Classic Price Breaks (£29.99 etc etc)

[box500]

Hi All,
It's a well-proven marketing fact that a lot more people will buy something for £29.99 than will buy it for £30.00. All about the psychology of sales.
So here I am, Sunday morning, going through most of our (c. 1100) product prices with a calculator, mouse and keyboard, working out and entering the VAT exclusive prices for the new site so I can get the inclusive prices I want to actually show.
The problem is, that many prices (e.g. £2.99 and £3.99) are not possible, and £2.98 and £3.98 won't have the same impact on sales, and looks untidy.
I have seen the thread where someone thought it was going to be possible in V7 to enter the VAT inclusive price you wanted to show for the product (as per Trading Standards recent interest in the matter for retail sites), and have actinic calculate the appropriate VAT exclusive price for the shop, but it apparently was not.
And now, the actual question......!
I've found the VAT calculation math options in business settings/TAX, and I'm wondering if anyone knows whether selecting a different method (there are 12 options, with round line scientific as the default), will enable me to charge someone £2.99 for something?
Ta
Ian

[ajfish]

I would also love to know the solution to this. Even attempting to put in a VAT exclusive prices to more than 2 decimal places will not sort the problem. I have mucked about with the rounding settings and it would appear that the bottom line (to use an accounting term) is that you end up with VAT exclusive prices in the database from which 17.5% is added to get the VAT inclusive price. So on an Actinic shopping cart you can never seem to get a VAT inclusive price of £3.99. In this example, since, the VAT exclusive price of £3.40 will give you an inclusive price of £4.00 and £3.39 will give you an inclusive price of £3.98. I really want £3.99!
Anyone?

Andrew

[Mike Hughes]

You should read this thread http://community.actinic.com/showthr...&threadid=1571 for a full discussion on possible workarounds. I'm not sure of Actinic's current position on this.

Mike

[ajfish]

It appears that there are no workarounds and this subject has all gone quiet.
We are feeding our figures into Sage and we cannot therefore alter the VAT percentage to fudge this. We are left with leaving odd looking prices scattered about our web site.
This really does need addressing wouldn't you say?

Andrew

[Mike Hughes]

I'd agree. The word according to Chris Barling back in August last year was:

We do plan to address this in the future.

Of course the big question is when. I guess only Actinic can answer this.

Mike

[cdicken]

I am putting together a list of recommendations at the moment for future releases of the software. I'll be sure to include this very near the top (if not at the top) of the list.

[box500]

Thanks everyone,

Don't feel so bad now that I know everyone is suffering

I shall now get back to the prices....

Ian

[wesleythorne]

Hi, has the vat issue on rounding been fixed yet. We are about to go vat registed and have to change all our prices. If it is not yet sorted can it be confirmed by Actinic that V8 will have the issue addressed.

Thanks
Wesley

[cdicken]

Hi Wesley

I'm afraid v8 will feature no changes in the way VAT is worked out. Sorry about that.

[Duncan Allan]

I found that changing the prices in the shops to round numbers had an impact on sales downwards.

People say oh £3.99 why don't you say £4 but when you do it doesnt pay off. It was a change issue for me at the time.

With Actinic I have to accept certain prices end up as ??.94 or ??.96.

Would the VAT issue be resolved by allowing 3 or 4 decimal places on the nett price. That would be every helpful as I would like this for another project.

Duncan

[chris ashdown]

When we had goods at £x.95 or x.99, we had our larger customers always looking for a discount.

We then changed the prices to things like x.87, x.93 and a few in the .48, .26 etc and found no difference in sales but far less requests for discounts

I concluded that people are all switched on to the .99, but consider other odd prices as good value calculated prices

[Duncan Allan]

Wholesale and retail markets respond in different ways.

I have toyed with different pricing models in both capacities and haven't really found an advantage over another save from rounding the price to the nearest £ or $ being adverse IME.

It's interesting that this has turned up now as I am looking at a new pricing structure

Retail wise in shops it's the bargain deals and discounts that drive sales. That isn't always the deciding factor on the .net. But postage is a big factor when someone is faced with the final invoice before they check out.

Duncan

[chris ashdown]

You are right Duncan

I think the shops use the .95,.99 well, as the have limited time available to get the punter to buy their goods and customers are expecting these prices

With the net, people have time to consider the item for a longer time and make up their mind

You can also appear much higher on the listings with a price of say .93 whilst everyone else is in the .95, .99 bracket

Guess it just pays to be individual sometimes.

Similar to site designs, you see some fantastic sites around which must cost a fortune, but what is the customer looking for, most likely the easiest route to buy or view an item with the least clutter around to distract them.

[Duncan Allan]

I agree Chris, web sites need to load fast, look clean and uncluttered and get people browsing. Admittedly there is an overhead with speed loads depending on the server/time of day/ISP. I lose interest with Flash sites from a personal point of view. I've told this to friends of mine who have a flash site and I can't spend the time waiting for it to load.

With pricing though unconventional numbers can be disturbing to a visitor. Faced with £13.47 or £6.29 the retail customer is going to get confused. To a wholesale customer ex vat it not an issue.
Perhaps .97p might work it's worth a try. I noticed that B&Q were playing around with .98p to keep to their cheapest price promise when everyone else were using .99p.
It's not rocket science but it is in the realms of purchasing psychology.

Duncan