Designing a better pricing page | Hacker News Reader

Designing a better pricing page

smashingmagazine.com

78 pointsmarban24 comments

I've also found it very useful to quickly look through a gallery of well-run companies' pricing pages: they've already invested a lot of money figuring out what works well, and I can spot the common patterns after looking through a collection of examples.

The website I like to use for this is https://www.glance.fyi/

I've especially found it useful to look at the historical screenshots of a company's website (only available for some websites). You can see the experiments happen and you can experience the company's evolution as they work to dial in their marketing copy, their sales pitch, and their pricing structure.

Surprised there's no mention on how much to charge

- You get choice paralysis if you price things too closely e.g. instead of $4.99 and $7.99, use $4.99 and $49.99 to make the distinction clear

- You may actually hurt yourself if you price "business" plans too low. Odds are it will get expensed and people like to feel important by buying expensive stuff.

If I can’t get $499 expensed then I probably can’t get $49.99 expensed either.

Worse, if I can get $499 expensed but it’s a total pain in my ass, I’m going to struggle to convince myself to wrestle with that process over $50.

Michael Dearing's talk on pricing [1] is a great resource on the topic.

[1]: https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/harrison-metals-micha...

I’m frustrated by the trendy dark pattern of saying “$9 per month if you pay annually”. If you’re going to be deceptive, why not go the whole way - “1 cent per minute”.

I think it is because people pay many things per month already, so it is easier to see if it fits in your budget.

If I could pay the annual fee in monthly installments then I definitely would find the breakdown helpful, but usually annual plans that are given monthly segments still require a full payment at the beginning of the subscription.

I like some the advice, and I know some companies that should take it ("Pricing page should be usable as a reference" is genius) but I strongly disagree with the kind of consumer psychology present in the lawn mower technique.

It was most likely conducted as a study, where an abstract scenario made people browse a pricing page for a product they likely didn't even understand. When I look at a pricing page (with my current role I'm delighted to say I get enough control over my engineering that I get to do that!) I simply look at what I need to find. Pricing differences between tiers, looking for a specific feature etc.

I was about to write pretty much the same thing. If I’m looking at detailed comparisons for your product, I’m already half sold and am looking for something specific. I’ve been doing this a lot with hospitality software in the past couple of years and I can’t relate to the lawn mower pattern at all.

Has anyone experimented with putting the priciest option first?

I once read that eg furniture shops put the most expensive items at the entrance to the shop thereby making the rest seem affordable.

Yep, it's called the Anchoring Effect.

https://blog.hubspot.com/ecommerce/setting-ecommerce-prices-...

The most famous example is maybe the Wendy’s triple cheeseburger.

They don’t sell many of them, but they increased the number of doubles sold substantially, since it became the “medium” option rather than the large.

Games with currency tend to always have an expensive option. Even if most people don't buy it, it makes the moderate option seem cheap.

I show the priciest option (2999/y) first, but my sales volume is too low to measure any difference. It does make the cheapest plan (149/y) “feel” cheaper.

The problem is that anchoring apparently also works with unrelated numbers so first reading “1500 happy customers use this product” could impact how the 2999 price point is perceived.

I’m glad (← sarcasm) if a modern pricing page lists *the actual price* without needing to create an account or install the app first.

Someone should start a SAAS business that generates pricing pages, with automatic customer price optimization.

Kana seems to be a start-up attempting just that: https://www.usekana.com/

Doesnt work.

Someone launched exactly this on HN a bit ago. I can't remember if it was a YC company or just a Show HN. Also optimized across currencies if I remember right.

Sounds interesting, I'll check it out thanks

Do it like Discord, so nobody really knows what they're paying for, but it gives them a good feeling when they do.

People feel good about paying discord? This, I need to hear.

You get that cool icon and stuff.

Additional reading for those interested in pricing saas: What makes a good subscription billing system? https://dev.to/shoplytics/what-makes-a-good-subscription-bil...

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