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Comment by swores | Hacker News Reader

Is the reason that $12 converted better than $9.99 definitely because users are able to visualise it as one dollar a month?

Maybe people see the .99 and are trained to think "99 cents is a marketing plan to make me think it's cheaper than it is", thus causing it to have the opposite effect?

Maybe people see $9.99 as a generic price, implying it was picked fairly randomly, whereas $12 is a slightly odd number to chose, implying that it was carefully picked as a price that gives users good value? (It would have that effect on me - $9.99 suggests they haven't worked out how much they need to charge me to make a profit, and just picked a rounded number that looks normal.)

I'd like to see $12 compared to $14, compared to $11.99, compared to $24, compared to $20.

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My take - People see one and two and those are the two lowest numerals. Fill their brain up with nines and somewhere there are synapses firing which say that's a lot. It's not like $10 is a huge psychological barrier in the same way $1000 is.

so then that means $10 would convert even better?

Wbat about 00000000001.00?

Watch the show. He talked about trying $13.99 and other price points. Nothing converted better than $12.

In my case, for donations on a forum... nothing converted better than £3 per month.

Why? Because it's been translated into "a beer a month", as someone initially said that surely people derived value such that if they met me once a month they'd get a beer in for me... and lo, that's exactly what people started doing online. Prior to this comment I had real trouble pulling in any donations, now people buy the servers and I a beer each month (via £3 donations).

And in case anyone is wondering, average price of a pint in the UK is £2.80, and in London where the forum is focused it is £3.30. http://www.pintprice.com/region.php?/United%20Kingdom/

My thought on this a while ago: People have to be able to visualise it in a human way to them.

They can visualise a pound coin or dollar bill and say, "That's not much", and they can visualise a pint and think "It's the courteous thing to do". They can't visualise 67p very well at all.

Sorry, haven't watched the show - has he tried $10, rounded off?

My guess: it's more of a "don't make me think" type thing.

Can you divide 9.99 by 12 in your head? How long would it take? How sure would you be of the answer after 1, 2, 3 ... 5 seconds?

In that impulsive fraction of a second that you have the user about to click the button and they are battling within themselves if they can do the calculation then it increases the chances that the "buy" side will win. Being able to do the calculation easily probably also gives a reflection of friendliness and ease onto the entire rest of the service as well.

Well personally it would take me a couple of seconds to get to "roughly 85c/month", but I wouldn't actually be thinking that when deciding to signup.

However, if I did care about how much $9.99/year is each month, rather than even trying to be slightly accurate, I'd round it off as "less than a dollar a month" and go straight ahead. That extra 17c/month doesn't make a difference to me.

(Obviously both my calculations speed and the amount I care about price differences when talking about that amount of money isn't neccesarily equal to that of other, possibly most other, potential customers.)

Exactly–seems a little speculative.

Maybe $9.99 would have converted more if they sold it as "That's less than a dollar a month!"

I wonder how it would have done priced at $12 but immediately discounted to $9.99? (Not only is it easy to see how cheap it is, but it's also on sale.)

And do you think $12 converts better than $12.00? It sounds minor but I bet it makes a difference.

In my experience we typically do round dollar amounts and drop the ".00", but maybe that helps explain why 9.99 loses to 12. How would 10 vs 12 do?

Reminds me of this: http://www.inc.com/guides/201101/guide-to-the-ABCs-of-pricin...

My guess is, that it's exploiting the basic synaptic nature of the brain. The 12 numeral automatically kicks in the association with months, which in turn splits the sum to 12 x $1, or one dollar a month which seems low enough to feel at ease with.

Seems to be intuitive enough to happen subconsciously.

The other price points just appear as one fixed sum in the mind, which is much less likely to be spent on a whim.

I don't like prices like $9.99 first I have to round up to $10 and then I haven't actually seen that price next to the item.

When someone quotes the price verbally $9.99 it's longer than $10, so sounds bigger.

Also, $9.99 sounds like they are embarrassed that it's that much and they have to trick you into paying more than you thought you were.

When I see $9.99, I think $10, not "99 cents is a marketing plan to make me think it's cheaper than it is".

Maybe they introduced this new price with a tagline - "A buck a month!".

I am pretty sure it's because of that, very simple, people like simple. I like simple.

Yes, if you watch the episode of This Week in Venture Capital, that is what the JibJab guy said.

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