Why 7?

I discovered the $7, $17, $27, $47, $67, $97 from some split test results Ryan Deiss published a few years back.
Apparently these were the magic numbers for maximum sales within each price band.
Not sure if they still hold true - but I guess none of the big marketers have tested and shared any different results.

there are full studies about this number. Outcome of them is that a 7 in the end sells best. This is simply why the 7 is used.

Maybe the 9 in the end is overdone and misses the promo effect.

This bother my mind to

Before I made this reply, this thread had 7 posts and 27 views**. Cool, huh?

In my opinion, the reason why creative marketers choose to use the number 7 as a price digit is because their product will look less expensive, and people will tend to buy it. It's like using the number 9 (ex. $69 for a $70 shirt), only today, it's the number 7.

Isn't the number 7 generally considered lucky? Additionally, $7 is that just over-five-dollars expense, while $8 is more like, "man I'm spending pretty much $10 on this thing." All psychological.

On a lighter note, after browsing the WSO section it would appear that in 2012 most posts are just announcing a FUTURE product, or offering a cheap-o freebie to build their list. As always, just my MFO.

BP

Not quite ... it's like so many other things in internet marketing: people copy what they see on the usually mistaken reasoning that it "must" be working and have been reliably tested by others in ways relevant to themselves, otherwise they wouldn't be seeing it everywhere. This is how myths are perpetuated.

The reality is that someone once allegedly split-tested it with the menu prices in a pizza restaurant in the 1960's, and unfortunately one of the people present was a "marketer"; ever since then everyone's copied it because "it must work, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it, would they?"

Meanwhile, I've seen some recent actual testing done by my own former clients, in which it was discovered that:-

(i) For a short report, $10 converted better than $7 (I thought $12 might have converted better still, but I couldn't persuade the client to test it, because he already "knew" it would be worse);

(ii) For an e-book $39 converted slightly better than $37;

(iii) For some coaching videos and a membership package $22 converted a lot better than $17.

In each case, when I say "converted better", I'm referring to "more sales", not just to "more net income" (though obviously that was also true).

But the established wisdom is for prices to end in a "7", and of course it must work, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it, would they?

Everybody saw the movie "Seven Monkeys"
So, it's 7

Why does everyone use toilet paper to wipe their butt? Truth is you could use a lot of things to wipe it but a few people decided toilet paper was the best and that's now what everyone uses. Same goes for the number 7. You might get better wiping with a towel or using the number 9, but few like to stray from the pack.