How to Run Pricing Experiments for Maximum Profit

Still guessing your way through pricing? It’s time to stop.

Pricing experiments are the most overlooked growth lever in your business. While you’re tweaking headlines and chasing traffic, your prices might be quietly killing conversions or leaving profit on the table.

This guide will show you how to stop guessing and start testing. We’ll break down the exact steps, strategies, and tools you need to run smarter pricing experiments, find your sweet spot, and finally put data behind the number that matters most: the one on the price tag.

Need a reliable tool for price testing? Personizely is an all-in-one conversion rate optimization platform that streamlines testing, personalization, and more!

What is a pricing experiment?

A pricing experiment is a structured way to test different product prices to see how your customers react—and more importantly, how those reactions impact your bottom line. It’s not guesswork or gut feelings. It’s using real data to figure out what people are actually willing to pay, how price affects demand, and where that sweet spot sits between too cheap and too expensive.

Let’s say you’re selling a subscription box. You’re charging $29 a month, and sales are decent, but you’ve got that itch. Are you undercharging? Are you scaring off potential customers? A pricing experiment helps answer those questions by letting you test multiple price points across different customer segments, without changing your entire pricing model all at once.

At its core, pricing experimentation is about control. You tweak prices in a calculated way, track what happens, and use that insight to make smarter decisions. Whether you’re offering tiered pricing, bundle pricing, limited-time discounts, or just trying to land on the most profitable number, the goal is always the same: to find the optimal price that matches customer expectations and maximizes revenue.

Price elasticity of demand concept

And this isn’t just for big brands with data science teams. Business owners of all sizes can tap into the power of price testing to uncover what actually drives buying behavior.

Why are price experiments important for an effective pricing strategy?

For many businesses, setting product prices often comes down to educated guesswork, driven by competitor benchmarks, instinct, or what feels reasonable. But pricing is one of the most powerful levers in your entire strategy. A small change can significantly impact conversion rates, customer demand, and overall revenue. That’s where pricing experimentation becomes essential.

But let’s not sugarcoat it. Running pricing tests can be messy. It’s not as simple as swapping out a button color or headline. Price touches everything from how your brand is perceived by potential customers to how your operations scale. Still, the upside? Massive. Done right, price testing can unlock profitable shifts in your strategy that no amount of marketing spend will ever match.

Price testing can aid business growth on multiple levels

Here’s what effective price testing can help you uncover, starting with foundational process improvements and ending with transformative outcomes:

• Spot price sensitivity before it hurts sales: Customers don’t all respond the same way to a price change. Some are highly price-sensitive, others less so. Testing reveals how different groups respond, helping you avoid sudden drops in sales volume and make future price adjustments with confidence.
• Measure price elasticity before rolling out changes: If you raise the price, do people still buy, or do they back off? A structured price experiment gives you real data to understand the elasticity of demand. Instead of guessing, you’ll see exactly how price shifts affect sales, helping you make smarter pricing decisions with less risk.
• Improve your conversion rate based on actual behavior: Instead of guessing what might work, price experiments show how price changes affect actual buying behavior. This lets you find the perfect price for customers that maximizes conversions, not just impressions or clicks.
• Boost revenue by optimizing your pricing model: Even small changes to how you structure your pricing (like shifting the monthly subscription fee by a few dollars or adjusting your tiers) can lead to meaningful growth. Price testing helps you fine-tune your pricing model so it works harder for your business.
• Identify your most profitable customer segments: Some buyers will always look for the lowest price. Others care more about speed, service, or added features. Price experimentation shows you which segments are willing to pay more—and which need a nudge—so you can tailor your offers and improve your margins.
• Forecast customer demand with better accuracy: Experiments give you something surface-level analytics can’t: hard data on how pricing impacts customer demand. That helps you plan better, avoid overstocking or understocking, and make sharper decisions around production and cash flow.
• Gain valuable insights into perceived value: Pricing says a lot about your product. It signals quality, exclusivity, or affordability. Testing different prices can reveal how customers really perceive your value, whether they see your offer as worth the price, overpriced, or a hidden bargain. That’s a valuable insight you can use to improve not just pricing, but messaging and positioning too.
• Drive long-term customer engagement: Pricing impacts retention just as much as acquisition. By testing and refining your pricing structure, especially in subscription or SaaS business models, you can reduce churn and keep customers happier over time.

At the end of the day, effective pricing experiment methods remove the guesswork and replace it with data-backed decisions that help you grow revenue, sharpen your strategy, and meet customer expectations more effectively. Yes, it takes work, but the long-term returns speak for themselves. According to McKinsey, companies that regularly experiment with pricing outperform their peers by up to 25% in gross margin improvement.

When should you engage in price testing?

Price experiments can deliver value at just about any stage of business growth. Whether you’re just launching or scaling up, testing helps you stay aligned with what your customers are willing to pay. But there are a few moments when price testing shifts from useful to critical. At these key milestones, skipping a pricing experiment could mean missing revenue, losing sales, or both.

Here are the situations when it’s absolutely worth the time to experiment prices:

New product rollout

When you're bringing a new product to market, you don’t have the luxury of historical pricing data. You’re essentially flying blind.

Price testing gives you a clear starting point by helping you understand initial demand curves, customer perception, and willingness to pay. It’s your best shot at landing on the optimal price from the beginning—before faulty assumptions get baked into your pricing tiers or long-term strategy.

Promotional sales and discounts

Not all discounts are created equal, and not all customers respond the same way to them. Running experiments before a limited-time offer promotion helps you understand how deep a discount really needs to be to ensure customer satisfaction.

Juicy Couture sells their signature tracksuits with a 40% off discount

Are you leaving money on the table with 25% off when 10% would do the job? Testing lets you align promotional pricing with actual customer behavior, so you’re not guessing during critical sales time periods.

Price increases

Raising prices comes with risk, but avoiding it altogether can cost you more in the long run. Instead of applying a blanket increase, use price experiments to test a list of price ranges across different customer segments. This helps you understand where the resistance starts and identify the maximum price ranges your audience is willing to accept.

With solid test data, you can adjust your pricing strategy to match your current cost structures without sacrificing your market share, conversion rates, or customer loyalty.

Sales downturns

If sales are sliding and you’re unsure why, testing your current pricing strategy should be one of the first things on your list. Price sensitivity can shift fast, especially in cost-conscious or competitive markets. Maybe your pricing tiers no longer reflect the value customers expect, or maybe regional prices need adjusting. Either way, experiments can help you isolate the issue and course-correct with data instead of gut instinct.

Seasonal changes

For seasonal businesses or companies with demand that fluctuates throughout the year, price testing helps you adapt. A pricing strategy that works in December might fall flat in March.

Price tests let you optimize prices for different time periods and customer behaviors, rather than applying the same blanket pricing year-round. That means better margins when demand is high, and better sales volume when it’s not.

Here’s how Sideways Snowboards handles it: in winter, when demand peaks and people are gearing up for ski trips, they sell at full price. As summer approaches and interest drops, they keep cash flowing by running clearance sales.

Seasonal clearance helps to improve better sales volumes when the demand is low

7 pricing strategies for effective pricing experiments

You already know why pricing experiments matter—and when to run them. Now it’s time to talk tactics. To get results that actually move the needle, your experiments need to be grounded in real pricing strategies.

This is where structure meets opportunity. Whether you're rolling out a new pricing tier, adjusting for seasonal demand, or testing bundle offers, the strategy behind the test shapes what you'll learn. Each approach serves a different purpose, depending on your pricing objectives and what you’re trying to uncover about customer behavior.

Below are seven tried-and-true strategies that give your tests clarity, direction, and the kind of insights you can actually act on.

Anchor pricing

Anchor pricing is a strategy that shows customers a higher original price next to the actual selling price to make the offer look more attractive. The higher price acts as an anchor price—a mental reference point that helps customers judge the value of the deal.

For example, if your software pricing plan is listed at $99/month but shows an original price of $129/month, that $129 becomes the anchor. Even if no one actually paid that amount, the $99 feels like a bargain in comparison. This perceived savings can boost your conversion rate because the offer feels like good value.

Snackzilla resorts to anchor pricing, showing that the cost of the item was reduced

Anchor pricing works especially well when you have multiple pricing variants or packages.

Best for:

• SaaS pricing pages
• Ecommerce promotions
• Limited-time discounts or feature upgrades

Competitive pricing

Competitive pricing means setting your prices based on what direct competitors are charging. Instead of setting prices based on internal goals or customer perception alone, you track competitor pricing and adjust accordingly. If they price a popular product at $50, you might offer yours at $48, or match it to stay competitive.

Apparel is a classic example: take Alo Yoga and Lululemon. Both offer high-end activewear, and their product prices often fall within the same range. A $128 pair of leggings from one might be $118 or $138 from the other. These $10–$20 differences keep the brands competitive without undercutting their premium positioning.

An example of competitive pricing: Lululemon and Alo charge similar prices for similar products, only $10 apart

Staying aligned with competitors can help you protect market share and remain part of the customer’s shortlist.

But this approach has limits. If everyone keeps lowering prices to stay competitive, margins shrink fast. And without factoring in what your product is actually worth to the customer, you risk missing the optimal price—the one that balances profitability and demand.

