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85 Comments

Experimenting with /pricing?

What do you see wrong in the below image? (apart from my lack of design skills)

Pricing without optimization

if you are in USA you won't see it, but a person like me from outside USA, I have to do one more thing.
pricing with highlight

  1. Take the value circled in red.
  2. Open a new tab.
  3. Type in google "convert 10 USD to CAD".

At this point, we have already diverted users to another tab, instead of them searching for credit card.

When the user comes to pricing page, they are evaluating lot of things like if the features match with what they need. We should minimize the number of questions in their head as little as possible.

I evaluated about 20 SAAS products and I see none of them do the currency conversion for me. All I needed was an estimate when evaluating, since i know stripe can do the conversion for me when I pay in my local currency.

Now evaluate this page.
pricing with highlight

I see two things that stand out.

  1. Currency is CAD and so i don't need to go to a new tab to convert.
  2. Show pricing in local currency shows me that you care for customers in Canada. I am more optimistic in evaluating the features.

Though it is a very minor thing, this decreases the number of questions i have in my head.

Europe:

India:

China:

As we develop product for global audience, we have to implement these small changes even in pricing page to provide a sense of personalization.

Experimentation:

I have experimented this with one of my pricing pages.
https://v2.bizchat.one/pricing/

Number of people who tried our paid plan did increase (but i am yet to find product market fit for this, so that is another problem for a different post)

Lets discuss in comments of what you think. Happy Indie Hacking. :)

UPDATE 1: Thank you for all the feedback. My Signups did decrease after this experiment. I will keep it for some more time to see the result.

As others have pointed out, better way is to default it to USD and provide an option (for people like me) to convert it to local currency.

And Just like that my two month of time is saved by creating a service like this that no one will use. Thank you Indie Hacker community ❤️ .

UPDATE 2: changed the title.

  1. 1

    My approach is providing different language versions of pricing pages (in different URLs of course) and using the corresponding currency, I wonder how you implement your default display currency, is that based on Geo-IP? I couldn't see an option here for me to choose.
    Because for SEO, serving dynamic content under a single URL is usually not a very good practice, hopes can help you~

  2. 9

    Hi Prakash, nice! I like the adaptive currency and am positive that it can increase conversions. Keep in mind that the EU uses the EUR€. You've used the GBP£ sign.

    1. 2

      Thanks for point it out . Let me fix it,

      1. 1

        Javascript already has the functionality to show local currency sign;)

        1. 1

          wow, i did not know that. Where is my mdn docs. :P

  3. 7

    For europe showing EUR and the british pound sign is super confusing though. EUR and british pound are different currencies, and aren't 1:1

    1. 1

      Thanks Ollii, i will fix it.

    2. 1

      Well, they basically are now :P

  4. 6

    This is my personal opinion but seeing pricing in INR confuses the heck out of me and for some reason $5 / mo sounds a lot less than 390 rs (but maybe thats just me)

    I think the better approach is to display the prices in USD by default but have a drop down to convert it in your own currency if you really need to see that.

    1. 2

      I can definitely understand where you're coming from! I know that sometimes prices in foreign currency can be confusing and overwhelming. I think the best approach is to display the prices in USD by default, but have a drop down to convert it in your own currency if you really need to see that. That way, you can get a better understanding of how much the product costs without being overwhelmed by the foreign currency.

    2. 1

      That is actually very true. Maybe some businesses prefer to just show the currency in dollars, since the "psychological" pricing strategy ($4,99 / $9,99 and such stuff you know, it is not excatly the case here but you get the idea) may work better than 6,4 CAD etc.

    3. 1

      me too, the same thoughts.

    4. 1

      Thank you. Yes I too think so. I always get surprised when I go to KFC in India and see a burger for 300 rupees when it is 5$ In USA. 😬

  5. 5

    I'm a fellow SaaS founder, and a few things stand out to me:

    1. If you are not going to process the payment in CAD don't show it, no one likes surprises at their checkout.
    2. Keep copy consistent across your plans, your leads want to be able to easily compare. So things like "Unimited Actions per month" in your Dev plan should be standardized.
    3. Spell check your content you can use tools like Grammarly copy, paste, edit, copy, paste.
    4. Don't repeat yourself in your plans i.e. use "Everything in Dev/Pro...." this will highlight what is unique about the price plan.
    5. Have a comparison table below the plans that highlight all features across each plan.
    6. You can use "Free" instead of $0/mo
    7. Consider adding a Pricing FAQ once you get some feedback from customers/leads. What is premium support? You are going to provide an SLO of response within the hour?
    8. Change the CTA for your plans to something more active like "Start your free trial", or "Get started" and maybe add below the CTA "No credit card required for trial" in case you do have a trial.
    9. Move the "Suitable for ..." copy just below the Plan name as that is not a feature but a hint for whom this is most suitable.
    10. Your actual plans, ideally should guide the customer through a progressive ladder, a good resource you can watch on youtube. Apart from the support, I can't really see any difference between the plans and that is bad for you. You should limit the Free tier, so instead of Unlimited everything give them a Max up to X. Do the same for the next plan, this way you will guide bigger customers to move up the plans where you can service them better.
    11. The actual value of the plans seems low for a Prosumer/Business customers. You would need to have a LARGE TSM if you are selling at the current pricing.
  6. 5

