Conversion rate is influenced by pricing on your B2B website

The benefits and disadvantages of pricing on a B2B website

Having pricing on your B2B website is a question that is posed by many.

A high price will turn away those that don’t grasp your services fully.
In order to have your visitors understanding completely the benefits, advantages and differentiators of your services requires more or clearer information on the website and time from the visitors.

A low price will turn away people who find your service or product to cheap to believe or expect no quality of service for this low price.
You need to prove your high or industry standard quality which is not easy to do over the Internet: having references can solve this problem.

By putting the pricing publicly on your website, you will only address to those customers willing to pay this price for the perceived value of your products or services.

Pricing on B2B website

Putting the pricing on your website shows:
- The confidence you have in your product.
- The confidence you have compared to your competitors.
- That you are challenging your competitors.
- That your website explains fully the benefits, advantages and differentiators.
- A sign of competing on pricing instead of quality or customer service.

At the same time the website pricing will bypass all sales people. They have nothing left over than to give an equal or a ’special’ lower price than the one posted on your website.
Similar problem occurs in case your sales model uses resellers or system integrators.

No pricing on B2B website

Without a price people can only guess about the price.
If they are interested in your services or products they have to make the effort to contact you for a pricing inquiry.
If your website expresses an expensive image, then the avaricious, penurious or bargain hunters will not even take the time.
If your website looks cheap or giving the idea of providing low-cost services or products, then those in search of quality and top service will not even consider contacting you.

Without any pricing on your website:
- Your website content or brand name needs to push the people to contact you.
- Your competitive advantage needs to be very compelling and convincing.
- An important factor of your products or services is missing.

We have experienced both.

Pricing on B2B website: Lower conversion rate

At first we had a form proposing different options (users, visitors, leads in buckets) that calculated the price on the website.
From day one it was the most popular visited page of the website after the home page. It seemed to be an attraction to have a price calculated.
Compared to the number of price calculations relatively a few of them ever signed up.

Apparently people visiting the website, are very curious to know about your price or an indicative price for a market, even if they are not interested in buying at all.
Thus good traffic but no conversions to sales or even to sign-ups for 30-days free trials.
Additionally we found that our pricing was too complex for a first time visitor as it proposed 2 different plans.

Higher conversion rate with ballpark pricing

Thus we removed the pricing calculation from the website and replaced it by ballpark pricing for the 2 different services we provide. In order to get a price quotation we asked to contact us by email.

Due to the fact we engaged with the visitors into a conversation by email the conversion rate was much higher.
Still writing an email as simple is it might be seems difficult, especially if some basic information that we asked for on the page, is required for a price quote. So we had many email going out asking for the necessary data.
Additionally many people used a non-company email address to send the email, thus we couldn’t verify if they were actually working at the company.

Improving inbound marketing by simple pricing inquiry form

To avoid the large number of incomplete quotation requests, we appended the pricing page with a simple form in order to streamline our pricing quotes and save us some time with email replying.

The form needed to be as simple as possible as any additional fields or complexities might keep the visitor from completing the form. We clearly defined the items asked in order not to confuse the visitor.
As a form normally doesn’t permit any freedom we added an additional field allowing posing any questions regarding our service or pricing.

Giving a ballpark pricing is more effective than to have a complex pricing calculation or your complete price list on your website. Both can be too complex and cumbersome to use as it needs a manual or explication.
Additionally, having to reply to the inquiries by email lets your sales team establish a first contact with a lead: inbound marketing and engaging leads into conversations.

On the Internet speed is all important and people want to know quickly the price range.
If they have to take time to:
- Enter much data in a complex form
- Understand your pricing structure
- Send an email requiring formulating their needs
This is likely to happen less than completing simple form.

Having ballpark pricing and a simple form to complete improves inbound marketing.

What are your experiences or thoughts of having complete or ballpark pricing on your website?