Site Optimization Price Testing | Price Testing |
| Thursday, 27 October 2005 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Topic: Price Testing — Do you know how to price your products or services to achieve the highest revenues? Our research suggests that you may never know unless you test. We recently released the audio recording of our clinic on this topic. You can listen to a recording of this clinic here: Which will generate the most revenue? A lower price that drives more traffic and buyers? Or a higher price that may attract fewer buyers, but deliver more income per sale? Our testing tells us that the answer to those questions is: "It depends." In this brief we will review the data from two separate tests and show you how a lower price beat a higher price, and vice versa. Here are three points to consider as we present these test results:
Experiment #1: In our first experiment, we worked with a leading psychiatrist and author to determine how to maximize the online sales of his newly published book. The three price points we tested were:
Which price point was best? Which price point yielded the most revenue? To answer these questions, we conducted a simple three-day pricing test. We drove a large volume of traffic to our site using just five search terms on Google AdWords. Using an A/B/C split test, we evenly distributed this traffic to three pages showing different pricing information. Here are the results of this three-day micro-test:
An important additional point: the higher price on the same book created a much higher profit margin, which resulted in greater profit generated on less physical units sold. KEY POINT: For physical products, profit margin should always be taken into account. For subscription-based services, this is much less of an issue. However, marketing costs should always be taken into account. In our next experiment, we weigh the pay-per-click (PPC) marketing costs against the revenue generated. But first, one final note on this test: It is important to weigh the benefits of additional new customers against that of higher revenue. In the example above the additional 180 customers at the $14.00 price point may actually be worth more in the long run than the additional $765 of immediate revenue generated at the $24.95 price point. In other words, the additional revenue made in subsequent sales to these customers may more than make up for slightly less revenue on the first sale. KEY POINT: It may be to your greatest advantage to select a price that generates slightly less revenue if that price also generates significantly more new customers. The average lifetime value of your customers and your ability to make additional sales to them will be the determining factors here. Experiment #2: In this test, we used three different price points for a paid-subscription site. Again, we split the traffic evenly between three landing pages. The only thing that was altered was the price. The three subscription price points we tested were:
Here are the initial testing results gathered over a four-day period:
Here is an ROI analysis of all three price points based on a $0.09 average CPC:
When ROI is calculated, it becomes even more obvious that the $10 price point is significantly better than the more expensive prices. And these numbers do not take into consideration recurring revenue. These results are even more dramatic when you factor in recurring revenue:
What's important here is that in addition to generating more sales, the lower price point also increases retention, which creates even more profit over the long term. KEY POINT: For subscription-based sites, consider selling long-term memberships as well. For more on this topic, see our report on Subscription Revenue. Even with retail sites, the lifetime value of a customer shouldn't be ignored. The additional sales you can make to existing customers may be significantly more valuable than the immediate additional sales. In these two tests, we have seen that intuition cannot be relied upon to predict optimal pricing. Sometimes a higher price creates more revenue, while other times a lower price will generate not only more immediate sales, but more recurring revenue as well. We have provided a downloadable spreadsheet tool that helps you calculate your revenue and profit for a number of price points: MEC Price Testing Analysis Tool In our recent web clinic, we covered the functionality of this spreadsheet in great detail. Download the clinic recording, Price Testing Clinic. While testing your product or service pricing, keep the following key guidelines in mind:
When evaluating your offer price, intuition will usually fail to deliver the ideal results. Testing is the only way to determine which approach will produce the most profit: a lower price that drives more traffic and buyers, or a higher price that may attract fewer buyers but deliver more income per sale. Every business is unique, and the above testing guidelines will help you determine your own ideal pricing structure.
RELATED MEC REPORTS:
As part of our research, we have prepared a review of the best Internet resources on this topic. Rating SystemThese sites were rated for usefulness and clarity, but alas, the rating is purely subjective. * = Decent | ** = Good | *** = Excellent | **** = Indispensable
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What You Need to UNDERSTAND: Based on number or orders, it appears that the $7.95 price point was perceived as a lesser value and that the $24.95 price point was too high. The $14.00 price point generated significantly more orders. But because of the larger price point, the $24.95 offer actually generated the most revenue.
