So, I mentioned a few days
ago how I was inadvertently
running a little test on one
of my sites.

(Worth going to:
http://theproductmachine.com/fbjacker/
if you have no idea what I am
talking about)

The reason why it was unintentional
was because I actually received the
salespage like that, so didn’t set up
the test on my own.

However, I was still very interested
to see how it would turn out.

What you will see, are that there
are three prices:

$9.95 – single site license
$19.95 – unlimited site license
$21.95 – multiple site developer license

The first thing that you will
notice are that the 2 higher prices
have very little difference is
price, but for the extra $2 there
is a definite benefit.

The second thing that you will notice
is that there is a really cheap option.

Cheap at a pricepoint where it should
easily break down the barriers of anyone
to buy if there is even an inkling
of desire of the part of the prospect.

So, what I want to do is first to tell
you what the results were, and then to
give you a bit of commentary on why I
think that the results were as they
were.

The actual results really surprised me
and probably will you also…

Just a quick note though. To give some
perspective, the results cover a few
hundred sales. Probably not conclusive
under total scientific conditions, but
good enough for me in order to come to
some conclusions.

So…….here is how they were:

Single license ($9.95) – 1 Sale
Multiple license ($19.95) – about 15% (of the rest)
Developer license ($21.95) – about 85% (of the rest)

Now, what really surprised me was the
fact that there was only one sale of the
single license.

At a price which I thought would be very
impulsive, I thought that a LOT more people
would buy at this pricepoint.

Personally, I know that I buy a lot of
downloable products online that I never
even look at. Therefore I tend to go for
the cheapest version and then upgrade if
I liked the taster.

Obviously, I am slightly unusual in that
way

In addition, on my second email, I made
a conscious decision to try and push the
cheap version as I thought that people
who were on the fence would be easily
pushed to spend $9.95 and just ‘give it
a try’.

I guess I was wrong.

I was also very surprised that 15% of
people bought the unlimited site option.

I thought that people would spend the
extra $2 to purchase the developers
edition which in my mind gave a lot
more value.

Here is what I have concluded from this
test:

1. This product at least was NOT an
impulse buy and the people who bought
were serious enough about their purchase
in order to know that they were going
to use it on multiple sites.

2. I suspect that I was probably slightly
unclear about the differences between the
three licenses and had I been clearer, I
would have seen more people buying the
developer rather than the umlimited. Perhaps
had I called the third version ‘unlimited
developer’ rather than ‘multiple developer’
that also would have made a difference

3. That you never know the results of
tests until you run them and running
by just a hunch will (almost) always
be wrong.

Many of you may recognise the set up
of the prices from a book called
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

If you haven’t read that book then
I highly advise you to get it.

Available from Amazon at:

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden
Forces That Shape Our Decisions

The basic premise, is that you should
have 3 prices.

The difference between the 2nd and 3rd
price is very little, but the value that
they get for the highest price is considerably
more than the 2nd.

On many things in life such as antiques
or collectibles in the offline world
or virtually anything downloadable in
the online it is very difficult to put
a monetary value on something.

By giving three prices, you are setting
different levels of value in your prospect’s
mind so that they can justify the price
which you are asking.

There is a lot more to is and suggest you
read the book yourself, but I guess that
this experiment did kind of prove his theory
to be correct.

Hope you enjoyed this analysis.

Please DO leave your comments in the box
below and feel free to share the link to
this post.

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer