How to Sell Expensive Products Online – 7 Actionable Tips
Let's assume, you're selling expensive products on your eCommerce website. But it's getting harder day by day to earn the expected profit from your current sales.
To sweep the situation under the rug, you launch a promo code. You get a boost after launching the promo code. But that doesn't meet your expectation.
Now you’re doubting the expensive price tags. You're thinking to lower the price. This is the blunder that most eCommerce site owners make.
At this point, you should not reconsider the price, instead, you should reconsider your marketing strategies. Because selling expensive products is a bit different than selling regular products.
If you're wondering about the strategy, keep reading this blog. We're going to unveil 7 proven tips to sell something expensive from your eCommerce website.
But before that let's clear a common confusion –
Why Selling Expensive Products Online Needs Different Strategy?
When it comes to selling eCommerce products, we commonly rely on the most common strategy – display the cheapest items of the highest quality possible, and set a moderate price for the item. This way, both store owners and their customers are happy with every purchase.
The buyers feel great because they pay a moderate price for their orders. Store owners, in turn, enjoy the deal because even this moderate price provides them with some earnings.
But selling expensive products doesn't work this way. Here are the differences:
- Premium Pricing Strategy: Odd pricing like .99 or .90 doesn't work here. Instead, premium pricing is expected in this case. A premium pricing strategy is when you price your products high to present the image that your products are high-value, luxury, or premium. Premium pricing focuses on the perceived value of a product rather than the actual value or production cost.
- The epitome of Product Quality: If your product is marginally better than your competitors but costs significantly high, certainly you are going to lose the competition. That means you have to touch the benchmark of product quality while increasing the product price.
- Confidence of Your Customers: You need to make your customers feel confident about their transactions from your store. When a buyer buys an expensive product, he wants a guarantee that it will serve him, for example, 5 years. You should offer guarantees and after-sale service to make your customers feel confident about your products.
Basically, these are the main challenges for you to sell something expensive on your site. Now let's learn 7 proven tips to overcome the situation.
7 Proven Tips to Sell Something Expensive Online Using WordPress
These are the 7 proven tips that we were talking about to sell expensive products from your eCommerce store:
- Research Your Potential Customers
- Explain the Benefits of High-Quality Products
- Compare Your Products with Other Expensive Items
- Show The Downsides of Low-Quality Products
- Avoid Odd Pricing to Make It Premium
- Don’t Offer Discounts Unnecessarily
- Offer Guarantee and After-Sale Service
Now we are going to discuss in detail each of the above-mentioned points. Let's start with the first one-
1. Research Your Potential Customers
When people buy expensive products, they take time to research. All of a sudden you realize you need a Rolex watch and order it online, no, this simply doesn't happen. If you need a watch, you'll start researching the watch, right? Because you need to feel confident about your purchase.
Now put yourself in your customer's shoes. They will go through the same process. You'll need to identify your prospect's motivations, pains, and triggering events. And you need to know it before they even come to your website.
Once you know your potential customers' motivations, it's time to prepare to capture those buyers. To do that, create a buyer persona of your ideal customer and explore why they'd consider a premium solution from you for their situation.
Don’t assume that prospects are not going to buy expensive products. Remember, even the thriftiest people treat themselves every now and then.
2. Explain the Benefits of High-Quality Products
People usually buy things that give them the most value. Therefore, list all of the benefits or value that your product offers. So that customers will know what they will get when they buy your product.
Make your customers aware of how much time, effort, and resources went into creating the item. The product becomes more than just an item when you tell your customers what makes it valuable.
But don't stop there. Paint the picture of what success looks like, what their life will be like if their problem no longer affects them. And showcase none other than only your products can disappear their problems like magic.
3. Compare Your Products with Other Expensive Items
Buying a wallet for $100 seems ridiculous, especially if there are wallets selling for $70 at the same store. But, what if we told you that you could get away with selling the $100 wallet by introducing another wallet, one that you’ll sell at $130?
When presented with three different pricing options for a similar product, the customer is more likely to choose the middle pricing option. This is called decoy pricing.
A case study of kitchenware company Williams-Sonoma shows that:
They had listed a $275 bread-maker in their print catalog, and while it was a quality product, nobody was buying it. The sales changed when they introduced a similar bread maker for $429 and positioned it next to the $275 bread maker.
The sales of the $275 bread maker nearly doubled because next to the new $429 model it seemed like a bargain.
So if you want to make your expensive product appear reasonably priced, put a similar but more expensive product next to it.
