2

how would you go about showing different prices to different users?

currently working on a mobile network's website, and its been requested to show different pricing depending on if the user is new or existing.

  • new users: people purchasing a phone + plan to join/switch to this mobile network.
  • existing users: customers who already have a phone + plan on the mobile network. (who can have promotions loaded onto their account, which affect pricing on phone upgrades)

a user must have service with us to have an account, you are not able to create an account if you don't use this mobile network

the purchase flow today is once a user selects a phone - they then get prompt to login if they are an existing user...and if so, they then get notified within the cart that phone(s) have discounts on them. therefore the user has to go back to the product page to view the discounted price(s).

a quick solution i thought would be: once a user chooses to shop phones, they then would be prompt to tell us if they are a new user, or an exsisting user (then login) before viewing the phones page.

any thoughts of different approaches for a request like this?

Improve this question
2
  • Couldn't you just update the price of the item in the cart, if a logged-in user is applicable for a discount? Then the user doesn't need to go back to the product page. Show the original price as well, so the user notices that a discount was applied. Of course the actual product page should reflect that information as well.
    – insertusernamehere
    Commented Apr 5, 2017 at 22:13
  • How do you define 'new' versus 'existing' users? If the user signs up for an account then looks at the prices, do they get the discount? A common strategy is to offer discounts when people sign up in order to attract new users/customers, so unless you define a new customers as someone who makes a purchase without logging into an account, or someone who has had an account for a certain amount of time, how would you implement this logic? Is it not possible to just show two sets of prices on the product page and then show the relevant price on checkout?
    – Michael Lai ♦
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 3:06

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

This is a very interesting problem. How I would tackle this issue in our e-commerce sites is:

  • When the user is not logged in => Show the prices for new users/universal price, but name it somehow different. For example, in the case of B2B shops, we name it as ARP (Advised Retail Price).
  • Give a proper indication that the user should log in, in order to see their "exclusive" price. This can happen with different ways, like on the top menu or on the right side of the site. This will also help for convincing a new user to make an account => Because they will know that there special offers for existing customers. Exclusiveness is something that makes people sign-in in a site.
  • If the user places something in their basket and then decides to log-in, then show a good feedback to them that the price has changed. Something like "special discount" for our existing customers, which makes it different from other discounts.
  • You could also add feedback in the shopping basket by notifying them that discount will be applied when they log-in
Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.