# The Psychology of Pricing Plans

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Nick Kolenda
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKlATx6NQbI
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/21639

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

prices seem very objective and rational on the surface but so many small and seemingly irrelevant factors like fonts colors digits can influence the perception of prices and persuade customers to buy i wrote a popular guide that summarizes these principles which you can download for free i'll put the link below in this video we'll apply those principles we'll start with a blank canvas and we'll build a pricing page that you can see all of these subconscious psychological effects that play a role in pricing let's start with the page layout and the pricing plans first color for pricing pages you should typically reduce the color as much as possible color has weight and in the context of pricing weight is a bad thing you want these prices to feel as light as possible so use a lot of white and light colors on your page next quantity how many pricing plans should you offer when possible show no more than three to four options there's a principle called fenced which stands for fingers of instantiation if you see three dots that are moving your brain can keep track of all of these motion paths simultaneously it's more difficult when you add a fourth dot but it's still feasible and possible for most people however once you add a fifth dot your attention collapses so the takeaway is that you can only keep track of four objects simultaneously in your pricing page customers can easily compare three to four options but as soon as you add that fifth option their attention collapses and they need to start comparing plans by viewing a subset of plans and then viewing another subset while keeping the previous plans in working memory next location where should you position the plans you should typically place them near the top of the page when people click to go to a pricing page they expect to see prices so you should show these prices immediately after the page loads if they don't see prices it can feel somewhat jarring as if they went to the wrong page and you should also center these plans in the middle thanks to the central fixation bias it's just easier to compare plans and options when they're in the middle but what if you can't center them should you place them on the left or the right it's a little tricky if you're displaying prices just by themselves with no ability to choose one of these options then you should place them on the left our brain perceives the left side of the design to be a visual fulcrum in other words if prices appear further away toward the right they just feel heavier as if they're on a teeter-totter pulling downward and so they just feel more expensive but let's say that customers need to choose a plan here our choices are influenced by the dominance of our hand right-handed people are more likely to choose options on the right while left-handed people left subconsciously these locations just feel easier for us to choose an option because of our physical ability so our brain misconstrues this ease for a desire so if you need to place your plans on one side or the other the right side might be more effective just because you'll be catering to right-handed people which are a larger percentage of the population now we talked about the locations of these plans but what about the prices inside these plants should they be toward the top or the bottom i would argue the top in a study with food packaging cookies seemed heavier when they appeared toward the bottom if they appeared higher on the package it felt like they were lifted to this location and if naturally the cookies must be lighter so they look like diet cookies same thing might happen with prices they might feel lighter toward the top as if they were lifted to this location so naturally they must be lighter next distance generally you should bring plants closer together in one study researchers filled one bag with the prize then when they asked people to choose a bag they preferred choosing from assortments in which the bags were closer together this layout caused them to visually group these bags so if one bag contained a prize subconsciously it felt like all of these bags contained that prize because their brain was grouping this cluster as a single unit and same thing can happen with pricing plans if these planes are close together customers will group all of these plans as a unit subconsciously it feels like they'll be receiving the benefits from all of these plans but you need to be careful if your cheapest option feels equivalent to your most expensive option then you might discourage people from buying a more expensive plan so be sure to test this now we talked about shortening the spatial distance between plans but you can also shorten the distance between these plans and the user you might want to insert something subtle in the background so that your plans become part of the foreground if users perceive these plans to be physically closer it just feels easier to choose one of these options and if it feels easier to choose then users will be more likely to do it perhaps you could insert something like clouds in the background this might trigger a feeling of lightness that gets attributed to the prices next height you should constrain these planes to the same height and here's why i'll show you two pictures each picture depicts an emotion and i want you to name these two emotions as fast as possible both images were the same dimensions and person so your answer was quicker because your brain could hold all of these variables constant the only element that was different was the

