OT: Please Just Say The Price Outfront

IceScribe

The websites I visit have gone crazy with the sales gimmicks.

There are 2 things that entice me to buy.
1. A nicely designed pleasing model I can use easily without 5 more things needed to buy to make it work and that works in the software I already own and know how to use.

2. The price is clearly stated. If's discounted say the price don't make me do the math. What will the seller take for the thing?
Horse trading went out with the buggy, for all the modernists out there. So are "short immediate supplies" like fresh corn just harvested on sale at the supermarket.

What is with all the conditional sales? it's maddening. Of course, I' d like to pay the lowest price, but I'm not going to get a math degree, or buy a bunch of stuff I don't want just to get a "bargain". I want the thing I want, how the heck much will it cost? And will it work with my tools?

It seems to me it's like getting a promo for sneakers on sale. Sounds good until you find out only pink ones are, only size 5 and only the left one is on sale, only on Tues between 1pm and 1:30. To get the pair, you have to spend more money, but they won't have the size you wear or the color you want anyway, and you'd have to buy a tshirt and a jacket to qualify.

If you have a coupon, it turns out to be for sandals only, and so it goes all over again. I do not think that is a forthright way to make a sale. Better to serve the customer upfront, and not with refunds, credits, or excuses, or worse, telling the customer they are at fault for not keeping up with the times. Shoes and sandals could be limited items in production, but I don't think software items particularly just released are. It's a file, not an ear of corn or a right shoe.

Forget about rewards, and bonus points, that turn out to be 50 cents nontranferable value, and " green stamps" for junk I wouldn't have bought anyway much less waited 6 months to amass my brownie points. This in lieu of true customer service. Make it easy to part with my hardearned money. Just say, you can buy this for x dollars and it will be complete and work with your tools. Is that really too much to ask?

And by the way, if I buy the tractor, don't show me a fantasy outfit, or an ogre, show me all the farm goodies. It's like those darn coupons at the market when you buy your favorite brand x, but they give you a coupon for a brand you don't like.

And, it is very bad form to insult the customer by saying they are out of date because they are not buying the latest sliced bread. What one does is say, when you are ready, you may find the advantage over your already owned items is this, clearly stated, and when you are ready to buy, you'll get a 20 percent discount. That's salesmanship. Confidence and friendly trade is on a good path then.

Oh, yeah, I sold stuff that nobody ever needed, for ridiculous prices, never on sale, never a coupon, no customer loyalty gimmicks, only honesty. Things always in short supply and in sizes that did not fit most customers, and in the wrong season. Like $200 dollar mohair ponchos size small in orange and black in August . None of those ponchos were returned, because I knew what my customers bought (by memory, but would a computer have been a help), and I'd say, hey last Christmas you bought those Day of Dead dolls--I bet this poncho would look fantastic as a throw. Bink! Wrap it up and ring it out. Respecting the customer of their limits, remembering what they bought, and making out of box suggestions. It can be done. Honest up front dealings will trump any gimmick. Really.

Now saying all this, I have to say I really like the Platinum Club items here, bought a lot and will buy more. I'm on a limited budget for entertainment, which is what 3d art is for me. When I see such good artists and the great price, it is very enticing. I hope that the older versions of DAZ are continued to be supported, because I want to render the pictures I have in mind. The variety, the detail and the topics are very inspiring, and I can work within my budget. That's good sales, too.

ShelLuser

I tend to agree with you to a certain extend, however, I also think you're overlooking several parts here.

IceScribe said:

What is with all the conditional sales? it's maddening. Of course, I' d like to pay the lowest price, but I'm not going to get a math degree, or buy a bunch of stuff I don't want just to get a "bargain". I want the thing I want, how the heck much will it cost? And will it work with my tools?

It seems to me it's like getting a promo for sneakers on sale. Sounds good until you find out only pink ones are, only size 5 and only the left one is on sale, only on Tues between 1pm and 1:30. To get the pair, you have to spend more money, but they won't have the size you wear or the color you want anyway, and you'd have to buy a tshirt and a jacket to qualify.
When talking about this website there is another alternative: simply store it in your wishlist and then go over said list on regular intervals to see if some of the products there might be legible for an (even bigger?) discount.

