The Effects of "Call for Pricing" Pricing Structures
-
I have a wholesaler who sells great products but they have an internet pricing policy that states we cannot show prices online and that we must have a "call for pricing" or "request a quote/price" button instead because retailers are losing sales due to lower prices online from other retailers.
I know, I know.. They are out of their mind. I have already told them that they should have online MAP pricing requirements to protect their retailers but they refuse to even set an MSRP! I've been looking for some articles to show the statistics of customers lost from not having a price on your site.
Does anyone have any information or suggested links on this topic? and the final question is if I was to remove the prices from my website, would that in turn affect my rankings?
-
Personally, if I can't find a price I hit the back button. This applies both to things I'm ready to buy right away and to things where a consultation is needed. For example, when searching for a company to do an animated explainer video for my site I only requested official quotes from companies that listed rough pricing estimates. And I only submitted my contact information to companies that didn't request a phone number. I have a fear of getting endless high-pressure sales calls.
Does my mentality apply to other people as well? I don't have stats on it, but probably, at least to people around my age (24). I want to do things when I want to do them. Usually that's at 3am. I don't want to call and leave a message and have somebody call me back at 8am when I'm sleeping. If I've made up my mind to buy something and I'm not allowed to buy it (reminds me of Apple forcing you to wait in line even if you already know what you want) I'll move on to the next vendor. If I need to get a quote, I want to do so by filling out a form. I'm also fairly introverted, and would rather not talk on the phone unless I'm in the mood to do so.
Additionally, when I have to call for a price I feel like it's going to be like buying a car. I don't feel like wasting my energy and emotions in a bartering process. I don't feel like being judged for how much I can probably afford and being charged accordingly.
Sorry I don't have any numbers, but that's my gut feeling.
-
I would imagine it would affect sales. There's probably no way around that. If they do this make sure call tracking is implemented so they can see what it does to their conversion rates.
As for rankings, Nakul Goyal gave the best answer so far with a first-hand account. He said they didn't change. But I would also imagine that you'd lose some sales from other channels that you can no longer participate in without pricing, such as Google Shopping, Amazon, and price-based comparison shopping engines.
There are other ways to block people from scraping your site for pricing besides requiring customers to call, so I wouldn't say that issue justifies this strategy on its own.
Good luck!
Everett
-
I am sure they did, but we were never able to have a read on it because price data was never added to the site. We just started measuring the Call to Action / Conversion as a successful RFQ or a visit to the contact page from these product level pages.
-
That's good to know but did it affect sales? It seems that less people are likely to call than are to just go ahead and check out.
-
Yes, but in our industry we have a set MAP Pricing policy with all other product suppliers which sets a legal limit on online pricing, normally about 20% below MSRP.
I personally will not call for pricing on most products. I assume it means that the price is too high. I can't imagine how many other people feel the same way and how many customers they're/we're losing from it.
-
Big companies hire computer savvy guys to run scripts and to take pricing from thousands of products from hundreds of competitors so they can undercut them or at least be competitive with them and use their strong brand name. This might be one of the reasons for this practice.
-
I worked on a B2B with a similar problem sometime back. The business decided to implement a Request for Quote system. And there was no impact on the rankings.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Experiences Tracking Phone Call Conversions?
Tracking conversions via phone call can be challenging. The Adwords phone ads only register a conversion if someone clicks on the phone number from their mobile phone. In many cases a landing page on a website has a lead/contact form AND a phone number displayed. The user calling that number would not be registered as a conversion unless you setup multiple virtual forwarding phone numbers for prominent keywords, ad groups and/or campaigns. This can be costly for smaller advertisers. Has anyone done or know of any empirical data on the average percentage of leads generated via phone call versus online form on a landing page. I know it can vary from business type to business type (and the form layout itself will have a modest effect.) More specifically I'm interested in the professional business services industry such as Engineering, Surveying, Commercial Real Estate, Accounting, etc. So for example if you conversion rate for online form submission on a landing page is 3%, and your phone number is prominently displayed, what would be a realistic ballpark estimate for the actual conversion rate including phone calls? 25% more? 50% more? Double? "Ballpark" is the keyword here. Just seeing if anyone has measured this and what their results were.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JCCMoz1 -
Is an email signup form more effective than a button?
I'm very confident it is. But I'm looking for a study I can use to tell my conservative bosses that if we replace the button with an email entry field and button, we'll improve conversion greatly. If anyone has a link to a study on how much you can further improve clickthrough by having an overlay form appear, I'd appreciate that as well. Joel
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JoelA0 -
Extract price from API to a Rich Snippet
Hi all! I'm trying to create a rich snippet that shows the bitcoin's price in the SERP title.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Gaston Riera
I've already seen this in the search result of "bitstamp". I've added a screenshot so as you can see what I'm saying. Also i'd like you to recommend me some rich snippet preview that supports extract data from an API. This is my first Q&A, hope you can understand me 🙂 Bye 60abdb6537.JPG0 -
Has anyone ever used Adwords' Forwarding Numbers as a Call Tracking Service?
