Quote or buy now? When office furniture websites should show prices

Every office furniture dealer website makes the same choice on every product page: show a price and a basket button, or ask the visitor to request a quote. Get it wrong one way and you end up pricing a 40-desk fit-out blind from a postcode. Get it wrong the other way and the office manager who wanted one chair for a new starter leaves for a site that tells her what it costs.

This guide is for dealer principals and sales directors deciding where that line sits. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, an ecommerce platform for dealers, so we have a stake in this. Where Orbit comes up we say what it does; everything else is general advice that works on any platform.

Should an office furniture website show prices or ask for a quote?

Both, on the same site. Show prices on the products a buyer can choose correctly without you seeing the room, and keep a quote route for the work that needs a survey, a floor plan or a conversation. For most dealers that means buy-now for task chairs, storage, accessories and standard desks, and quote-led for fit-outs, bespoke pieces and large projects.

The basic split is in our plan for selling office furniture online. This guide covers the harder part: the borderline cases, guide prices, the quote form, response times and turning quotes into orders.

How do you decide, category by category?

Run each product category through four tests. You do not need a score sheet: if two or more point to a quote, the category probably belongs on the quote side.

1. Basket size

Small baskets are expensive to quote. Set a threshold, say £1,500 ex VAT, and look at the typical order in each category. Below it, the quote, the emails and the chasing eat the margin, so price it. Above it, a person earns their keep, and the buyer usually expects one.

2. Configuration complexity

Count the choices a buyer has to get right. A task chair with three fabrics and two arm options fits a product page. A bench desking run needs widths, leg frames, screens, cable management and a layout that works around the columns: that is a drawing, not a dropdown. If a wrong choice comes back as a return, quote it.

3. Delivery and installation variability

If delivery is predictable (boxed chairs by courier, lockers on a two-person service with a known charge), a fixed charge works and the item can be bought online. If the cost depends on floors, lifts, out-of-hours working, phasing or clearing the old furniture, you cannot price it from a postcode. Our guide to delivery and installation charges for office furniture sets out where that line usually falls.

4. Competitor price visibility

Search your ten best-selling products by name. If other dealers and online retailers show a price, the buyer will see it whether you do or not, and “request a quote” on that chair reads as “we are dearer”. If nobody shows a price, because the product is specified to order, you lose little by quoting.

How the tests play out across a typical range (our judgement, for illustration):

What sits between buy now and request a quote?

Most of the lost sales happen in the middle, where a dealer puts “price on application” on a product a buyer could have bought. Four patterns cover nearly every case:

1. Buy now. Price, basket, delivery charge. For products that pass all four tests.
2. Buy now, with a volume route. The price is shown and the basket works, with a line underneath: “Furnishing a team? Ask for a project price on 10 or more.” The single-chair buyer checks out; the 40-chair buyer calls you.
3. Guide price, then quote. No basket, but a “from” price or a typical cost per workstation, so the buyer knows they are in the right place.
4. Quote only. For work where any number would mislead. Give these pages more substance, not less: case studies, photos of finished jobs, typical lead times and the name of who will call back.

Avoid “call for price” on anything a rival lists with a price. It loses the buyer who wanted to buy, and it tells the one who does call that you plan to negotiate.

How should a dealer use “from £X” guide prices?

A guide price anchors the conversation. The buyer arrives at the quote with a number in mind, and a total that comes in near or under it is an easy yes. Three rules keep it honest.

• Make the “from” price buyable. The UK advertising code says price claims such as “up to” and “from” must not mislead by exaggerating the availability or amount of benefits likely to be obtained (CAP Code rule 3.22, asa.org.uk, checked 29 October 2026). A from price based on a size or finish nobody orders fails that test and irritates the buyer. Use a configuration you actually sell.
• Say what is included. The same section of the code says prices must state any delivery charges, or say they are payable when they cannot reasonably be worked out in advance (rule 3.20). It allows prices without VAT only where everyone the price is aimed at pays no VAT or can recover it, with the VAT rate or amount stated prominently (rule 3.18). A site anyone can buy from will struggle to meet that condition, so show the inc VAT figure too, or let the buyer switch.
• Anchor projects per workstation, not per job. “Bench desking from £X per position, delivered and installed” is easier to relate to a floor than a total for someone else’s office. Work the figure out from your recent jobs.

A worked example, with assumed figures. Your last four bench desking jobs came in at £420, £455, £470 and £510 per position ex VAT, delivered and installed. Publish “typically £420 to £510 per position ex VAT (£504 to £612 inc VAT), delivered and installed, depending on layout and access”. A buyer with 30 people now expects roughly £12,600 to £15,300 ex VAT, and the ones expecting £5,000 rule themselves out before taking up a survey slot. Check the margin on each end of the range with the margin calculator, and keep the rules for your buy-now prices consistent with it (the maths is in markup vs margin for trade price lists).

