: "Most popular package" pricing design This seemed like the best place to ask this question since it's design related but I'm sorta more interested in the reasons behind this trend and any A/B

@Gretchen549

You'll never know whether it works for your own scenario until you do your own A/B test. However in many cases it actually works. Ugly looking red buttons and stuff like that really draws attention and stand out of the rest.
From our questionnaires we understand that choosing "popular" item people think others have already done some research and this is a good option, especially when the price is not much different.

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@Fox8063795

It works, but it's not the tags. It's much more interesting:

Framing and the Goldilocks effect

On persuasion techniques, the Goldilocks effect is used by designers to direct a user towards one "best choice", by simply making the other choices either have just basic features (free or cheaper, but not good enough) or too many features (too expensive, too many superfluous add ons). That way, by means of framing, the right choice seems to be the one the designer intended all along: the middle one.

Framing, as Smashing Magazine puts it:


This principle acknowledges that people aren’t very good at estimating
the absolute value of what they are buying. People make comparisons,
either against the alternatives you show them or some external
benchmark.


Also, since we are on the persuasion topic, the "Most Popular" label on the option works as Social Proof, another technique often used. Nielsen and The baymard institute have run tests on the effectiveness of this technique with positive results (I'll look for those if I can). But what I know you can do to boost that result is tell the user not just that it's pupular, but how many people chose that. e.g.: "87% chose this" "5.900 People bought this". That way making that claim, "most popular", more tangible.

Read more on the Goldilocks effect here: shortboredsurfer.com/2010/09/27/understanding-the-power-of-the-goldilocks-effect/

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@Debbie163

It's some basic marketing "neuro-programming"; They often add that "popular choice" for people who have no clue about what they're buying but want the safe choice. That is, I believe, the market that fall for this in general.

The premium and cheapest options are often the "sidekicks" that will influence the final choice; the cheapest choice is expensive when compared to the middle one (a.k.a. popular choice) in term of value, and the premium one is too risky for a quick purchase. That creates a funnel effect toward the product the provider wants to sell easily and for which the profit margin is still good. That tactic is not meant to influence people who take their time before getting their credit card number in the checkout, it's meant to affect people who need to take a decision quickly and don't want to make a mistake. If you'd buy a car but had absolutely no knowledge of the 3 brands, you'd probably also go for the middle choice unless you can easily afford the premium option.

I've seen a lot of websites where the wholesale premium option has purchase limits or is said to be "unavailable due to high demand" (it's bologna as you guess); for some products that "middle" best choice option is the one that is the most profitable.

Does it work?

On a certain market as I mentioned above, I think it does.

Regarding marketing studies on this, I guess it works exactly the same as putting a sticker "BIG SAVINGS ONLY TODAY" written yellow on red on a pickle jar that is 1 penny cheaper than the normal price. Some customers can be gullible, naive or lead by their emotions, especially when they don't research first what they need to buy. There's a disconnect with their critical thinking when that happens and marketers love it.

Is it annoying on layouts?

Bah. Ok I'll admit it's not fun on web projects.

To add some balance, I like to use ribbons or badges for this kind of thing, or add other "titles" to the 2 other groups (eg. Starter, Best Choice, Premium OR Trial, Most Popular, Best Savings, etc.) But I think the badges work best and you can add them on the images if you have any.

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@Gail6891361

From a marketting and sales perspective designers, developers and engineers often get things wrong. While beautiful, tastefull, elegant, exciting etc. design is often something the design crowd aspires to. Truth of the matter is that junk is also a viable marketing strategy especially when one tries to diversify product ranges.*

Cheap has to have the quality of cheap. Otherwise its hard for you to charge premium elsewhere. It is in fact hard to design cheap looking pages that still are projecting dependability.

Second humans are bad at appraising value on goods they do not commonly buy. Pricing is a function whats available. Lack of options is confusing and scary. By putting two categories next to each other your building a baseline for what is cheap and what is not. It would probably be even better to have a third: Super premium option, thats way too expensive to be considered. Anyway the gist is humans rarely want to buy the cheapest option, by giving them some visible excuse to shift gears they will probably migrate to one of the popular center offers. The persons who dont fall for this trick, either cant afford to or are experts that aren't easily swayed by tricks as they know what they want.

If you want some entertaining but deep insight into this i suggest reading:


Undercover Economist
Freakonomics


* I know this and still dont like the idea one bit.

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