Pricing tables on websites are an efficient way to communicate service or product offerings, their price tag, and key features. Sounds simple, right? The tricky part of pricing tables is balancing the amount of information available to the customer. Too much information, and you’ll end up with endless paragraphs that make it difficult for customers to find the details they want. However, too little information and customers may not understand the value of your offerings, causing them to move forward with a company who simply offers the cheapest option—which may or may not be you. So how do you create an effective pricing table that delivers the right amount of information at a glance? We’ll tell you how.
In this article, we’ll explore ways you can build the user experience for a pricing table that enables customers to easily grasp your full line of products and/or services and the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision.
Step 1: Provide Pricing Upfront
Customers use pricing to understand the value of a product or service offering. Without it, your customers may feel lost, which reduces how they perceive your service or product. Think about how many times you’ve personally browsed a site asking, “Where’s the price?” Most likely, you left feeling unbelievably frustrated.
However, from the company’s perspective, we get it. No one wants to put pricing on their site. In fact, oftentimes we are asked by clients whether they must include pricing on their website. We’ve found many business owners are hesitant to display this information on their website for a number of reasons:
- Prices are higher than their competitors
- Service or product offerings are custom
- Complex pricing model
- Competitors will copy their prices
In some cases, we may agree with these or other reasons why a client may not want to display pricing on their site. But it’s worth having the conversation and exploring all opportunities you may be missing out on by leaving it off. More times than not, if a client has a compelling brand and can demonstrate the value and success of their offerings, we’ll recommend they be upfront about pricing, along with demonstrating their value to their customers. For more complex pricing models, we typically recommend including a “starting at” price at a minimum.
Once everyone is in agreeance with adding pricing to the page, you want to make the pricing clear and prominent. You can do this by increasing the font size and boldness. If applicable, remember to include whether the pricing is based on a per day, month, or yearly basis.
Step 2: Highlight the Best Value/Most Popular Pricing
This is key if you want to direct customers to a product or service offering that is most profitable for your company, but that also provides a solution to their goals. One easy way to draw users to the offering that does just that is emphasizing the offering you want users to buy. This includes wording such as “most popular,” “recommended,” or “best offer.” You can also communicate this visually by using a vibrant color to highlight the plan you want the user to notice first.
Step 3: Make it Easy to Compare
The goal of a pricing table is to make it easy for customers to find the product or service that is right for them. Help customers find the right offering by highlighting the differences rather than the similarities. When choosing which features you want to highlight in the table, make certain you are placing the most distinctive features at the top while leaving the more common features towards the bottom.
One way to make it easy to compare your offerings visually is by using images to clearly illustrate their differences or to show who would best benefit from a certain offering. For instance, if a company is offering a project management software with several plans, you may want to have an illustration of one person for a plan with one login, three people illustrated for three logins, and multiple people for the larger plan will unlimited logins. One thing to note is your visuals should not interfere with how your customers scan and consume other information in the table.
Step 4: Address Fears or Uncertainty
Emotions such as fear or doubt caused by uncertainty can keep customers from moving forward and purchasing your product or service offering. Since you can’t physically ask them what their concerns are in person, you should include information that diminishes any doubts by addressing common concerns. So, in addition to providing an informative pricing table that is easy-to-scan, you can handle their concerns by providing things such as a FAQ section, live chat, testimonials, or helpful tool tips.
On a larger scale, for users who have concerns about post-purchasing, we recommend highlighting your return policy, or calling out a money-back guarantee or free trial if possible.
Step 5: Have a Prominent Call to Action
The call to action is what determines whether your pricing table is successful or not, meaning it should stand out and convey clear messaging that tells the user what to do. Don’t let other elements such as the features, pricing, or visual cues distract users from moving forward.
In addition to having a clear call to action, how you word your call to action is important. We’ve learned the best way to learn which call to action works best is to test! You may find that words such as “submit” or “sign up” may not do as well as “get started today” or “start your free trial.” However, as with anything in optimization, you should continue testing to find out which call to action works best.
It’s Your Turn
A great article from Smashing Magazine points out that “every unnecessary cell in your pricing table increases the probability of losing potential customers, because you make it more difficult for them to compare various plans and select the best one.” Don’t add information just for a “just in case” scenario. Instead, truly stop and think about whether adding an extra cell, feature, or call to action will benefit the user.
Now go out and build the perfect pricing table user experience. Remember that your pricing table should easily communicate information users are interested in and help them make the right purchasing decision.