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Consider the following list of prices:
Plan A Plan B Plan C
------ ------ ------
$50/mo $40/mo $30/mo
Is it more effective to list the prices low-to-high or high-to-low (when reading left to right)? (Assume also, that the higher cost plan is the sales-target)
Following shows screen-shots of different sales price comparison plans..
http://www.webdesigndev.com/inspiration/25-clear-and-beautiful-comparison-tables
Key thing is to distinguish the plan that you want user to select by putting a lable "Best" and/or "Recommended" on top of the column header and providing list of features in clear text exclusive to the plan ( e.g. in your case $50 plan )
also making the default selection in different color catches user's attention on reading the information about that plan..
take a look at godady plan comparison page
http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/web-hosting.aspx
Edit:
Also converting prices from 50 , 40 and 30 to 49.99 ,39.99 , 29.99 helps
As a general rule of thumb:
make sure you highlight one as "Recommended" or so (usually the second or third cheapest if you have 4-5 choices): it should be the one that fits most of your target and that you aim to sell (thanks to anchoring)
don't have 20+ plans: too many choices will stop buyers who will then leave, thinking they'll come back when they know more, but never come back in the end. Between 3 and 6 is be a good number imho.
Also, sort by price (or most important feature like "number of servers"), from the cheapest to the most expensive: that way, buyers tend to pay more attention to the price itself instead of reading all the small details, and tend to pick the recommended choice (or the one directly on the right or left); just make sure whichever property you sort by is the one in large bold font to highlight that it's the important part, that way buyers naturally assume that the furthest one offers the most features but is the most expensive, and that the first has the least features but cheapest.
Don't be surprised if the "most expensive" / "perceived as most features" choice is seldom chosen: most people want to think they pick the best features/price ratio and rarely pick the "every single options" choice (except for software where the idea is more "I want the full version of the program instead of the limited trial").
Similar example: if you want to borrow 20$, first ask for 50$, expect refusal, then ask for 20$ as alternative: it increases your chances compared to asking 20$ directly. If you can read french, this book has many other such examples.
But as another mentionned, the best to ease your mind is to make several versions and A/B test until you're left with the most effective version :-)
You want to present the most expensive items first.
A few reasons:
So, left to right is probably more effective, since that's how most of us read.
Why don't you try A/B testing the two different methods, or an array of different layout to see what works best. It's obviously worth it since it could have a sizable impact on your bottom line.
If you wanted to test static pages against each other you could try our tool at http://intuitionhq.com, or if you are wanting to test live pages you could try using Googles website optimizer or visualwebsiteoptimizer.com
I'm sure whatever testing you do will add value for your business, so I'd definitely go for it if I was you.
Good luck.
For better conversions expensive pricing should come first. It gets more exposure that way. This post by UX Movement explains this strategy along with a few others. http://uxmovement.com/content/7-useful-design-strategies-for-a-successful-pricing-table
