Testing limited time offers?

Anyone ever test to see what works best?

[limitup]

Lately I see a lot of "... but if you order by X date the price is only blah blah blah" on all sorts of websites. Or it might be something like "register by X date and we'll give you Y free!" for a registration site.

Usually it's anywhere from 1 day to 7 days in the future, and some sites even use midnight of the current day, etc. (Which never made sense to me because the offer will be expired for lots of people in a different timezone that is ahead of the server time)

Has anyone ever done any testing on this to see which works best?

On the surface it seems like a 1 or 2 day deadline will create more urgency than a 7 day deadline, but on the other hand you don't want the person to feel so rushed that they say forget it.

I guess it depends on the site too. For something that is an impulse purchase for most people, I would assume a very short deadline would work better vs. a short deadline on a site selling a high-end product that requires the user to do their homework, research, etc.

But mostly I'm interested in how all of this might relate to impulse purchases, since that's the camp I'm in. =)

[lorax]

I haven't done any testing but I can say with certainty that the general concept works very well with impulse purchasers. A deal is a deal but a half-price deal with a time limit is even better.

[raywood]

I've never tried it, but it sounds like a good idea if it's genuine. I've seen plenty of sites where the special offer expires at midnight tonight. Go back to the site two days later, it still expires at midnight tonight. Deadline date changes every day.

Do I trust an offer like that? Ha, ha.
ray

[limitup]

The thing is, most web consumer are oblivious to the fact that the deadline changes, if in fact it does. Keep in mind that you are not the average web consumer. Unless a person is selling "how to make money on the internet" related products to people who know how most "limited" time offers work, they actually work very well.