It’s no secret that the way people perceive your prices affects your conversions either negatively or positively, so here’s a quick list of 8 E-Commerce Pricing Strategies to test:
1.- Anchoring
You can anchor a higher number in your shopper’s mind by positioning it where the shopper can see it first. Shoppers who see a higher number before a lower number are often willing to spend more money…
It’s a bit like when I ask my wife, Chrissi if I can go to Japan for a month to train with my Ninjutsu Grandmaster and she thinks I’m outrageous, but when I then ask to go for two weeks, it seems Ientirely reasonable
2.- Charm Pricing
Shoppers have been trained since they first started spending their pocket money as a kid to associate prices ending in .99 with discounts and bargains. This works even if the actual saving is a pittance.
3.- Rounded Pricing
A rounded price’s visual fluency appeals to customers, so this pricing tactic works best for emotional purchases, ideal if you’re running ads to irrationally passionate Facebook audiences. For rational purchases, end your price with 99.
4.- Leveraging “Free”
People’s brains light up when you mention “free.” So shoehorn it into your offering wherever you can. Free gift with purchase… Buy one get one free… Free shipping.
5.- Chinese Number Perception
I used to be a Feng shui geek but four kids later, trying to keep our house “in balance” is like walking on quicksand.
And as well as the art of balancing energies, in Chinese culture, numbers are meaningful too. The number 4 is avoided because of its phonetic similarity to the word death. The number 8, on the other hand, is lucky.
6.- Price Font Size
Experiments have proven that when a sale price is shown in a physically smaller font than the original price, the shopper perceives the price as lower.
This is because the shopper subconsciously relates the physical size difference between the original and the sale price to the discount magnitude… sneaky but clever. (The Shoptimized Theme leverages this principle as a standard feature.)
7.- The Rule of 100
According to Jonah Berger, discounts are better communicated as a percentage when the original price was under $100. So, if the original price was $50, show the discount as 10% off when the saving is $5. The 10% is perceived to be a bigger saving than $5 because it’s a bigger number.
If the original price was over $100, it’s better communicated in dollar value. The numbers will be larger so the discount will appear larger to the shopper.
8.- Exclusive Pricing
“Reassuringly expensive” comes into play here, “lower-end” products may be of the same quality as luxury brands, but people are still willing to pay for the prestige that buying a well-known brand gives them.
If you’re selling premium products, always, emphasize your product’s quality and branding to justify its high price tag. And if you want to split-test different pricing strategies, Google Optimize is free and perfect to started with. If you want hand-holding help, started with split-testing go here.