Best for:

• Commoditized products
• Markets with transparent competitor pricing
• New market or region entry

Comparative pricing

Comparative pricing means presenting two or more options side by side: usually the cheapest option, one or more expensive options, and a strategically designed middle option. The goal is to highlight value through contrast and subtly guide customers toward the plan you actually want them to choose.

You’ve seen this all over SaaS pricing pages: a Basic plan at $19, Pro at $49, and Business at $99. Most users gravitate toward the middle option—it feels like the smart pick. Not too basic, not too bloated. That’s the decoy effect in action.

Personizely uses the comparative pricing strategy

This strategy works especially well when offering both monthly pricing options and an annual plan. It also allows you to test different feature combinations to see which ones nudge customers toward upgrades.

But it’s not just for SaaS businesses. Here’s an example of comparative pricing in ecommerce:

Teapigs offers a selection of different pack sizes for different prices, a prime example of comparative pricing in ecommerce

Best for:

• SaaS or membership-based businesses
• Tools with modular feature combinations
• Pricing pages with both monthly and annual plan options

Charm pricing

Charm pricing (also known as psychological pricing) is the classic trick of ending prices in .99 to make them look cheaper than they actually are. $49.99 feels friendlier to the wallet than $50, even though the difference is barely the price of a paperclip.

H&M uses charm pricing to increase their sales volume

This tactic was everywhere for decades, and for good reason: it worked. Especially in retail, where small pricing variables can sway potential customers, charm pricing was the go-to move for boosting conversions.

That said, buyers today are savvier. They’ve seen the .99 trick one too many times, and it doesn’t always hit the way it used to. But in price-sensitive markets (or when selling everyday items) it can still tip the scales.

Tip: Instead of $49.99, test prices like $48.76 or $52.25. Odd pricing still messes with our mental math—but feels more natural and less like a sales gimmick.

Example of modernized charm pricing on the Craftshack website

When used thoughtfully, it’s a simple way to test perception and explore revenue potentials without changing the product itself.

Best for:

• Consumer goods and everyday items
• Budget-conscious potential customers
• Testing subtle pricing variables to increase revenue potential

Cost-plus pricing

Cost-plus, or markup pricing, is as straightforward as it sounds: calculate your costs, add a margin, and that’s your price. If producing a popular product costs $20 and you’re aiming for a 50% margin, you’d price it at $30. It’s simple, consistent, and ensures profitability on every sale.

But for price experiments, cost-plus has limits. It doesn’t account for what customers are willing to pay, how direct competitors are pricing, or how your offer compares in a competitive market.

That said, it’s still useful as a baseline. Cost-plus helps you set a safe floor price. From there, you can experiment with prices above (and below) that baseline to test customer response and push toward your optimal price.

Best for:

• Retail and wholesale businesses
• Products with stable costs
• Establishing a floor before testing higher price points

Bundle pricing

Bundle pricing means grouping two or more products into a package and offering them at a slightly reduced rate. It’s an easy way to boost perceived value and increase how much potential customers spend in a single order.

Say you sell a keyboard for $49 and a mouse for $39. Instead of selling them separately, you offer the pair for $75. Customers feel like they’re getting a deal, and you move more units.

Bundle pricing strategy on the Glossier website

But the real opportunity with bundling comes from personalization. Instead of offering fixed packages, let potential customers build their own bundles. Use product recommendation popups to suggest add-ons that make sense based on what they’re browsing or buying.

Personizely allows you to build personalized product recommendation widgets for price bundling

Tools like Personizely make it easy to create dynamic website widgets that guide users toward tailored bundles, boosting both conversion rates and average order value.

Best for:

• Ecommerce stores
• Digital products and subscriptions
• Seasonal offers and promotional campaigns

Dynamic pricing

Dynamic pricing means adjusting prices in real time based on demand, competition, time periods, or even customer behavior. It’s algorithm-driven and used heavily by airlines, ride-share apps, and large retailers.

For example, a hotel might charge $150 on a Monday and $300 on Saturday based on demand curves. It maximizes revenue, but requires data and tools to pull off.

Best for:

• Travel and hospitality
• Event ticketing
• High-traffic ecommerce platforms

How to run pricing tests

Exploring different strategies is a great start, but without a clear process, you won’t know which pricing variants actually work.

Random price changes won’t tell you much. A well-designed test, on the other hand, can show you exactly how pricing variants perform, which variant prices resonate, and when it’s time to make changes.

Below is a step-by-step guide to running price experiments with purpose…

1. Set clear goals for your price tests

Every price test starts with a defined goal. Without one, you won’t know what to measure or what success looks like. A clear pricing objective helps you choose the right metrics to measure, whether that’s conversion rate, revenue per visitor, upgrade rate, or retention.

