To Price or Not to Price ...
Posted On: 2007-03-13
...that is the question.
I'm sure that Shakespeare would be horrified to see a quote from Hamlet butchered in such a cavalier fashion ... but then Shakespeare never had to decide whether or not to show prices on a website. Unlike Shakespeare it is a question that we have to consider and there doesn't seem to be one answer that fits all situations. Instead, the answer seems to be ... it all depends.
There was a time early in my life as an affiliate marketer when I never showed the prices of any membership in an adult site that I was trying to sell. That was many moons ago, well before any sponsor came out with the $1.00 trial offer. Before that bargain-basement price began to appear I, and just about everyone else, didn't mention a price. Instead we left it up to the sponsor to mention money on the paysite tour.
Then one leading affiliate marketer suggested that perhaps we should start mentioning prices. His theory was that if we mentioned prices then the only surfers who clicked through to the sponsor's site would be those who were prepared to pay.
Of course he wasn't silly; he didn't suggest that we talk prices on our galleries or free sites. Instead he suggested that the surfer be directed from the free site or gallery to what was basically a full-page ad for our sponsor and that was the page where we should begin to talk money.
When people started to follow his advice we found that the numbers of surfers going through to the sponsor may have dropped off a little but those that did were more inclined to join. So overall it seemed like a great idea and it certainly still seems to be so from my point of view.
However there are some instances where a price right on the gallery or free site might be a great selling point. If the sponsor offers a $1.00 trial for example that might seem like such a bargain to the surfer that he would be more inclined to hit the sponsor's site and join than if no price point was mentioned.
So that's something to think about for adult sites but what about mainstream sites?
Pricing on mainstream sites
Well of course, if you're trying to sell a product that the surfer can buy direct from your site, then you do have to display the price and the sooner the customer sees the price the better. No one wants to go right through to the shopping cart before he or she finds out how much the product you're selling is going to cost them.
But are there times when you would never display the price of a product on a website?
I certainly believe that there are such times. We've just finished building a website for a tourist operator and his site was one where we didn't talk prices - and he understood why we chose not to mention prices.
Instead of mentioning prices anyone who was interested was invited to call for further details. That gave this tourist operator, and his staff, a chance to upsell the potential customer to something more expensive. It also gave the tourist operator and his staff the chance to sell the potential customer on other services that the business offered.
That was something that this business had been doing on their printed brochures for quite a long time and it has certainly worked well for them. Instead of having tourists come in just in time for the tour the business encourages people to come in a bit earlier for breakfast, or stay a bit later after the tour and have lunch.
Even though breakfast and lunch, and all the other services the business offered, were mentioned in their brochure many who called had missed those options. When they looked at the brochure they were only interested in the tours and never even noticed that the business offered other things that they might have been interested in.
By getting the customers to call in for details the business was able to make money from their other products. And that's money that they would have missed out on if the tour prices had been displayed on their website and in their brochures.
So there is a very good reason for not displaying prices on a website. If you, or the business you're building the website for, have a chance of making extra money from an upsell then don't give the prospective customer all the information. Give them just enough to keep them interested and then give them a call to action that will open them up to other options.
Of course, if there are no other options then you really have nothing to lose by displaying the prices ... or do you?