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

emotion but if these images were two different people with different dimensions these other variables would have competed for your attention slowing down your comparison and same with prices you should keep planes the same height so that the intrinsic semantic differences will be easier to notice and compare next the names of plans generally you should enlarge and bold the plan names you want their attention on what they're receiving rather than the cost that they'll be paying next sequence in which order should you arrange these plans in one study a restaurant increased their revenue by listing beer prices from most expensive to least expensive when people read these prices the first few items established a higher reference price which in turn made these subsequent prices seem cheaper unfortunately we can't really do this with pricing pages if your culture reads from left to right then you conceptualize numbers as getting larger from left to right so your pricing page needs to adhere to this left to right sequence however we can still apply this same principle it's not the sequence that matters it's the order in which people evaluate plans so we can accomplish that same effect by visually distinguishing the most expensive plan if customers view this most expensive price first then this number establishes a higher reference price that will make the subsequent prices seem cheaper or if you don't want to highlight an expensive price you can achieve the same effect by showing a random high number nearby next there's usually a button at the bottom of plans and you should think about inserting a very thin line above this button without this line customers will group this button with the rest of the plan this button will consume a smaller percentage of their attention adding this line will isolate this button when users contemplate clicking this button all of their attention will be consolidated in this location rather than being shared with the elements above and here's a bonus trick you could also insert a texture nearby like lines or dots in one study when people viewed tears and cloth their arm muscles became activated as if they were the ones who were making these tears whenever we see a texture our brain simulates the physical sensation of touching this texture in your page if you can activate the hand muscles of customers while they contemplate this decision they might become more likely to choose a plan now that we've discussed the page layout let's tackle the prices inside these plans digits which numbers should you choose it depends on their motive round numbers work better for emotional purchases while precise rational purchases pricing pages will usually have a rational motive but we can't really show highly precise numbers without cluttering this design instead we should take a round price like fifty dollars and reduce the left digit this new price is called a charm price when people read forty nine dollars they start encoding this price before they reach the end of it so it feels closer to 40 dollars many other factors play a role with digits like whether odd or even the number of syllables the visual directionality of digits you can refer to my pdf for all of those other ideas next visual size prices seem more expensive in a larger font size customers mistribute this visual size to a numerical size hmm you know how big is this price something feels big so the price must be big but this effect can be tricky sometimes this visual size can be misattributed to a more favorable type of size suppose that somebody arrives on a pricing page and they know what the actual price should be in this scenario they're not necessarily evaluating the size of the price they're difference between this price and the expected price so here you want this gap to seem as large as possible and a visually larger price might instill this perception when customers look at the price they think hmm how much cheaper is this price something feels big so the gap must be big we could keep dissecting this mechanism but here's the general takeaway if your prices are competitive then visually enlarge them if you're not competitive then visually de-emphasize them next duration like a monthly billing duration generally place this duration below the price if you place it next to the price you provide a visual reference point that makes the adjacent price feel visually larger and it also makes it harder to compare prices across plans instead of comparing digits versus digits users need to carry this extra information in their working memory while comparing prices place the duration below in order to isolate these digits so that these numbers are the only elements in their working memory in detention next color research shows that red prices are more appealing for men but i think a more powerful adjustment would be reducing the color and opacity of the currency symbol which reduces what's called the pain of pain and finally discounts you can make these prices seem cheaper by adding a larger crossed out price above only do this if these numbers are actually legitimate but here's how i might approach it you visually enlarge this top number so that the price below looks visually smaller by comparison you still need their attention on the smaller number so i

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reduced the opacity of this top number while adding red to this price below this also helps with what i call contrast fluency for example infomercials depict problems in black and white yet they depict the solution and vivid color viewers think something feels different therefore the product must make a big difference same thing here a stronger visual difference will imply a stronger conceptual and numerical difference and you might have noticed that i space these numbers apart if there's a larger visual gap your brain perceives a larger numerical gap i tried to strengthen this effect by adding a thin line which might prime the idea of a number line and notice that i positioned the original price above these numbers are easier to subtract because of the digit by digit comparison but if your discount isn't favorable you might want to align these numbers horizontally to impede this subtraction and these two numbers 50 and 25 should be especially effective because of the ease of computation effect the gap between two numbers feels larger if these numbers are easy to subtract and that makes sense in the sensory world if something is very easy to notice is usually large so if this numerical difference is easy to notice subconsciously it just feels larger because of our sensory experience and there's an added benefit because 50 is divisible by 25. in one study a 24 pizza seemed better with two multiples of that price nearby something just felt right and customers concluded that they wanted to buy pizza i'd be curious whether this effect happens with a combination like 149 i suspect that it would still happen but probably to a weaker extent so those are some pricing tricks based on psychology you can download my pdf for a summary as well as many other principles that we didn't cover and you can always break these guidelines i'm not sold on this design with the discounted price i might shrink this price above even though it visually enlarges the price below i think the clarity of this new design would be more effective so always use your judgment when incorporating these principles but to summarize if i had to design a pricing page i might incorporate a lot of white so that prices feel lighter add no more than three to four plans keep plants above the fold with the same height and close together insert a graphic behind them so that they feel physically closer to the user and ideally it should be a physical texture so that it primes a sensory feeling position prices near the top of plans so that they feel lighter reduce the leftmost digit as much as possible isolate these digits by positioning durations below them and finally add a thin line above these buttons to consolidate all of the attention on this action