    Hi!

    To be honest, providing the pricing in a local currency in most cases won't affect on your conversion rate and sales if you do not localize a whole website and product.

    What really more important is your pricing model. For example, I don't understand the difference between pricing plans. I wish you the best of luck with your experiments!

  7. 4

    amazing, great line of thought!

  8. 4

    I am French, and I see displaying

    EUR 5/mo

    in French, it's written 5€/month (or at most 5 euros/month)

    I would rather indicate the price in dollars in large, and in small below "So 5 euros/month currently"

    1. 1

      As a fellow French person, I was going to say the exact same thing.
      We are used to seeing prices in dollars anyway.

      And I think using the country code is weird for almost every country!
      Americans don't write USD 5, they write $5
      Europeans don't write EUR 5/month, they write 5 € (with a   space)
      Brazilians don't write BRL 5, they write R$5.

      So this system seems more confusing than it is helpful. I agree with KenorFR that the solution is to show prices in dollars ($5/mo) and then have a label underneath that provides localized pricing.

  9. 3

    My opionion on the whole local pricing situation, is whilst it's a nice to have for sure, it's unlikely to be the reason for lacking sales.

    Having to convert $ or euro to £ has never stopped me purchasing anything. I would imagine most buyers can convert to $, as it's a regular thing to do online.

  10. 3

    The reason is that USD is relatively stable currency than others.

    A foreign entity that trades with another foreign entity often just use USD instead of either their currency, also makes easier to have their supply chains dealing in USD.

    I am just using USD as an example, it can be any widely used currency

    1. 1

      I think final stripe checkout page is still in USD. This local pricing display maybe just on pricing page.

      1. 1

        Then you might run into exchange rate issues.

        I understand you might want to adjust it according to their local currency to try to influence user behavior ( like $0.99 vs $1.00). You also wanted to try to give them an easy conversion to their local currency. You might also be concerned local's purchase power. I think those are all good intentions for your clients but they also adds complexity. I'd add one thing about local purchase power. If you are using reduce price to get stickiness in another country, maybe it's worth the effort. Otherwise, it's better to stick to your marketing plan (pricing).

  11. 2

    Nice work Prakash, gave me something to think about with our own project! We currently display in USD but after reading this and the comments I think will have a sub-line that displays in their local currency.

    The points around purchasing power parity and offering cheaper rates in lower-income countries is very interesting, how can you stop people using a VPN to circumnavigate to take a steep discount on your service?

  12. 2

    Good point.. that's a typical thing to leave out during MVP phase and forget to implement afterwards

  13. 2

    I have been working in SaaS industry and here is my feedback:

    • Make the plan name bigger than $$ numbers
    • Do not show pricing in so many currencies. Most of the world is comfortable with USD numbers
    • Remove text "USD", just use dollar sign $
    • Change CTA button to "Sign Up No" or "Try for a Week" (if you are offering trial)
    • Add Pricing FAQs below the plans on the pricing page
    • Make the bullet point texts aligned so its easy to compare. Right now, same bullet point text is on different level and its difficult to understand what additional features I get in the next plan
    • Add a good page title instead of "Pricing", so like "Scalable Pricing", "Pay As You Go", "Unlimited usage for fixed fee" (I do not know what is the most important feature of your pricing model)

    Overall page design and content is good.

  14. 2

    It's definitely nice to have. But IMO it makes a difference only if pricing respects purchasing power parity

    1. 2

      Yeah, that's a very good point. I'm always positively surprised when I see PPP on a service. I usually get around 50% discount, which is a good way to motivate a potential buyer.

  15. 2

    Since it doesn't look too successful, I think it's good to try to see why. I think the problem is your hypothesis that diverting the user to a new tab is not good for conversion.

    Firstly, I know the conversion to my local currency by heart (GBP). Most probably do. And even if I need to go to another tab, that tab doesn't lead to anything. I would simply close it and go back to the original website once I see the conversion.