Here are a few common goals to consider:

• Increase average order value
• Improve conversion rate on key pages
• Reduce customer churn in subscription models
• Test variant prices for a new product launch
• See which pricing variants lead to more upgrades to an annual plan
• Identify price points that boost revenue without hurting volume

Make sure your goal is SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

❌ Not this: “Let’s see what happens if we raise prices.”

✅ Try this instead: “Test whether a $59 price point improves conversion rate by 10% over 3 weeks compared to our current $49 offer.”

A clear, focused goal keeps your test grounded—and your decisions data-driven.

2. Segment your audience

Not all customers react the same to price changes, so segmentation matters. To get clear, usable insights, you need to break down your audience.

Segment your valuable traffic by things like:

• New vs. returning visitors
• Purchase history or loyalty status
• Device type (mobile vs. desktop)
• Location (especially when testing region prices)
• Traffic source (e.g. paid vs. organic)

This helps you control the allocation of traffic so each price variant is shown to the right audience.

For example, you might show a higher price to repeat buyers and a discount to first-time visitors. Their reactions will likely differ, and those insights can lead to smarter, more targeted pricing strategies.

Tip: If you’re short on traffic, don’t over-segment. Focus on one meaningful variable at a time to keep your results statistically sound.

3. Choose a pricing strategy for the test

Your pricing strategy sets the foundation for the entire experiment, so choose one that directly supports your goal.

If you want to test perceived value, go with anchor or charm pricing. If you're aiming to increase order size, consider bundles or tiered pricing. Testing urgency or demand shifts? Dynamic pricing might be the fit.

To choose the right strategy, consider:

• Your goal (conversion, revenue, retention, etc.)
• What you’re selling (single products, plans, or bundles)
• Who you’re targeting (new visitors, loyal customers, price-sensitive buyers)
• How flexible your pricing structure is

Stick to one strategy per test. The more focused your setup, the more useful your results.

4. Define your control and variant prices

With your pricing strategy in place, the next step is choosing what prices to test. Start with your control price—the one you're currently using. Then set one or more variant prices to compare it against.

The prices you choose should reflect the strategy you’re testing. For charm pricing, you might shift from $50 to $49. For bundling, you could test different package totals. If you're experimenting with anchor pricing, your variant might be a higher original price used as a reference point.

5. Use the right tools for testing

Manual testing is messy, and most ecommerce platforms aren’t built for price split testing out of the box. That’s where tools like Personizely shine.

Personizely lets you run pricing A/B tests through dynamic pricing variants on your Shopify website, no dev team required. You can set up your price variants, control allocation of traffic, and monitor performance using its built-in analytics tool.

Personizely allows you to run controlled price tests

6. Choose the right sample size and duration

The smaller your sample, the easier it is to get false positives. To trust your results, you need a larger sample size—enough traffic to make the data statistically reliable.

How long should you run a test? That depends on your traffic volume, but a good rule of thumb is at least two business cycles (often 2–4 weeks). Be patient. Ending too early can lead to wrong decisions and painful price adjustments later.

And remember: keep everything else consistent. Don’t launch a promo or overhaul your homepage mid-test. Control the variables so you’re only testing price.

7. Monitor results in real-time

Once your test is live, keep an eye on it, but resist the urge to jump to conclusions too early. Use your analytics tool to track KPIs tied to your goal: conversion rate, average order value, revenue per visitor, churn rate (whatever’s relevant).

Personizely provides valuable insights into your price experiments

Watch how each price variant performs against the control price. Is one bringing in more sales but lowering total revenue? Is a higher price hurting conversions but increasing margin?

8. Analyze, implement, and iterate

Once the test reaches statistical significance, it’s time to make a call. If a variant price clearly outperforms the control, consider rolling it out more broadly. If not, you’ve still learned something valuable—what doesn’t work is just as important as what does.

And this is key: pricing experiments aren’t one-and-done. Markets shift. Customer expectations evolve. Your types of pricing experiments should too.

Keep testing regularly, especially after new product launches, major traffic changes, or competitor shake-ups!

Ready to make better pricing decisions for your business?

If there’s one thing to take away from this guide, it’s this: pricing isn’t fixed. It’s something you can test, refine, and improve—if you approach it with structure.

Whether you’re working with bundles, pricing tiers, charm pricing, or any of the strategies we covered, price experimentation gives you the insight to find the balance between driving sales and protecting margins. There’s no shortage of ways to test, you just need the right setup to do it well.

That’s where Personizely comes in. With our visual editor, price testing, and server-side testing capabilities, you can run pricing experiments directly on your Shopify store—without code, without waiting on devs, and with full control over logic and targeting.

Run smarter tests. Find what works. Adjust with confidence.

Try Personizely and start testing prices that make sense for you and your customers.

Price experimentation FAQs