You set your price, publish the page, and wait. Then the doubt creeps in. Did you leave money on the table?

Every seller feels it. A price set too high scares buyers away. A price set too low makes them suspicious and shrinks every sale you make. So most people guess and hope.

You can stop guessing. A simple price test lets your buyers tell you what they will pay, and they answer with their wallets, not their opinions.

We have run price tests in our own business for years, and the results have surprised me more than once. Below are three real tests, what each one taught me, and the exact steps you can follow to run your own.

By the end you will know which price to test first. You will know how many visitors you need. And you will know the one trap that makes people quit testing too early. That alone can save you months of second guessing.

In This Article...

Test One: The Lower Monthly Price Won

A while back, we ran a split test on our Internet Marketing Newsletter during a launch. A split test shows two versions of one page to two groups of visitors. Half see Version A. Half see Version B. Only one thing changes between them.

Both pages offered the same trial to start. The only difference was the monthly amount that began after the trial ended. One page asked for a lower monthly amount. The other asked for a higher one.

The lower monthly amount won, and it won by a wide margin.

You may think, of course it did, it costs less. Look closer. The entry point was identical on both pages. Nobody paid more on day one. The only thing that changed was what the new member agreed to pay later.

Here is what that told us. Once a trial removes the first hurdle, your buyer stops thinking about today’s cost. They start thinking about next month, and the month after that.

That matters if you sell a membership or any monthly offer. In your buyer’s mind, your starting price and your ongoing price are two separate decisions. Test them one at a time. You will find more on this kind of thinking in other posts I have shared recently.

Test Two: The Price Almost Nobody Believed In

About fifteen years ago, we mailed a promotion for a business-in-a-box package. It came as a set of DVDs with a full marketing kit, everything a buyer needed to start an information publishing business.

We set up a test with two prices. One was the price we felt safe with. The other was nearly double.

We mailed 5,000 letters at each price. Same sales letter. Same package. Same everything. Only the price on the order form changed.

The drop in orders at the higher price was tiny. It was a ripple, not a wave.

Let that sink in. Nearly double the price, and almost the same number of buyers.

When we ran the numbers, the higher price brought in far more money from every mailing. We sent the rest of the promotion at that price and never looked back.

The lesson is not that you should always charge more. I expected a big drop, and the market told me otherwise. You do not know what your market will bear until you test it.

You do not know what your market will bear until you test it.

Think about the price you use today. Did you choose it with data, or with a nervous feeling in your stomach?

Most sellers pick a number that feels safe. Safe feels good, but safe also costs you. If we had never tested that mailing, we would have left a large sum on the table, every month, for years. You would never see that loss on any report. It only shows up when you test.

Test Three: Free Plus Postage Versus One Flat Price

The third test taught me something no chart can show. We offered a DVD two ways. One offer was free, with a small charge for postage. The other was a low flat price with shipping included.

The number of orders came out almost identical.

But the flat price had a quiet advantage. It ended the complaints.

A small, noisy group of buyers on the free offer objected to paying anything for postage, even a few dollars. They told us so, often. The flat price offer drew none of that. My reply to the complainers was always cheerful. I told them they were welcome to collect a copy in person from our fulfillment center. That ended the conversation, and it showed me these were not the buyers I wanted.

Same number of orders. Fewer headaches. Better customers.

Here is what you can take from it. Your price also works as a filter. The right price attracts the people you want to serve. It turns away the ones who would only drain your time.

So when you run a price test, watch more than the number of orders. Watch the kind of buyer each price brings you.

How To Run A Price Test You Can Trust

You have seen what testing can reveal. Now here is how to run one the right way, in five steps.

First, pick a tool that splits your visitors for you. Never sort visitors by hand. Any good page builder with built-in split testing will do. It must send visitors to each version at random and show the same person the same version every time.

Second, change one variable at a time. Most failed tests break this rule. Change the price, the headline, and the button color together, and you cannot know which change moved the result. Change the price. Keep everything else the same.

Third, test big differences first. A price against one a few cents higher tells you nothing. The gap is too small to show up at normal traffic levels. Set your price against one that is half again higher, or double.

Fourth, give the test enough visitors. I suggest at least 100 visitors per version before you decide anything. Aim for 500 to 1,000 per version if you can. The smaller the gap between the two results, the more visitors you need to know the gap is real. Paid traffic can speed this up, so you get your answer in days instead of weeks.

Here is a quick example. Say you test a lower price against a higher one, with 500 visitors on each page. If the two pages bring in close to the same number of orders, the higher price wins, because each order pays you more. You still check refunds before you call it, but you now have a clear next step.

Fifth, read the right numbers. Orders matter, but they are not the whole story. Watch your refund rate next to your orders. A price that brings many orders and many refunds is not a winner. It sets expectations your product cannot meet.

Then check your average order size across everything a buyer purchases, not only the first item. A lower price that sells few extras can earn less than a higher price that attracts buyers who go on to buy more. What counts is how much the average buyer is worth to you in total.

The Trap That Stops Most People

Here is a warning, and I learned it from experience. There is always something else to test. After the price, you can test the headline. After the headline, the button color. After that, the order of your bullet points.

Go deep enough and the results turn strange. Blue beats red. Then green beats blue. Then red beats green. At that point you are not improving anything. You are chasing noise.

So test your price first, because price moves your results more than any other single change. Then test one or two other big things if your traffic allows. Then stop.

Ship the product. Make more sales. A well-priced offer that sells every week beats a perfect page you are still tweaking six months after you should have launched.

The best pricing plan in the world is the one you put in place.

Where To Run Your First Test

If you want to run your first price test this week, the tool should make it simple. Inside eShowcase.com, split testing is built in. You set up two versions of a page and move a slider to decide how much traffic each one gets. The system keeps every visitor on the same version, and when the test ends you pick the winner with one click.

We run our own pages, email marketing, and split tests through it. Marketing should determine the tech stack, not the other way around. If your current page builder cannot split test, that is a good reason to look at one that can.

Pick one price, pick a bolder price to set against it, and let your buyers vote. The answer may surprise you, the way it surprised me. Whatever it shows, you will know instead of guess, and that is a strong place to price from. I am rooting for you, and I would love to hear what your first test reveals.

Nick James

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3 Real Price Tests With Surprising Results You Can Copy