Which is ignoring the obvious: ignoring the whole commercial approach all together and simply buying that which you want. In that case I could assume the only thing which matters is which website provides the product which closely resembles that which you want to buy and also charges the least.

IceScribe said:

If you have a coupon, it turns out to be for sandals only, and so it goes all over again. I do not think that is a forthright way to make a sale.
Still, I also think it's fair to say that they clearly make it well known, up front, that those coupons are for DAZ original material only (link to Platinum club promo page).

There are plenty of cases where I'd wholeheartedly agree here, but this isn't one of them. Because instead of putting this detail somewhere in the fine print or buried into a (very) long section of text Daz has put this into an hard to miss header above the section which explains the coupons.

If you look into this platinum club thing then it's really hard to miss all of this.

IceScribe said:

Better to serve the customer upfront, and not with refunds, credits, or excuses, or worse, telling the customer they are at fault for not keeping up with the times. Shoes and sandals could be limited items in production, but I don't think software items particularly just released are. It's a file, not an ear of corn or a right shoe.

Maybe better for you, but not the company behind it.

Now, I may be approaching all of these things slightly different because I run a (small!) IT company myself, but you got to understand that this is their so called business model. And it's this model, which most likely clearly calculated sale options such as impulse purchases, easy product researches ("if 100000 visitors have product 'A' in their wishlist it's got to be good..") as well as an ongoing promotional process (perhaps even unintended; but the (for me) well known issue of "in order to use A you'll need D, E, G, and X as well").

The latter is not entirely fair IMO because I can clearly see that if you have to start from 'scratch' (Genesis or Genesis 2 itself) it's most likely going to be much more pain to provide extra's then if you can base yourself on a predefined model and work your way from there.

But the thing is; you also got to keep in mind that it's this same business model which allows companies such as Daz to provide the stuff for these lower prices. And although I agree that there will probably be times where this can be a little frustrating, I also think it's fair to keep in mind that without this approach chances are high that the overall prices would be much higher.

This holds especially true if you're a smaller company. Or are into software design. Going even more offtopic but IMO there's is nothing more time and resource consuming than software design in general. And all those hours spend there will also need to be paid for.

This isn't a one-way street we're talking about, the whole sales approach goes back and forth.

And speaking of hours... Do you think that running a place like this forum is free? No; I'm not even talking about stuff such as forum maintenance or forum activities in general (I can clearly see that there are plenty of people who are more than willing to assist there). No, I'm talking about maintenance.

Being a sysadmin myself it's a given: running a forum will, per definition, attract more nastiness. People trying to break in, people trying to abuse stuff, etc, etc.. Same applies to a sales website. Of course they could approach that problem with pure ignorance (like Sony seems to have been doing with their Playstation network few years back) and as an outsider you can never be fully sure about that.

And there is the increase in webtraffic, normally you don't pay extra for that perse, but it should be counted as well.

Thing is; one way or the other it's also costing them (extra) money. Yet they still manage to provide contents for relatively low prices...

This in lieu of true customer service. Make it easy to part with my hardearned money. Just say, you can buy this for x dollars and it will be complete and work with your tools. Is that really too much to ask?

Most likely it isn't. But as I mentioned above it would come with consequences, the most likely one being raised prices.

There are more companies which use this approach. Take a company like GoDaddy for example. In case you don't know them; they're an Internet service provider and sell domain names, provide website hosting, virtual server hosting, website builders, etc, etc. My company primarily uses them for domain names and SSL certificates ("means to encrypt the traffic on a website or mailserver").

And they use the same approach. When I have several domains which I want to renew now in my cart you can rest assured that you'll get a lot of overhead such as "are you sure you don't want this domain too?" or "if you order now you'll get free year of website hosting because you're a valued customer!".

Annoying if all you want is, for example, moving a domain to your regular provider because a new customer decided to rely on your services. Especially because having to go through all that costs money too (time is money when running a business, simple as that).

Yet without that same business model they also wouldn't be providing their services at the current prices. It's a given.

