My interest and passion around pricing stems from my experience in all areas of a business.  Over the years I have worked directly with (as well as evaluated and implemented) a number of accounting, ERP and CRM software solutions.  Including Oracle, SAP, Great Plains (prior to Microsoft acquisition), QuickBooks, ForeFront and numerous others, as well as third party or custom add-ons that address un-met business needs.

In fact, I have been “this close” to taking the leap and developing my own solution, because I believe all of the available solutions are missing significant opportunities to really set themselves apart from and lead the field.

Below I offer three brief comments on a solution previously launched as NetBooks and recently rebranded and relaunched as WorkingPoint.  I went ahead and signed up for the free offering to give it a test drive.  So far, for what they are offering, I really like what they have done with their solution.  I think WorkingPoint has built a great foundation to position themselves to win a lot of paying customers. 

It will be interesting to see how aggressively WorkingPoint goes after the market with compelling and beneficial new features.  If they choose to go slow, I wonder if they'd consider offering a white label version so I can add the beneficial features that my first hand experience tells me would compel tens to hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of prospects to switch from what they are using today.

Here are three brief thoughts on their pricing page:

a) Even though they are an accounting package and cents do matter, they should lose the “.00” after their displayed prices.  Psychologically the extra digits can seem more expensive and complex.  On the flip-side, losing the “.00” can make the pricing seem less, simple and straightforward.

b) I think they should be more creative and add some enthusiasm around how they are naming the different offering options.  Sure, it seems irrelevant, but there is a real opportunity to differentiate your offerings, your brand and raise the interest level in the minds of prospects.  Just don't go overboard and get too "off the wall" . . . it should make sense to your target customers.

c) The “Coming Soon…” section is an excellent choice and many startups miss opportunities when they do not include a section that captures the direction the solution is going.  Doing so communicates value in the mind of prospects and says “we are continually innovating and improving the solution” and “we plan on being around longterm”.  I would like to see at least one more upcoming beneficial feature listed though, as two seems like too short of a list.  They could even include a last entry that says something like, “Even More On the Way . . . we listen to the recommendations of our customers, click here to see some of the amazing additional features we are working on” (they do include similar copy, but at very bottom of page currently).

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I’ll stop there for now, as there are a number of other elements I would be A/B testing.  I will update this post with some additional thoughts soon.

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Update on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 04:12PM by Chris Hopf

Today I received an email (screenshot below) announcing that WorkingPoint has updated their Pricing Page.  Perhaps my prior post was taken into consideration.

I sure hope they are AB testing and closely monitoring these changes.  Looks like they took some of my tips to heart, but I was surprised to see they decided to reduce their offerings from four down to only two.  I rarely make exceptions to my recommendation of 3 offerings minimum, which in their case would be 1 free offering plus 2 paid offerings.

As always, what matters is what performs best.  It will be interesting to watch how this evolves.

View the updated pricing page here:  http://www.workingpoint.com/pricing-and-signup/

Email Screenshot:

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Updated Pricing Page top half:

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Updated Pricing Page bottom half:

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Update on Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 07:51AM by Chris Hopf

Another iteration of Workingpoint's pricing page is captured below.  They have had some slight modifications since my prior update post, but those were primarily around moving "coming soon" features up within the available features.

Notice they have swapped the Premium and the Free columns, as well as their own version of de-emphasizing the Free offering.

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