You want one. last. chance. to tell people why they should buy your product before they see the price, because your product is all flavors of awesomeness, but if they move around your product page and can’t see a price, and have to click the buy button to find out, then two thoughts will cross their minds: 1) Is the product THAT expensive? Because if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it, and 2) Is the product going to be this difficult to use, too?
The Price Quest Begins
I looked for a particular kind of software. Then I looked for a link in the main navigation of a seller’s site that said “Pricing.” Nope. Okay, “Products.” Now I expected to see a page of their products with a price next to each. I even looked in the footer of the page to find “Pricing.” Nope.
Then I saw a page or button called “Buy.” No price. Just “Buy.” Ugh. I was sent to a page that offered to let me download the desktop version, start a web app trial, or in teensy letters, “Launch a demo version” (because demo versions are always full-featured, you know), or Buy. Still no price. Fine. I clicked Buy. First step of the software seller’s shopping cart. $79. That might be a good price, that might be an ouch, but why did I have to go on a journey to find out the price?
And Shopping Effort Probably Ends
I researched more to see what’s out there. The field for the software I wanted is pretty crowded. As I figured out what the top contenders were going to be, I kept going back to the fact that this seller made me work so hard to find a price. Would I be on chats or calls or submitting trouble tickets every day to try to figure out how to navigate the software and its settings? In my mind, a bad user experience getting a price means probably a bad user experience using the software. It’s definitely not always the case, but it happens often enough.
For enterprise software, I get that you have to find out how many seats (licenses to use the software) would be needed, so you can price accordingly. But, it all the pricing is hidden right out of the box, that tells me (perhaps mistakenly) the software is enterprise level anyway, and we won’t be a good fit.
Fix It
To have more sales and fewer abandoned shopping carts, make your product pricing easy to find. Put your price on a page that’s easy to find (I like to find a link to the pricing page up top, in the main navigation, when I’m researching products), and impress upon the visitor the value your product will provide to them. Don’t be embarrassed about it. If you are this transparent about the price, it’s a good start to convincing visitors that your product will be easy to use and have better support, too.
I can help you with your user experience, including your navigation. Contact me!