How To Raise Prices Without Losing Customers

By Adam  |  4 Aug 2015 19:00:00

It's a fact of business that sometimes prices have to come up. Maybe it's down to inflation, maybe you've fallen on harder times or maybe you just want to quit your day job; whatever the reason, if you run an eCommerce business for an extended period of time, it is almost an unavoidable fact that you're going to have to raise the prices at some point. But won't doing this make your customers mad? Maybe even to the extent of them not wanting to do business with you?

Well, hopefully not. After all, in their hearts, it's pretty safe to say that everybody accepts the fact that prices are always going to go up. I'm going to talk you over some of the things you can do to lessen the blow of an increase in prices and the first one is obvious: honesty. The old saying goes that "honesty is the best policy" and it applies in virtually every context (including running an eCommerce website). One thing people probably appreciate is the fact that you are an independent business and not a huge corporation (like Amazon) and explaining the need for an increase in prices will cement that trustworthy, independent image they have of you. If they know it's the difference between having your business continue at an increased price or having you disappear, I think it's likely that they'll go for the higher prices!

Of course, if you don't need to be making more money from your eCommerce website and are just putting your prices up because you think it would be nice to have some money, there are still ways that you can avoid people getting mad. The main thing to do would be a rebranding, change your logo, change the packaging of your product (if you make your own packaging) and even change the designs of your website; while these might all be superficial changes, if you make it look like what you're selling has become more of a luxury product, then people might believe that you have enhanced it somehow, making the increased cost seem less bad. A little devious, I suppose, but who's to tell you how to run your own business?

So if you do need to put up the prices, I hope either of those ideas will have been helpful to you. But if you don't even have an eCommerce website yet, sign up for Sellr now! It is completely free