What Is The Price

This is a topic I should’ve covered in my book 50 Biggest Website Mistakes but didn’t. When someone visits your website why make them ask “What is the Price?”

I review a lot of products and look over a lot of sales pages either during the review or as a web guy working on a website for a client. But as you can imagine, I see a lot of sales pages, pricing tables, order buttons and such.

Something I see way too often is confusion when it comes to asking for the price. Too many times the website visitor has to look all over for an order link or even more the price and what they get for that price.

One quote that comes to mind is: “A Confused Buyer Never Buys!”

Think about that for a moment. Have you ever went to buy something and it didn’t have a price tag? The first thing you do is look to see if there is another just like that item that does have the price tag on it and hope it’s the right size. But what do you do if there isn’t? Do you hunt down a sales rep, take it to the checkout and ask as your checking out? Or just put it back?

I know for me, many times I just put it down and move on. I wasn’t meant to buy it 😉 That’s in the retail space but for a website, there is no excuse. We don’t have a physical “tag” we attach to our items we sell online. We can put a button or a link and the price in plain view as much as we want pretty simply.  

Something else that is very important is to give them the exact price they will be paying. It doesn’t matter if the price is $19 or $1,999 if that’s what you want for the item tell them that’s what they’re going to pay.

I will say that it is a good idea to let them know what they are getting for that amount. In most cases, it’s pretty easy if you are selling a book or T-Shirt but if you are selling a service, coaching, or training you need to be very clear.

If you are selling a one-time coaching session and it’s $997 tell them it is a one-time payment of $997. If you are offering a payment option tell them it is 3 payments of $334 or whatever your chosen price is. In this case, I generally add a little more for the payments and would provide two buttons the higher price on the left and the one-time price on the right.

CONVERSION TIP: In testing I’ve found that if you have two buttons side by side make the button offer you want them to choose on the right. While we don’t want to discount left-handed people statistics show that 90% of the people in the world are right handed. That being said our brains will seek out the button on the right more often and click that button. (Provided it’s a good offer explained well).

In the scenario above I put the one time price on the right because I’d rather have the one time payment instead of three payments. Granted I would receive more over time but that is only if they make all three payments.

In another scenario, if you have a subscription where you are offering a monthly payment of $97 per month, you might want to offer an annual payment of $970. If this is the case I put the $97 priced button on the left with the text “Order Today for Just $97 Per Month”. On the button on the right, I would put the following text: “Pay $970 Yearly and Save $194”. You can see an example of this on my Inner Circle Page.

I do this because I’ve found that the retention rate is better on the yearly subscription but this is something you of course would want to test for your market because every industry is different.

What started this post was something I stumbled across on a service I’m evaluating. The price looks good (not as great as original perceived) but still a decent price once I’ve figured out what I’m getting. That’s the issue I had to ask “What is the price”.

While they DID spelled it out on their website it could be conceived two different ways. In fact I conferred with a friend to see how they interpreted it before submitting a support ticket.

Their page shows a monthly price and a yearly discounted price which is fine. The confusion comes in with the price in large print is a per person price and is stated as “Per month, per person, Starts with two persons”. It could be conceived that the initially membership includes two people and each additional person is that amount.

It confuses the buyer and makes them feel cheated in a way. Draw me in with a good price only to find out that I need to pay double that per month to get started. I know in this case it is not meant to be a bait and switch deal and it’s just a matter of wording and confusion in the interpretation of that wording by the visitor.

In going through this thought process myself, it made me wonder if others struggle with this situation and felt the need to share with other like minded business owners so that they can avoid this in their sales processes and not leave their customers wondering “What Is The Price?”

An early love for graphics brought me online 20 years ago which lead me to consume a vast knowledge in marketing, conversion, design and various types of web technologies. That information led to becoming a serial entrepreneur, author, coach, trainer and That One Web Guy! Click To Read The Full Bio