This week, Senior Partner Manager, Lauren Barnes, tells us how to select the optimum price point for your site. Lauren takes care of the WhiteLabelDating.com Top Tier and Media Partners.
It can be easy to assume a blanket approach when selecting a price point for a site. A common question that we’re asked on the partner team is, ‘how much should I charge’ or even ‘what do other sites targeting this niche charge’? The answer is simple; to find what works for your site individually, you’ll need to explore the options. Rate card testing allows us to evaluate what works for your site; what generates the most cash and the best lifetime value.
Rate card testing was first introduced earlier this year. It’s a tool which we developed in-house to allow us to assess the most appropriate price points for your site. Many of our top tier partners have used rate card testing to find the optimum price that works for each of their sites.
As well as testing price bands, we have also evolved the testing system to trial the most effective ways of displaying prices in order to attract members. It may be that we run a trial showing the price as a round number e.g. ‘£20 per month’, in comparison with ‘£19.95 per month’ to see which works best. Alternatively, we can highlight the savings that can be made with a longer term package e.g. ‘save £35’, rather than showing the discounted price, ‘only £10 per month’, to see which is the most attractive to members. We can then identify which method attracts the most conversions across different sites; do members on site A opt more frequently for the 3 month package, the 1 month or 6 month package?
The data that rate card testing has given us is incredibly valuable and has also confirmed something that the quality of the brand definitively reflects the price that the customers are willing to pay for a site, stressing the importance of design, domain and the quality of advertising.
Ultimately, this is an accurate, closely analysed tool giving us the opportunity to monitor every potentially affected metric and we insist on continuously testing price bands until all options are exhausted. However, in the unlikely event that we find that rate card testing is having a detrimental effect on your site, the tests will be removed immediately. Yet there is no need to shy away from testing every aspect of your site: only good can come of the testing.
In order to qualify for rate card testing, your site needs to have a high enough volume of traffic to ensure that the data collected will be conclusive. The tool requires a minimum of around fifty initial sign-ups per month for testing to be viable. If you’d like to explore the options for rate card testing your sites,
get in touch with your Partner Manager today and get yourself a slice of the pie!