Price testing

[directorate.office]

I have a new language learning product but want to test the price (or rather various prices) - the question I have is how do I do that in a subtle way, as it's clearly vital but I don't want to be known as the company that changes their price once a day?

[liam75005]

Ebay auction testing ? You do only one auction, so you don't get the bad reputation.

[AlexMoen]

There are a few ways you could go about it, depending upon your budget.

You could just change the wording on your website as an excuse to change the pricing. Have "Grand Opening Week discounts" as a way to test fluctuations, or "the next x amount of people to sign up get at the discounted price." It's all in the wording. Eventually, and hopefully without too much changing, you'll have a decent feel for what % of your website hits (assuming an ecommerce site) will pay for x, y and z prices.

If you're worried about your reputation being hammered, you could create a fake site that sells something similar, separate the pricing change, and gauge the traffic. Or, if all else fails, take the same product and repackage it under a different company and name and try again (and don't worry, because I highly doubt you'll have saturated the entire market).

Also, of course, find your closest competitors (or those doing something closest to what your product offers) and see what they charge.

Don't be afraid to niche yourself as a quality (ie expensive) product also. You don't want to low-ball yourself and only get by on the extra pennies left over after you subtract the costs, so make sure there's a decent mark up.

In the end, however, I think it will all come down to your sales and marketing efforts and the presentation of the product that determines the price.