“Our customers are telling us that they are facing a tough year and are cautious, particularly for borrowing, but that their appetite for searching on line for the best deals is stronger than ever before.” Peter Plumb, moneysupermarket.com

Seems to be a new trend in eCommerce, which suggest that showing the prices for a competing site is something that consumers want and that can be beneficial for etailers. People will check anyway for prices on different websites, so why not saving their time and keeping them on our website by showing the competitors’ prices directly on the product page?

But for any new idea, there are pros and cons. Linda Bustos from GetElastic consider that is not such a good idea:

“The study suggests adding price comparison because customers like it is a good decision. I disagree. 63% may like to see comparison, but will they purchase from you? They may return to use your comparison tool, but will they boost or dilute your site conversion? Does loyalty translate to sales or loyalty of visits? Are you spending oodles of money to drive new traffic only to guide them to another site? Are you confusing the customer and killing conversion by giving too much choice?”

And she continues with 3 cons for this:

• Risk of Lawsuit – if prices are not up-to-date
• Advertising for the Competition – why would you do something like that?
• Risk of eroding trust – if you show only higher prices or inaccurate information you’ll lose your credibility

On the other side, Win Buyer came with a study completed in November 2009, that examines the
results of employing Onsite Comparative Pricing (OCP) on a multitude of US-based online stores and the critical components therein which drive lift in conversion as well cart size.

Results of the study indicate that the more product and price matches available for display in the OCP application, the higher the increase in conversion-to-sale, average order size, and total site revenues:

• average order value increased by 3.2% on pages with Winbuyer’s OCP application
• average revenue lift of 4.9% achieved on pages that applied the Winbuyer OCP
• total site revenues increased by 2%

Over 200 online retailers in the US and UK. including Overstock.com, Ritz Interactive, GameQuest and Hayneedle, are now offering their customers the ability to compare prices directly on their product pages using WinBuyer’s Onsite Comparative Pricing (OCP) application.

Think about it. Is it suitable for your website?

Related Posts

• No Related Post