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Do people buy more when products are presented horizontally across the page or when they are presented vertically on the left?

My company is in the first stages of redesigning one of our e-commerce websites. Currently on non-mobile devices, our products (non-physical, if it makes a difference) are presented on the right side of the page under the header:

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We are moving towards either:

1) Showing the products in their current stacked layout, but on the left side of the page:

enter image description here

Or 2) Showing the products in a side-by-side pricing table that stretches horizontally:

enter image description here

Has there been any UX case studies done as to customer behavior differences between the two new options? If it's specific to conversion rates and display on non-phone devices, that would be great. (I read through a StackExchange question about "order of prices and effects on sales", but it didn't address the change in layout/positioning.)

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It all depends on what product you are trying to sell and what question will you be helping the user to answer. These could fundamentally affect how the pricing information is presented. For instance, "which flavor of your product should I be buying?" (lead by feature) is a totally different question from "What is the cheapest price I can buy your product for?" (lead by price).

Remember that shopping is primarily an act of comparison and you'll have to make comparing prices as easy as possible. But add the fact there are various stages of shopping and comparison ("What should I get?"- A list works well if there are a lot of options, think restaurant menus) versus deciding the best option to purchase ("Which one should I get?"- a side by side comparison works better, narrowing it down to say two choices).

Having said that, well known fact that people in the West will scan from left to right.

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  • +1. I agree that #2 definitely wins if your goal is to provide a feature comparison. See e.g., sendgrid.com/pricing.html . I've seen people use #1 for that, but I find it very painful to read.
    – Brian
    Oct 17, 2012 at 20:34
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    Thanks for the great answer. You're right, the decision to "lead by feature" vs. "lead by price" is the key.
    – Naa Marteki Reed
    Oct 19, 2012 at 16:21

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