No matter how pretty your site or amazing your product to maximize conversions the marketer needs to rely on price justification.

Price justification matters because the moment cold traffic lands on your site this is where their eyes fixate:

Sure reviews and descriptions matter but price matters the most.

And price isn’t a straightforward thing.

To illustrate let me ask a question:

What’s a good price for a pair of running shoes?

For some, it’s $90. For others, $45. It depends on the value the shoe delivers.

Context matters, and without it, many visitors default to using price as a shortlisting strategy.

And because price is the first thing landing traffic notices it gets imprinted in their minds. You know what they say about first impressions.

This is a problem for the marketer because the visitor has noticed the price before fully appreciating the context. That’s what price justification fixes.

The Good News Is Shoppers Are Willing to Pay More

Consumers care about quality. 53% rate quality as the most important factor when making purchases compared to price (38%) (source).

They also generally understand that price positively correlates to quality (source), but this calculus can get messed up if the visitor sees your product after viewing a lower-priced alternative somewhere else.

Price Justification and Online Shopping Behavior

When shoppers are looking to solve a problem, they Google it.

They search for a term like “curling iron” and Google shows a bunch of ads.

Next, they right-click and open each promising result in a new browser tab.

Then they very quickly start closing tabs that don’t feel relevant.

In this speed dating stage, the shopper isn’t systematically evaluating competing choices; no, they are rushing. Since price is an easily available element, that’s what is relied on.

But as we saw above, price isn’t the best indicator of quality.

What Price Justification Is Trying to Accomplish

Shoppers are seeking a balance between price and quality.

The marketer needs to convince the buyer their brand has found the perfect balance.

There are two types of prices and both need justification– premium prices and heavily discounted prices.

Price Justification for a Premium Product

If you are selling a premium product you are investing in quality and this means your price will be higher.

Ora Organic (not a client) sells a premium vegan vitamin D supplement. Here is their page:

It’s really well designed and we’re sure this $16.99 price tag is acceptable to 80% of visitors. But that’s not the group we care about.

To improve conversions, we shouldn’t think about the 80% that are converting, we should obsess over the 20% that aren’t.

One reason someone may have decided against buying is that they feel $16.99 is too much for a supplement. A quick Google search reveals vitamin D supplements are available for a lot less online. The marketer needs to address the elephant in the room.

Here’s What We Did

We added a Quality Matters link and placed it immediately to the right of the price point (see screenshot below). Users who have questions about price usually have it when they see the price tag so we wanted the answer to be nearby:

And when the link is clicked here is the price justification popup message (click image to zoomed view):

Is this the best popup sales pitch? Probably not. And this is why we would A/B test 20 versions till we get it totally dialed in. Here are some things you can talk about in your explanation:

– Let the buyer know you had the choice to go with slightly inferior ingredients but decided against it.

– How you’ve studied the other options out there. Don’t bad-mouth the competition but make sure your explanation positions you as an expert.

– Talk about how hard it was to get the product, just right. Shoppers are drawn to stories where the brand started on a journey, encountered a challenge, and was able to overcome it. This buyer psychology principle is called Labor Illusion.

– Get into complicated details about the process or the product. This helps demonstrate expertise. I once did a test for a client that sells a pizza-making product. To dramatize we added a thermodynamics equation; something we were sure most wouldn’t understand but it would make clear that were super-geeks about the subject. BTW, that case study is here: Bestseller Sales Up 46.42%.

– Let the reader know you’re charging more because our customers (people like them) demand high quality.

– Talk about how obsessed you are with quality. How you’d rather shut down the company than sell something you knew was inferior quality.

The Challenge for The Discounted Product

We’ve seen how to fix the problem if your price is above expectations (the Ora Organic example above). The opposite can also be a problem— where you are giving an incredible discount and the shopper thinks of it as “too good to be true”. To see two examples of this read this article: Psychology of Discounting.

Next Steps After Prices Have Been Justified

Price Justification is part of a larger discussion about the nine truths about online shoppers. But if this is the first article you’ve seen on our blog you need to head here pronto: Marketing Secrets.