After strategically positioning your product in the market to generate awareness and interest in your target audience, the next step is to nudge them to subscribe to your plans.

Pricing is one of the factors that influence the number of subscriptions to your platform, so you need to take it seriously. Your pricing page should be user-friendly enough to attract potential users while also being simple enough for them to understand what they are getting with each subscription.

This article is a guide to help you ask the right questions that will guide you in designing a pricing page that will nudge your potential customers to convert.

What Is Subscription Pricing?

It’s a pricing model in which customers pay to access a product or service for a specified period and must renew the plan when the subscription expires. The subscription pricing model is a widely used pricing model for software.

For example, you have to subscribe to a paid plan to watch movies on Netflix. The subscription period could be monthly, yearly, or even quarterly, depending on the target market. 

What Are the Benefits of Subscription Pricing?

Using the subscription pricing model helps both the company and the users understand what they are signing up for with each plan and how to select plans that solve their problems. Here are some of the advantages:

• Customers find it more convenient to divide payments into monthly or annual installments.
• Customers do not have to manually pay for the subscription at the end of the subscription period; the subscription is automatically renewed. Some platforms alert users on the day their subscription will be renewed.
• It allows the company to easily determine the revenue generated.
• Customers can choose the product features they want from your platform with customized subscription plans.
• It promotes brand loyalty and a high retention rate.

Research Questions to Ask When Researching Subscription Pricing

• Plan-Related Questions

A . How should I Introduce the Plans?

These are questions that consider the best way to introduce the plan to your customers, including the number of plans, the plan name, and even the pricing page design. This question prompts two more:

• What’s the Optimal Number of Plans to Show on the Pricing Page?

Even if you have a lot of pricing plans, it’s not a good idea to overwhelm users who are looking through to get a look at your plan. 

Typically, most businesses limit their pricing page to 3-5 plans; going beyond this may make your pricing page appear tacky and overwhelming to potential customers.

• How Should I Name My Plans?

While naming your plans may appear to be a simple task, the right name can make or break your business. This does not imply that you should come up with ridiculous names to be unique; plan names should be simple and effectively communicate the value customers will receive from the plan.

B. Should I Include a Free Plan/ Freemium?

Offering a free plan may help you increase your user base and encourage people to upgrade to higher-tier plans to take advantage of the premium benefits.

You could also go with a limited free trial, which gives users a taste of what they can do with premium features. Having access to premium features reduces users’ desire to downgrade to a free plan.

Here are some other free plan questions 

1. What’s the Likelihood of Acquiring More Users if I Offer a Free Plan?
2. Will I Lose Potential Customers Without a Free Plan or Free Trial?
3. At What Rate Will People Subscribe to My Platform’s Free Plan?
4. Will the Free Plan Offer Discourage Users From Paying for Higher Priced Plans?

• Price/Payment-Related Questions

C. What Is the Optimal Pricing Strategy?

The optimal price is the highest price customers are willing to pay for the product or service you’re offering that helps you maximize profits. Implementing an optimal pricing strategy allows you to get the most out of your customers without driving them away with exorbitant prices.

Here are some questions to help determine the optimal price for your subscription plans:

• What Should Be the Cost per Plan?

• Should I Include or Exclude Tax From My Pricing Plans?

Whether you include or exclude tax depends on your customers. Some customers may decide to drop if they get to the payment page and see a charge that was not disclosed earlier.

Even if you do not include tax in your pricing, include a disclaimer informing your customers that they will have to pay tax in addition to the price they see. For example, $4/ month (tax excluded).

• In What Order Should I Arrange My Plans, Basic to Premium or Vice Versa?

While this may seem to be a minor detail, it can play a significant role. How you arrange your plans matters to your customers; arrange your plans so that the average customer can easily find the plans that meet their needs.

For example, when you go from the lowest to the highest price, customers notice an increase in price as well as an increase in value.

•  What Pricing Strategy Should I Use?

• Competitor-based pricing
• Penetration pricing strategy
• Cost-Plus pricing
• Value-based pricing

•   What Billing Frequency Should I Use?

When creating subscription billing frequency, think of your buyer persona and the plan that would suit them. For example, if your product is B2B, annual and quarterly subscriptions may be more appealing to your customers.

However, if you are a B2C company, your customers may prefer monthly payments because they are paying you from their monthly income. It doesn’t mean you should offer annual plans, but design your pricing with the assumption that the majority of users will opt for the monthly plan.

Also, if you believe that annual plans are better for your company, you can offer annual subscriptions at a discount to entice people to choose the subscription that provides the most value.

• Feature-Related Questions

Aside from price, customers are concerned with the value they receive from the plans. What are the benefits of each subscription plan?

D. How Should I Allocate Features Into Plans on My Pricing Page?

Features are a major motivator for customers to select a specific subscription; it may just be the nudge your customers need to go with the premium plans.

