What we are building
A price list on a hygiene site is not an image of a fee sheet and it is not a PDF. It is a small set of records with fields, rendered as a table on a laptop and as stacked cards on a phone, matching exactly what your booking tool quotes, and editable by you in ten minutes when your fees change.
A hygiene visit is a known quantity. Price is the first thing a patient wants and often the only thing standing between reading the page and booking. Here is the build order.
1. Write the list before anyone opens a website
On paper, in the order a patient meets them:
- New patient hygiene visit, with the longer appointment time it really takes
- Returning hygiene visit
- Extended appointment where more time is needed
- Airflow, stain removal or whitening if you offer them
- Plan member visit, if you run a membership
Each line needs a name a patient recognises, a price, a duration and one plain sentence of what it includes. Clinical terminology belongs in your notes. The list on the website is written for someone who last thought about their teeth six months ago.
2. Decide what a price actually means
Most complaints about dental pricing are about ambiguity rather than the number. Settle three things before publishing:
Is it a fixed price or a from price? If a longer or heavier appointment costs more, say so on the line rather than at the chair.
What is included? Whether the assessment, the advice at the end and any radiographs taken by the dentist are inside or outside the number.
What changes it on the day? One sentence: if you need more time than booked, this is what happens and this is what it costs. Written on the page, in your words, so the till is never a surprise.
3. Set the prices in the booking tool first
Configure the appointment types, durations and prices in Dentally, Software of Excellence, Cliniko, Jane, Acuity or Square Appointments, then write the website list from what the tool holds.
Doing it in that order means the price a patient reads is the price the booking flow quotes and the card machine charges. Doing it the other way round guarantees the two drift apart within a year, usually a month after a fee rise.
4. Model it as records, not a hard-coded table
In the CMS, a price line is a record with fields: name, price, price type (fixed or from), duration, short description, an optional note, and a display order. A plan is a separate record with a monthly price, what it includes and where the sign-up goes.
The point of records is that you edit a number in a field. Nobody has to open code, nobody has to ring a developer, and nothing else on the page can break while you do it.
5. Render it for a phone first
Most people read this on a phone, often standing up. On a small screen a wide table becomes a horizontal scroll, and a horizontal scroll on a price list loses bookings.
Stack each line as a card: name, price, duration, one line of description, and a Book button that opens that exact appointment type. On a laptop the same records become a table. Same data, two layouts.
6. Put a Book button on every line
The price list is where the decision happens. Every line gets its own button, deep linked so the right appointment is already selected. A patient reading the price of a returning visit should not land on a generic booking page and have to work out which option they are.
7. Say the direct access position beside the price
Where patients can come to you without a dentist's referral, say it on the price list as well as the home page, because this is the page they are on when they decide. Where a referral or a recent examination is required, say that instead, plainly, so nobody books a visit that cannot go ahead.
The position varies by country and, in the United States, by state, so publish your own rather than a general statement, and confirm it with your regulator. This is orientation, not legal advice.
8. Handle plans on the same page
If you run a membership, show the monthly price beside the pay-as-you-go price so the comparison is done for the reader. Two visits a year and a discount on extras is a common shape, and the arithmetic that makes it worth joining should be visible rather than implied.
Link to the sign-up in your payment or booking tool rather than trying to take the subscription on the website itself.
9. Add the things a price list is silently asked
Underneath the list, in short lines: what payment you take, whether you take card at the chair, your cancellation window and deposit position if you have one, and whether any insurance or scheme applies. These are the calls the price list would otherwise generate.
10. Diary the review
Fees change and the site does not follow on its own. Put a calendar reminder at whatever interval you review pricing, and make the reminder cover three places: the booking tool, the website records and any printed sheet at reception. All three, or you will be quoting three different numbers.
Where this sits
An editable price list, matched to the booking tool and readable on a phone, is one of the six things every hygiene clinic website we build has, and the same pricing pattern runs through our dental practice websites. Our own packages are on pricing. Answer the price question on the page and the phone stops ringing about it.