And by the way, if I buy the tractor, don't show me a fantasy outfit, or an ogre, show me all the farm goodies. It's like those darn coupons at the market when you buy your favorite brand x, but they give you a coupon for a brand you don't like.
Not 100% sure if we're talking about the same thing, but in my experience they always clearly show you what you'll get when looking into a product.

Though I do agree that they sometimes can overdo it a little by making things look more pretty. Even so; it's the same idea there I think. For example, last week I got excited about the Andromeda legends scenery. It looks very good, the girl looks pretty, the dragon looks menacing....

But if you then click "what's included" you'll get a clear list of the things you'll get when buying. Girl and dragon obviously not included, but instead the location ("prop"?) itself, several poses and obviously several textures. And at that time it helps to have some basic understanding of the world you're in so that you can truly value the stuff you're buying.

Still, stuff like this is happening all over the place. I'm quite deep into digital audio, own several platforms myself and consider myself to be on a semi-professional level when it comes to sound design and sound synthesis in general. Sometimes I also go over stuff to see if I can find anything interesting or extra's (though very seldom since I already have a rather extensive environment).

But if you then look at the website of, say, Native Instruments you'll come across the very same issues. With a very big difference...

They don't tell you up front that "if you're interested in this compressor extension for $240,- you might want to wait 2 months because then we'll be doing a 40% off sale". Instead they'll easily sell you the plugin for $240,- and continue with their (sometimes annual) sale anyway.

Thing is; if you know the environment you're in you'll know if that compressor is worth $240,- or not. And although it may look like a huge amount of money for something as trivial as a small software extension; rest assured that sometimes such plugins are indeed easily worth $200 to $300 dollars.

In the end it all depends on what this stuff if worth to you. I got my Andromeda set... And found a good way to spend my August coupon as well; saved me quite a bit of money (and I'm still very happy with this set).

Finally, but considering that I'm pretty new in this whole CG thing these are merely impressions I have, there's also the issue of the time it takes to make something. When I went over all the stuff in the store I also wondered about some of the prices, especially in comparison to the amount of goodies you got in return. But then I also started to realize that in order to make some of those products you got to invest quite some amount of time. And as it goes in running a business; time costs money too.

So yeah, in general I tend to agree with you, but I also think it's fair to try and reflect on the other side of the fence. They don't use this approach for no reason, and I'm confident that without that approach prices would be a lot higher too.

Even so; just my 2 cents here.

IceScribe

@ShelLuser

thank you for considering my points, the main one being I'm a customer, I'm am important half of the transaction. The other half doesn't know what I must do to get to the cash register to buy their product nor do I need to know how their business model works. I don't need an apology for existing business models. Unless someone speaks up, it's biz as usual. Maybe someone else will say, "hey, you know, that Emperor really isn't wearing any clothes".

******* ***** ******

Who knows how many customers just sigh and give up because the buying experience has been made a math exam with real world consequences on their pocketbook? Maybe that is one aspect of a business model, just wear out the customer, LOL! Well, I am not singling out DAZ. I just ignore the huge flippy banners, and the tiered discounts, because up front, I can't afford to rebuild my 3d software collection. But I've notice this sales gimmickry on clothing sites, and other sites. I probably will never buy a new car because I can't stand all the phony baloney double talk. If they won't spit out the bottom line, why in the heck should I concern myself with theirs?

edited to add: I have drawn up many many price quotations for professional clients. Usually, their own accounting required an explicit quote and issued purchase orders or requisitions against them and not a penny more. But professional or retail customer, my experience has been their main question is how much? So I'm willing to say my pov may be different from the average bear. Every body likes a good deal, no doubt. I like deals too, but I wont be sending in my 10,000 to help the ambassador get his 2 million which he will gratefully share with me, LOL!

ghastlycomic

I think the most annoying one is the "E-mail us for the price".

That pretty much says "our price is stupidly expensive and if people saw it they would balk and walk away, but we hope if we can trick you into opening a dialogue our sales rep will be able to talk you into a sale".

murgatroyd314

IceScribe said:

Of course, I' d like to pay the lowest price, but I'm not going to get a math degree, or buy a bunch of stuff I don't want just to get a "bargain".

I have a math degree, and some of these sales are still complicated enough that figuring them out isn't worth my time.