What should an office furniture quote request form ask?

Enough to give a useful first answer without a phone call, and no more. Every extra required field loses some people, so split the form into what you must have and what helps.

Ask every time:

• Name, company, email and phone.
• What the project is: a new office, a refurbishment, extra desks, a few chairs, something made to size.
• How many people or workstations.
• Site postcode, the floor, and whether there is a lift.
• When they need it: a date, a move, or no fixed date.

Ask, but make optional:

• Products or ranges they have seen on your site, so you know which page sent them.
• Finish and colour preferences.
• A floor plan or photos of the space.
• Whether they want installation, and old furniture taken away.
• A budget band. Many buyers skip it; the ones who answer save you a round of revisions.

Show follow-up questions only when they apply: ask how many desks only if the buyer ticked desks. Put the form on the project pages themselves, not only on a contact page three clicks away.

On Orbit, quote requests are taken with a form or your contact page. The Forms plugin (listed as Form Builder in the plugin store, with a free plan) builds the form by drag and drop, can show a question only when an earlier answer calls for it, emails you each submission and can send the buyer an automatic reply. File uploads, for floor plans and photos, are on its paid plan. If most of your work is contract and fit-out, the Quorum office theme is laid out for it, with quote buttons that lead to your contact page.

How fast should you respond to a quote request?

Faster than the other dealers the buyer emailed, because a quote request is rarely sent to one dealer. We suggest three promises, written on the form so the buyer knows what to expect:

• Straight away: an automatic reply that confirms the request arrived, says who will handle it and when they will hear.
• The same working day: a person replies, confirms what they understood and asks for anything missing. For a few chairs or desks, this reply can include the price.
• Within two or three working days: a first price for standard products, or a survey date for a fit-out.

Then follow up: a call two days after the quote goes out, and again a week before it expires. Track every request as a deal with a stage and a value, in a spreadsheet or a CRM; the Orbit CRM plugin has pipelines and deals for this, beside each customer’s timeline.

How do you turn an office furniture quote into an order?

Quotes tend to stall between “looks fine” and a signed order. Make yours easy to say yes to:

1. One reference, one document. Quote number, date and validity (30 days is common, with a line saying prices can change if a manufacturer raises its list), plus the buyer’s own reference if they gave one.
2. Itemised lines. Products with codes, finishes and quantities; delivery, installation and removal of old furniture as separate lines; VAT shown. A buyer comparing three quotes needs to compare like with like.
3. Lead times and what you need from them. Made-to-order finishes, the delivery window, and site details: access, parking, a contact on the day.
4. Clear terms for made-to-order items. For consumers buying at a distance, the usual cancellation right does not apply to goods made to the consumer’s specifications or clearly personalised (Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, regulation 28(1)(b), legislation.gov.uk, checked 29 October 2026). Business buyers rely on your terms, so state deposits, cancellation and what happens if the order changes. Do not assume a stock chair in a chosen fabric counts as made to specification; take advice on your own terms.
5. One way to accept. A signed copy or their purchase order, plus the deposit if you take one. Say which on the quote.

Then move the repeat business into the shop. If the agreed prices match your web prices, the buyer can reorder online next time without a quote. On Orbit, a buyer ordering through the shop pays by card or by a manual method such as bank transfer, and when the order is paid Orbit raises a purchase order to each supplier connected on Orbit, left as a draft for you to check or sent straight to the supplier. If the agreed prices are special to that customer, the Enterprise plan (£999 a month, or £749 a month billed yearly, ex VAT) lets you put them into that company’s own price catalogue, so its buyers see them when they sign in. How that works for regular accounts is in our guide to trade accounts and contract pricing.

How do you know the balance is right?

Review it with sales every quarter. Four numbers show which products sit on the wrong side:

• Quote requests for priced products. If people ask for a quote on a chair that has a price, the page is missing something: a lead time, a delivery charge, a volume price.
• Quote-to-order rate by category. A category that converts well from quotes and is mostly small orders may be ready to sell online.
• Large online orders. If buyers check out 30 chairs online, you may be missing a project price and an installation job.
• Time spent per quote. Hours spent quoting products under your threshold are the cost the buy-now side should remove.

How does this work on Orbit?

On the buy-now side, every plan includes supplier catalogue sync: connect a supplier on Orbit, tick the products, and they import with images, variants, brand, category and specs, priced by your rules (a percentage markup, a percentage margin or a fixed amount, with rounding such as .99 or .95, matched by brand, category or cost band). Colour and image swatches are built in, delivery charges use shipping classes, conditional rates and postcode rules, and shoppers can switch prices between ex VAT and inc VAT. On the quote side: the Forms plugin or your contact page, and the Quorum theme (£120, one-off).

Plans run from Solo at £25 a month to Enterprise at £999 a month, ex VAT, with a 14-day free trial. More on Orbit for office furniture dealers.