Hiding the Price?

What is Amazon thinking?

[ggrot]

Has anyone besides myself noticed recently that Amazon seems to have tons of merchandise listed where they wont show the price until you add it to your shopping cart? Even the search results, where you can compare products by price and brief description, dont show half the prices. I find this very irritating and don't imagine it is helping their sales. Does anyone know of any new ecommerce rule about making customers jump through hoops before they can even see a price?

[Birdman]

Well, that's not good considering the recent statistic stating that lack of price is one of the biggest turn-offs to shoppers.

[kjs50]

I haven't checked to see which products Amazon is doing this for, but coming from the electronics industry, there is a pricing rule called MAP (Manaufactur's Advertised Price). The manufacture controls what price you can advertise for the product and the only way around it is to let them add it to their cart.

It's akin to the magazines where you see "Call, too low to advertise". It's not a gimmick they're pulling, but the only way they can tell you about the price.

Thanks.

[Christi]

Birdman, can you cite the source of that statistic? I'm curious. Thanks,

Christi

[gsx]

I have noticed on the UK for products that are not available quickly. Perhaps they are persuading you to look at the items with the price - which are in stock?

[aspdaddy]

Christi - No price was no.1 in Jakobs
Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002

[Craig_F]

yes, it's very annoying. But, I have a client that has do the same thing, it's required by the manufacturer since they price their items so low.

[webdevsf]

Amazon is the king of A/B testing. There's a reason they are doing it on some products and not others. They are testing conversion rates. This is the only way to do it.

Jakob Neilsen et. al. are good, but you must take them with a grain of salt. To a degree, he is just spouting, and what worked for him in one case may not work in another.