    On the flip side, showing local currency spews a variety of different issues. Is the price around the same? Would I get a better deal if I VPN to another country? What if the exchange rate changed drastically? (EUR used to worth more than USD just a short few months ago for example).

    Thanks for sharing! I think this is a good case study. Something that might look beneficial might bring across many disadvantages.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the add on. Purchase Parity is one of the major struggles of pricing the product. Internet leveled the base for all, but pricing still remains not parity checked.

  16. 2

    Seems like it has an issue with non-Latin characters. See what happened for Czech localization: https://i.imgur.com/O7MnEuc.png

    1. 1

      Thanks you Chris. Yeah the symbols are html encoded which is causing it to displayed as text instead of symbols. I will fix it asap .

  17. 2

    Just a FeedBack from Brazil :
    https://postimg.cc/30XVj7JW

    But I thought detection by ip address very interesting

  18. 2

    I had a conversation with a Director of sales at a major tech company. He told us that the biggest competitor was not who we think. The biggest competitor is your Pro edition vs your enterprise or business edition.

    All 3 of the pricing's look the same. They actually are all almost the same. You need A CLEAR distraction between pro and enterprise. Why would I transfer over? Experiment with different CTA buttons. Try and make a clear distinction between Pro and Enterprise.

  19. 1

    Hi @prakashn, from the screenshots one thing that stands out to me is that middle price is right in the center of the two offers so it's not helping you guide your customers towards one or the other which might lead to decision paralysis and bounce.

    Rather than $0, $5, $10, I would recommend experimenting with $0, $7, $10 to guide your customers towards your business plan over the pro.

    With regards to the latest version on your link, the only thing that stands out to me is that each has exactly 3 bullet points. So at a quick glance they all look the same. In that regards the approach in your screenshots (with the increasing number of bullet points per tier) seemed a bit more effective to me.

  20. 1

    I live in South America and I absolutely hate when I see prices in the local currency. I am not American but I prefer to see dollars.

    In fact, I always have to spend time switching to USD.

    The only question you should be asking yourself though is this: what does my split- testing data tell?

    Rest is irrelevant.

  21. 1

    That is a good idea, exactly what happens to me when i leave to find a conversion rate on a second tab and my mind is starting to wonder what if i keep googling this product elsewhere.

  22. 1

    I understand the question / experiment was focused on localization, and that's awesome! That said - I do think there are some other optimization opportunities to be found on your pricing page.

    Here are a few that I see:

    -The "suitable for..." statements at the bottom of each plan should be elevated as a key part of messaging. These are key - they align each plan to a target customer type.

    -There is opportunity to simplify the plan descriptions. Instead of repeating common features for each plan, you could simplify by saying something like "all Starter features plus...". Again, this helps clarify when each plan adds different value / serves a different customer need.

    -Is the price month-to-month or a per month annual price? I assume the former. Make that clear. Also consider offering an incentivized annual subscription price.

    -There is opportunity to add copy that helps clarify what problems each plan solves, and what benefits / value are delivered. This doesn't need to be expansive but should reinforce why a particular customer should choose a particular plan. This can be integrated with the messaging for the target customers as well. For example, for your "Pro" plan, you might say "for influencers and social media managers seeking to get started with a fully-featured platform for managing giveaways".

    -You might consider a FAQ section to answer common questions that all customers have on pricing. For example - "can I get a discount for volume?"

  23. 1

    I'm is Europe and I still see dollars. What up?

    1. 2

      this experiment is stopped since it was affecting my Churn rate.

  24. 1

    Even if you will present the prices in local currencies on your page... Are you sure the exchange rate you use will be the same as the one used in your payment gateway? If not, don't provide misleading, inaccurate prices. Publish only what you really control. But an external link to rates conversion tools is a nice idea.

  25. 1

    Thank you for sharing Prakash!
    I was thinking about the same, and find that pricing localization is something that should be done by the payment gateway on checkout, or directly by the user.

    My plan: AFTER validation and first sales, get a currency selector on top of the pricing page. So they can choose to see in USD, EUR, INR, CNY.

    • Make sure that you can process payments in those currencies, or add a note that prices are just a reference and will be processed in USD.
  26. 1
    1. Good for you!

    2. While this does decrease a bit of friction, I think you're better off spending your time thinking and testing the price architecture (and possibly the business model).

  27. 1

    Hi Parkash, well done, maybe display two prices like "5$ (INR 780)", what did you use to get conversion rate to other currencies?

    1. 1

      i use static text to convert the currency. But you can use any API.

