travel matters. Exam season is busier. All true, and none of it justifies a fees page that says contact us for a quote. It just moves the parent to the tutor who published.
Here is how to build a fees page that answers the sum.
1. Publish per session and per term
Parents think in two units and you need both. The per session rate is how they compare you with the other tutor they found. The per term figure is how they decide whether they can afford it.
So show the session rate, then the term equivalent based on your normal term length, with the number of sessions stated. Twelve sessions across an autumn term at your Year 5 rate, with the total written out. If terms vary, use a typical term and say so.
2. Vary by the two things that actually change the price
Most tutoring price lists are too complicated. Almost all of the real variation comes from stage and format.
Build a small table. Rows for stage: primary, lower secondary, GCSE or equivalent, sixth form. Columns for format: one to one in person, one to one online, small group. Fill in the session rate. That is usually the whole price list, and a parent can find themselves in it in five seconds.
Where a subject genuinely costs more to teach, add a line rather than a second table.
3. Price the trial or assessment separately and clearly
Give it its own line with its own number, or say plainly that it is free. This is the price that decides whether a parent starts, so it should be the easiest figure on the page to find.
If the assessment fee is credited against the first block when they continue, say that. It removes the feeling of paying twice to find out.
4. Show the options parents ask about anyway
Siblings booked together. A block or term paid up front against pay as you go. Intensive revision courses before exams. Holiday catch-up sessions. Travel to the family's home beyond a certain distance.
Each gets one line and a number. Do not invent a discount to fill a row. An honest short list beats a long one with vague terms.
5. Write the money rules in plain words
Underneath the table, the questions that otherwise arrive by email. When payment is due, monthly or per term or per session. Which methods you take. Your cancellation notice and whether a late cancellation is charged. Whether missed sessions are made up or forfeited. What happens over holidays. How much notice either side gives to stop.
Write these as short statements, not as terms and conditions. The point is that a parent finishes the page with nothing left to ask.
6. Set the same structure up in the platform
The page and the software have to agree, or your admin doubles. In TutorBird, Teachworks, ClassForKids or Acuity, create the services exactly as they appear on the page: the trial, then one service per stage and format combination, with the correct duration and rate on each.
Then set up how you actually take money. Recurring sessions with monthly invoicing, term blocks sold as a package, or payment per session. These platforms differ in how they handle invoicing, packages and term billing, so check the specifics with the vendor before you promise a parent a payment schedule the software cannot run.
Whatever you choose, the booking button on the fees page should carry the parent into the right service already selected.
7. Keep the funding and subsidy question honest
Parents sometimes arrive expecting the funding language they know from nurseries and clubs. Private tutoring generally sits outside those schemes, and eligibility for anything that does exist varies by country and region.
If a scheme, bursary or local authority arrangement genuinely applies to you, say so and link the official source. If not, say nothing rather than something vague. A wrong hint here wastes an hour of somebody's evening.
8. Give the page a review date
Put the month your fees were last updated at the bottom. Then diarise the change: announce increases to current families directly before the page changes, and update the platform and the page on the same day so nobody books yesterday's rate.
9. Measure whether it works
Track clicks on the booking button from the fees page separately from the home page. If the fees page is where people leave, the problem is usually not the number. It is a missing term total, an unanswered cancellation rule, or a table a parent cannot find themselves in.
Where this sits
A fees page with per session and per term figures, the trial priced separately and the same structure mirrored in the booking platform is part of a children's tutoring website as we build it, and the same pricing discipline runs through our other childcare and family websites. Our own packages are on pricing. Publish the number and you stop paying for enquiries that were never going to convert.