For example, offering professional plan features in a basic plan will result in a low subscription for your professional plan because customers get what they need in a lower-priced plan.

•  What Features Should I Include or Exclude in My Free Plan/Free Trial?

The key to creating a free plan is to ensure that customers see the value of your premium plans and upgrade to them. As a result, providing your free plan subscribers with all of the features they require is counterproductive; they will continue to use the free plan.

Excluding too many features may also make your platform difficult to navigate, discouraging users from subscribing rather than upgrading to paid plans.

Free trial subscribers should be able to sample some of the premium features, but not all of them. Not having total access to all premium features is likely to motivate them to pay to gain access to all of the features they desire.

•  What Feature Should I Allocate to Each Plan?

•  What Features Matter Most to Each User Segment?

•  What are the Nice to Have Features?

These are the features that customers prefer but are not necessary. Users can do without it, but it would be nice to have it. Knowing what the features allow you to create a marketing plan that reflects both what your customers need and want.

Customers don’t place so much priority on nice-to-have features, so you can decide to include them in all plans.

•  What Features should be Promoted as Additional Features?

This is important if you offer customized plans where customers can pick and choose the features they want. You can create a list of the plan’s features and then allow users to request additional features for an additional fee.

For example, the cloud storage space for your professional plan is 50GB, but customers can extend the storage space to 120GB for an extra fee.

• Look-And-Feel-Related Questions

E. How Should I present Features for Each Plan?

Features and pricing are key factors that help convert leads to customers.

Here are a few questions to ask to best present your features to potential customers:

•  What’s the maximum number of features the average user can see and consider fully on your pricing page?

A long list of features can be overwhelming for users; they can’t compare plans effectively and may be confused about what they’re getting with each plan.

So, don’t overburden your pricing page with more features than your users can handle at once. For example, you could put the most important features at the top and allow users to expand to see more.

•  Should I include or Exclude Technical features on my pricing plans?

Explicitly labeling your features allows you to persuade customers to make an instant decision. Customers leave your pricing page because they don’t understand what the features mean or what they get from the plan.

Depending on the type of technical features, if it’s a feature customer needs, you should include it but break down all users who understand what you’re offering, even users who aren’t tech-savvy.

•  What’s the Best Format to Use to Display My Plans?

When designing your pricing page, make it easy to understand, highlighting the features customers want, and is presented it in a user-friendly manner.

For example, you can place your pricing plan side by side with each plan’s feature under the plan. You could also choose to highlight only the major features side by side and include the remaining features in a table for easy plan comparison.

Questions About Movement Between Tiers

F. What Is the Best Strategy to Motivate Users to Upgrade to Higher-Priced Plans?

• Should I Give Promotional Offers to Users When They Upgrade?

Giving users promotional discounts for upgrading to a higher-priced plan allows customers to access more features at a lower cost than usual. It’s a good motivator for them to upgrade.

However, you must strategically offer this discount so that it does not become the norm and customers disregard it. 

For example, when a user’s subscription is about to expire, you can offer them a discount for upgrading to a higher plan. You could also provide seasonal discounts on subscription plans such as Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas, among others.

•  How Long Should I Wait Before Informing Users About the Advanced Features They Will Gain Access to if They Upgrade?

•  What Plans Are Customers Likely to Upgrade to and From?

Knowing which plans customers are upgrading to allows you to identify which plan to promote to specific user segments. For example, if the majority of basic plan users are upgrading to Pro, you can focus your promotional offers to Basic users on moving to Pro for less.

•  How Smooth Is the User’s Plan Transition Experience?

Users should not have any problems switching from one plan to another; it may be a turn-off for the majority of them. You can collect feedback from users who have upgraded or downgraded to better understand their experience and how you can improve it.

G. What Pricing Metrics Should I Use for My Platform?

Pricing metrics help you understand the performance of pricing plans and how you can improve it. Here are some pricing metric questions you should answer:

•  How Many New Users Do You Acquire Per Month

Knowing how many users you acquire in a month allows you to decide if you should increase your marketing and sales efforts. Keep in mind that special offers may increase monthly user acquisition.

•  Number of Active Users Per Month

You may acquire more users, but if they are inactive, it will have little impact on the company’s revenue. Identifying active users can help you optimize your marketing strategy for pursuing and re-engaging inactive users.

•  How Often for How Long Are Customers Using My Products and Services

You can determine this by measuring:

• Number of projects users created per month
• Hours Spent on Your Platform Monthly and more

Conclusion

Pricing is a major determinant of whether or not you will acquire customers. So, optimizing your pricing page is critical to ensuring that you maximize the leads generated and convert them into long-term customers.

Another deciding factor for user subscription is features. Creating a great pricing page allows you to highlight the most important features to customers without overwhelming them with too much information or using difficult-to-understand copy.