  28. 1

    I'm in Italy but it still shows USD for me.. might be an ad blocking thing?

    1. 1

      just stopped the experiment :) my conversion rate is affected by this conversion.

  29. 1

    Or either use "Everything in PRO plus" or order your items so they appear on the same line across each plan.
    Change your "CHOOSE" call to action to things like "Try it now", "Start a free trial"
    KISS, keep it simple! Just use one currency page. Just use USD, if at the end you're billed in USD (and remove "you will be billed in USD." which is confusing)

  30. 1

    I wouldn't be surprised if it does help with conversion rates.

    However, as a user from a small country I'm used to converting USD, EUR and GBP. In many cases I do not even have to google it.

    In the rare cases where I do see local currency on a foreign website, it could make me feel like the service is shady or maybe a bit less professional. Especially when I suspect I would still be charged in USD. It's weird, I know.

  31. 1

    Very interesting observation! I think there is a lot to take and learn from this!

  32. 1

    Thank you for this experimentation!

  33. 1

    Interesting experiment, thanks for sharing the initial result!

    While your idea to make things easier for your customers sounds reasonable, I think you might actually make things more difficult by giving them a choice.

    Every time I go through one of my funnels, I try to limit the number of decisions somebody has to make to buy from me.

    Letting them play around with currencies is taking their attention away from "do I really need this" to a mere "Oh, I wonder how much this is in ABC currency".

    Shouldn't their payment gateway show how much they're charged in their local currency before they make the purchase?

    I love experimenting with things like this - do you also split-test various price points?

  34. 1

    once cent less make a big defence do 9.99$ insted of 10$

    I made a post about finding the right price: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-secret-of-pricing-and-startup-success-e02ab8e693

  35. 1

    I think it really depends on the type of user that you have. In my case, if I see a pricing page in Costa Rican colones I would be suspicious of what conversion rate you used for this. I have an account in USD and that's how I prefer to pay, otherwise, I would be losing money by having to purchase colones.

    I don't like when platforms assume that just because I'm from Costa Rica then I speak Spanish and I use CRC as the currency of choice. That might be the case for most people here, but that's not my case.

    Now, if you give me an easy-on-page option to see the amount in a different conversion based on my location that's another thing.

    Lately, when I open Amazon.com I'm annoyed because they automatically send me to the Spanish version, which is an automatic poor translation, and no matter how much I change the language to English it changes it back again. This is a bad experience for me.

  36. 1

    Thank you for this great idea, I totally agree and I'm surprised such info is new for me, Thank you

  37. 1

    @prakashn

    No doubt that works well if your product is not limited to the one country. I have also seen the requirement to change the price on the ip based. You have done good work keep up your work.

    Middle east countries like to see price in their local currency have you created for them?

    1. 1

      Not really . Thanks for the feedback

  38. 1

    If you are going to do this, you should give the user an option to select their preferred currency. I live in India but I charge my clients in USD. So, I prefer to look at prices in USD for business tools and software...

  39. 1

    interesting and important considerations! However, I think that the adjustment of the currency should not happen without the user's involvement.

  40. 1

    Nice! That's so adaptive. No need to google the exchange rates. so thoughtful...

    1. 1

      Thank you. Few companies do use this currently, but not a successful experimentation for me. :D

  41. 1

    Run this financial tool: https://increnovation.azurewebsites.net/fermi/highlevel

    see if the model make sense financially for your business. Do try to be realistic as it might help you make decisions better.

  42. 1

    Off topic, but given the exchange rate for USD right now, I'd be wanting to hoard as many greenbacks as I can get. Everything I do will be USD, but in your case it makes sense to give options and a tidy conversion tool.

  43. 1

    UPDATE 3: subscription did fall through, so reverted it back to use $.

    though i did not have time to implement, i found that Zapier pricing does something similar. https://zapier.com/pricing
    option to convert to any currency of your interest. Hope it helps someone. Happy Indie Hacking.

  44. 1

    I'm in the UK and It shows Euro - the UK using GBP sterling.

  45. 1

    I prefer seeeing price in USD and not my local currency because with automatic currency conversion i am not able to compare the pricing with other saas which are not doing automatic conversion and displaying them in USD. Infact when you do it like this i have to do the reverse conversion from local currency to USD to gauge the actual price. I would rather prefer a small button where you let me choose the currency and keep the default as USD but that is just one data point.

  46. 1

    Another answer to your leading question:

    What do you see wrong in the below image?
    