4. Show The Downsides of Low-Quality Products
You may have heard this proverb:
The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.
That means low-quality products can't make people satisfied. That is why always there are people who look for high-quality products, no matter how much the price is.
Along with showing the success story of using your products, you can also showcase how people regret choosing low-quality products from your competitors. It's not your words against your competitors, it's about the confession of a user.
This will help your potential customers to purchase high-quality products from your store.
5. Avoid Odd Pricing to Make It Premium
Odd pricing or using prices that end in .9 or .5, like, $4.99 instead of $5 make products seem cheaper. Though odd pricing is effective for some products, you might want to avoid it when it comes to selling high-priced products.
You are selling expensive products which means your product is supposed to be felt luxurious. Rounded prices provide a feeling of luxury while prices ending with .99 give a sense of a cheaper deal. Notice luxury brands like Burberry, Prada, and Balenciaga, they stick to round pricing.
White price tag backgrounds made the consumers perceive the product as of higher value.
The white background color also increased purchase intention, people were more likely to go through with buying the item. You can apply these kinds of different A/B tests on the pricing to find out which one works best for you.
6. Don’t Offer Discounts Unnecessarily
Giving discounts is a proven way for getting more sales. But that's not for you when you are selling something expensive. You’re offering a high-priced product so that price tag is there for some reason.
You are selling expensive products which mean shoppers expect premium gesture and product from you. So, refrain yourself from doing anything that hurts the luxurious image of your products.
Don't forget that products on sale usually have a cheaper vibe, even the high-stake ones. So, discounts are not a selling point for you.
7. Offer Guarantee and After-Sale Service
When people buy something expensive, they count on quality. They want to feel confident about their purchase. If you can convince them you don't compromise with quality, ever you're ready to offer a guarantee, customers will love to buy from you.
Make the customer feel accommodated and safe with perks like:
- An easy and free return process
- Friendly round-the-clock customer service
- Clear product warranties
- Exclusive access to content (ebooks, guides, etc.) and communities (like private Facebook Groups and forums)
Apart from offering guarantees, make sure you have a support team to help your customers if they face any problems while using your products. When you are selling luxurious products, your buyers expect you to be extremely polite and professional. So, don't hurt their beliefs about you.
Most Common FAQs on How to Sell Expensive Products
If you want to convince someone to buy something expensive, you can follow the below-mentioned steps:
1. Learn About Your Potential Customers
2. Explain How High-Quality Products Can Solve Their Problems
3. Compare Your Products With Other Expensive Items on Your Website
4. Show Examples of Others Who Regretted Choosing Low-Quality Products
5. Avoid Odd Pricing
6. Don’t Offer Discounts
7. Offer Guarantee and After-Sale Service
Yes, you can sell every type of product including expensive products on a WordPress website. WordPress has a dedicated plugin called WooCommerce to create eCommerce websites. Also, it has several free and paid plugins to create eCommerce sites within hours. So, selling expensive products using WordPress is very much possible.
To sell something using WordPress, first, you have to create an eCommerce website. Then you'll be able to sell something on your website. Here are the steps to sell something using WordPress:
1. Register a domain name and buy a web hosting
2. Install WordPress on your cPanel.
3. Install WooCommerce.
4. Upload products to your WooCommerce store.
5. Integrate payment gateways.
6. Start promoting your online store.
7. Serve your potential customers what they are looking for.
That's all! This is how you can sell something using WordPress.
You can sell expensive products from your own website. Just create an online store and start selling your expensive products.
If you want to sell these items on an online marketplace, there are options as well. Here is the list of the top places where you can sell expensive products.
1. Amazon.
2. eBay.
3. Etsy.
4. Facebook marketplace
5. Poshmark
There are several popular eCommerce solutions that can help you to sell expensive products. Here is the list of the top eCommerce solutions:
1. WooCommerce
2. Shopify
3. BigCommerce
4. Wix
5. Squarespace
Prepare Yourself to Start Selling Expensive Products on Your WordPress Website
Marketing expensive products is all about testing what works and what doesn’t. So, keep applying these hacks that we have shared in this blog to figure out which hack brings you the most success.
Apart from this, always pay attention to what other luxury brands are doing, how they’re pricing and using visuals in product descriptions, etc. Perhaps you’ll find something from your competitors that you could use in your product marketing.
If you've already started selling expensive products and want to share your success story, you're more than welcome to do that. You can use the comment box below to let us know which strategy you follow for selling something expensive on your WordPress website. Thank you.