Hi, I was taking over a client's Adwords account from a previous agency. It appears the former agency added the Google Forwarding Number (for call tracking on call extensions) and added it to the client's website. Therefore, if anyone calls that number from the website, it would register within Adwords (just not as a conversion but as a click under "call extensions") The problem: you can't filter by phone number (the same number calling +1 would indicate spam) you can filter by device (so tablet / computer) can be considered spam generally. Questions: Anyone ever used this before? Your thoughts? Does anyone know if there is spam coming from mobile devices now-a-days? Please tell me what I'm missing. Any advice / anyone else seen this / done this? Thanks Moz Community, Cole
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ColeLusby0 -
What's the most effective web marketing tactic you've seen or used that very few people know about?
I wanted to start a thread to share some of the really cool marketing tactics I've seen on the web that I think few folks are using, AND ask the community here what you've seen, too! Some of my favorite undiscovered or less-used tactics include: Making smart use of bios for conferences, events, interviews, etc. where folks ask you or your team members for a "bio" and you get to control the links, link targets, and anchor text. This is super powerful in my experience, so long as you have a moderately strong profile or regular participation in this type of stuff. Price anchoring on conversion pages, e.g. http://www.trackur.com/options - note how they start with the highest price to help "anchor" the audience to bigger numbers. A great principle of psychology in action. Using re-marketing to draw people to content rather than just purchase/conversion pages. The effectiveness of these is, I've heard, dramatically higher than the usual re-marketing campaigns that take you to a squeeze or purchase page. I can't share the example I'm thinking of, unfortunately, but I'd urge you to try it! Get more social shares and clicks by SHARING MORE THAN ONCE! A lot of folks feel like they are burdening their audience on Twitter/Facebook/G+ or frustrating them if they post multiple times, when in fact, very, very few of your followers are online at any given time. I've tested this myself and I get almost no negative feedback but can triple or more the number of shares/+1s/likes/visits/etc I get just by sharing 2-3X! The key is not to be too repetitive or annoying, and to acknowledge past shares (at least for me). e.g. I'll say "my blog post from last night on XYZ" and get a ton more clicks. What are your favorites? Please share!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | randfish16 -
Call to actions buttons
Redoing my site at the moment and placing a few call's to action around it. The calls to action are pretty basic, along the lines of 'click here to get a quote', when you click you get taken to an anchor towards the bottom of the same page that takes you to a contact form. I've based the Calls to action on just a brightly coloured gif image that has text written on to it (not in code but added via photoshop)? This the right way to go, or should I be putting the text actually on my page and using a background coloured element to do it? The same image is used across several pages (got a couple of these images which I use across the site) and thinking it's easier to do it this way rather than code? Adding alt text to images 'Click here to get quote on X' (X being product) and also using img title tag for when mouse i hovering over - Click here to get a quote! Don't want to get hit by any dupe content issue for using the same image on multiple pages etc (I could always no index the folder where the call to action images are stored if this helps?) This sound ok to you pros?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Jon-C0 -
Tips on marketing actual "Products" rather than "SEO Advice"?
First of all I just want to say that I love SEOMoz, it's by far the best no-BS resource for SEO and online marketing information in general on the entire Internet, and well worth the money. HOWEVER, one beef I am starting to have with it recently is... Most of the content being generated is becoming about "how to market to marketers" or "selling SEO" rather than actual advice or focus selling general products or services. By this I mean that all the new trends towards pumping out content based on research, making fancy infographics etc. etc. are all well and good for those who are trying to market their marketing or SEO talents in general but not THAT applicable to traditional online storefronts. I work for a fairly large company that sells tickets for theme parks/attractions/tours etc. and SEOMoz was a huge help initially for a recent site redesign, but now every time I log on to check for fresh content it's seemingly a repeat similar advice on how to get links or traffic for an SEO business. I don't mean this to come off as a whine because as I said SEOMoz is wonderful, but I've conducted endless site searches for (recent) information on traditional online marketing etc. and the ratio just seems to be...off. Anyone else feeling this way?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ExperienceOz0 -
Call-to-action is literally a call/dialing a number...
The call-to-action for this site is not some sort of webform, nor adding an item to a cart; it is a call, that is the action this business wants to elicit. Would there possibly be any advantage to making the number clickable and having a landing page for that, any suggestions on how to make this call-to-action more pronounced/clear? Thanks! =]
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Mozzin0