    There is a strategy called framing where you nestle or book-end the subscription(s) you prefer your customers to purchase between a pair of lets-say-lesser subscriptions, and visually emphasize the main subscr. with great vigor. For example:

    9USD/mo Starter     49USD/mo Pro    129USD/mo Enterprise
    

    49$ being the main subscription. Where the 9$ satisfies a small part of the long tail and is expressly designed to promote upsell to the 49$ subscr, and the 129$ subscr. is one you don't expect would ever be purchased (but a few might!). The central 49$ entry is highlighted / larger / has splashy graphics, focusing the reader's eye on it first. The reader will then use that as the basis or benchmark and compare with the one on the left and the one on the right, and hopefully be persuaded that 49$ is best for them. That's the framing.

    Try it!

  47. 1

    hello, I was accessing from Chile, (CL) and the price appears in euros

  48. 1

    This is really interesting.

    My only concern is the currency conversion. So if a business mainly deals in USD (like a SaaS) and say the price is $5 USD per month, converting it to CAD may make it seem to the user that they are paying the CAD equivalent, but in reality once currency conversions take place, the price could be different.

    Any thoughts?

  49. 1

    Just a heads up, I'm from the UK and it's showing as EUR for me. This should be GBP.

  50. 1

    I was reading about pricing and how it's unfair that a developer with less economic resources should pay the same amount of money to obtain the same item, or level of service, as someone that has more economic resources at their disposal.

    Using McDonald's Big Mac infographic as a simple reminder, it is obvious that you're going pay more or less for the same thing.

    Price of MCD in different countries

    The problem is applicable to SaaS/services!

    As an example, if you're a developer in a Venezuela or Italy, is it fair that you should pay $19.99 to access a SaaS product when the cost of living and, more importantly, your income are extremely different from someone living in North America or Switzerland?

    So if you come from a country that has a lower purchase power, why should you pay double for getting the same service just because of economical inequalities that are out of your control?
    And vice-versa, if you're selling from a country and you priced your offering based on your purchase power, why shouldn't someone with a higher purchase power have to pay a little bit more?

    https://media.giphy.com/media/JBJ0wVpiY22Ag/giphy.gif

    That's where purchasing power equality matters!

  51. 1

    I think it should have the option to change currency. I live in Europe, but Euro is not the currency in my country and I prefer USD. (I prefer USD more than the national currency too). There are for sure people that prefer USD even though Euro (or other) is their currency.

    More than 90% of apps have USD as their currency, when I see EUR or national currency it always confuses me, just not used to it at all. If there is an option to change it, I always do.

    1. 2

      Thank you. That is a valid point. Now i know whey everything is in USD. :-D.

  52. 1

    If this is the only product I'm looking into, then your idea does make sense to me.

    But imagine this, I'm evaluating a couple of products and yours is one of them.

    All of them show the prices in USD, but your one shows in my local currency so I will actually have to convert it back to USD again - just to compare it with the rest of the products. We're back to square zero, aren't we? Haha.

    Honestly, it's not a big deal. As Sankumar has already mentioned in the comment section, there could be a dropdown menu to change the currency. However, I think the dropdown menu should give the user the option to see it in their local currency, not the USD one. I'm assuming here that your product has plenty of competitors so users would be comparing yours with other products - but if that's not the case, then your idea+USD being in the drop-down menu sounds better.

    I would love to see a follow up on this with data-driven analysis of how this experiment did. Thanks for the idea, I'm definitely gonna implement this in my product as well!

  53. 1

    Is this local pricing only on pricing landing page or stripe checkout page is also converted and shows charge in local currency?

    1. 1

      Stripe currently does not support showing the currency in local format, so it is shown in USD , but gets converted once you pay with local card

  54. 1

    I think your problem isn't about design, but about having more pricing plans than customers. If this is wrong,

    • rethink who you're showing the product to
    • remove extra words
    • remove confusion with currencies

    But most likely the reason people don't convert is because you haven't explained how your tool will benefit them.

  55. 0

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  56. 0

    Are you certain that the exchange rate you use will be the same as the one used in your payment gateway, even if you publish the pricing in local currencies on your page? If not, don't give out pricing that are false or wrong. Only publish something you can actually control. But it would be nice to have an external link to tools for rate conversion. Nowadays people buy any product. People want discount on every product on which the company has discount on some products and not on others. There is a single website that has a discount on every product and you also get a coupon. The source of which you can saving a lot. Please visit this website dailycouponsandcodes.com

  57. 0

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  58. 0

    We have provided currency localisation in a way that when a user lands from a particular country, they see the pricing in their local currency, still if they want, they can pay in any other currency that we offer by using the toggle.

    Check it out here: https://hire.win/#pricing

  59. 1

    This comment was deleted 10 months ago.

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