Best practices in designing a pricing page
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. — Warren Buffett
The quote of Warren Buffet is a great reminder to look at our product from our customer’s perspective before we start designing a pricing page. As a Designer in a SaaS company, you might have a hard time to figure out what you should consider in designing a pricing page. Yes, it’s not a simple thing and it can be a bit tricky! In fact, the Conversion Pro and A/B Testing Expert at Draft, Nick Disabato, states that the first place every single visitor runs to is the pricing page. According to Val Geisler, a writer who specializes in email marketing and content for SaaS, your customers are either price-focused first or features-focused first.
Does every SaaS company have a pricing page?
The answer is not necessarily. You may wonder why some companies don’t have a pricing page. Ok, let’s talk about the need for the pricing page. There is a very good reason to not share pricing at all. If your target is mostly Enterprise, a pricing page can make you look cheap. Enterprises care about the solution; they less concern about the costs. In many cases, push visitors to schedule a demo can result in better conversions.
Juriba is a software platform built to help organisations manage End User IT migration projects and the Evergreen IT asset lifecycle. As we can see that instead of creating a pricing page, they use the call-to-action button to request a demo. We can conclude that their target audience is mostly Enterprise.
Therefore, the pricing page team should consider if a demo-only option is right for their company.
Pricing Page Formula
Now we’ll dive into the important elements that need to be shown on a pricing page for a higher conversion rate.
- List your plan options
- List your prices
- Add the features available at each price point
- Include testimonials or trusted brands
- Highlight the plan you really want people to buy
- Add the benefits such as money back guarantee, secure payment, and free trial if you have one
- Add FAQ
Asana is a management tool to help teams organise, track, and manage their work. They point out all the essential elements on their pricing page.
Furthermore, Kate Harvey of Chargify explained that innovative SaaS companies are recognizing a shift in customer demand and offering their products and features ‘à la carte,’ and are tailoring specific offers to target sets of customers rather than offering all customers the same generic packages. Briefly, customers want choices hence you can also consider creating bundles for your pricing page.
Appcues is the world’s first User Experience layer to build and optimize user onboarding flows, NPS surveys, and feature announcements that drive user retention and engagement. On their pricing page, they offer package bundles by giving the sliding scale to their customers. It helps them to select monthly active users and pay only based on the selected bundle.
The Power of Content on Pricing Page
According to Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré, Head of Community Growth at Zest.is, once you’ve changed your content to sell the desired outcome, the benefits of buying your product will become more apparent and have a better chance of outweighing the perceived costs in the buyer’s mind.
Furthermore, customers will only buy your product if they believe that the value they’re receiving is greater than the price they’re paying; otherwise, why would they pay? This idea forms the basis of our specialty: value-based pricing. (Further reading: Value Based Pricing 101)
List Your Most Expensive Plans First
Before you start designing a pricing page you might do research and comparison to some SaaS company websites. Then you found out that there’s a different position of putting the plans. Hence, you wonder whether the most expensive plans should be placed on the left or on the right. Here comes the interesting part! ;)
According to ConversionXL, ordering your pricing tiers from most expensive to least expensive results in higher revenue. And highlighting one of those options results in even greater results. They proved why in a recent original research study participants choose more expensive packages more often when they are listed first, or furthest left in left-right order.
To figure this out, they ran the same study, manipulating the pricing tier order for SurveyGizmo’s pricing page, along with highlighting a recommended option with a different color. Here’s what they found using the same task scenario, eye-tracking, and post-survey feedback methods:
Results Summary of the study:
- People basically viewed in an “r” shape, reading features and prices on top, no matter what order the plans were in or what was highlighted
- When ordered cheap-to-expensive, participants focused more quickly, and longer on the highlighted plan
- Participants chose the PRO plan more often in the expensive first plan order, and when it was highlighted.
Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and an email marketing service. As we can see from their pricing page, not only they put the most expensive plans on the left, but they also add value to its content. They do a captivating approachment with their visitors by writing “Flexible plans that grow with you” and put a nice illustration to represent it :)
Tableau is a powerful and fastest growing data visualization tool used in the Business Intelligence Industry. Interestingly, they divide the plans based on specific customer segments. Generally speaking, naming your package tiers can help people self-select faster.
Treehouse is an online school that teaches technology, including web design, coding, and much more. They put a cap on one table that says “preferred plan” or “most popular” or using color to highlight what the user should focus on. They use the “Direct Users” approach in order to get users to buy what would be most profitable for their company but also for their customer to be satisfied.
Conclusion
Every SaaS company has a different target audience hence by understanding what’s the needs of your user will help you to create a pricing page that converts. Then focus on presenting and organizing your pricing information as simply as possible, from most expensive to least, with a recommended or highlighted product to prevent decision fatigue. Keep in mind to create engaging content that sells the benefits and values of your product.
“Pricing is the exchange rate you put on all the tangible and intangible aspects of your business. Value for cash.” — Patrick Campbell
References:
A Cheat Sheet to Designing a Pricing Page that Converts
How to design a pricing page that converts
UX Flows: How to Get Users to Click “Buy” on Your Pricing Page
Six Must Read Pricing Strategy Quotes
Value Based Pricing 101: The Necessities and Your Pricing Strategy
I Analyzed 250 SaaS Pricing Pages — Here’s What I Found
The Effects of Highlighting a “Recommended” Pricing Plan [Original Research]