Pricing Strategy, Tech News, AI in Design & Coding

Part one - Strategy: Video masterclass on pricing psychology

There is da Vinci quote used in Nick Kolenda’s book on pricing psychology that sums up what I’m talking about today:

“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions”

Pricing is perception. How we each react to the same price can be different, depending on our perspectives. For this reason, price doesn’t have an absolute meaning. And if we understand what shapes perception, we can influence how price is perceived.

Watch the video to explore ten practical ways this applies to ecommerce stores.

Want the transcript? Let me know via the comments and I'll share.

Jump to:

[01:10] Your building blocks for understanding price

[02:40] 1. Price fluency

[03:45] 2. Price structure and simplicity

[03:45] 3. Anchor high prices with larger numbers

[06:30] 4. Break pricing into smaller units

[07:15] 5. Use words of a small magnitude

[08:25] 6. Alliteration creates a pleasant sensation

[09:20] 7. Put the larger WAS price on the left

[10:25] 8. Break down product costs

[11:50] 9. Encourage customers to spend early

[13:10] 10. Emphasise the most popular pricing option

Part Two - Tech News

Sirv

I hadn’t come across this before, and now really like it! Sirv is an image CDN that dynamically optimises base images into alternative sizes and styles, handling things like compression. It’s got some big name customers including WWF, Schuh and Mizuno.

The feature I really like is the automatic conversion of videos to 360 spin images. You can upload a 4k video file and Sirv will convert it into an interactive image view without you needing to do anything. There is a manual conversion option to let you control settings like which part of a video to use, the number of frames required and image format.

Check it out here.?

Segmentify

Searchandising 2.0 launched in April with the following key improvements:

• 50% smaller code base to deliver faster search experiences
• Introduced customisable search filters
• Removed page refreshes by enabling customers to interact with products on-page

.... oh and ChatGPT-4 has landed and you can now do funky things like let the app analyse what’s on your desktop screen and answer any questions about it. AI has eyes.

Part Three - How AI is influencing design and coding in ecommerce

Design:

Creative and design teams are embedding AI in their ideation process:

• Using AI to generate the base images for the design teams to edit and redraw into a prototype style
• Providing inspiration to help start the drawing process, even if the AI-generated images aren’t directly used
• Learning to write effective prompts to get detailed designs via automation (and using specialist prompt writers)
• Speeding up the creative process to generate concepts and ideas - cutting time to market?
• Proof of concept testing: putting out AI product concepts via social media to get product feedback to feed into real-life production decisions, validating demand without having to create anything physical

Here’s a nice video with NEXT Childrenswear designer Chloe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QViUKttWWNc

Development:

Here’s a bonkers stat to start with:

When Italy banned ChatGPT, the productivity of coders in the country fell by 50% before recovering due to the disruption caused.

Source: SSRN research paper.

This isn’t about lazy coding ?? It’s about coding efficiency ??

Major ecommerce vendors have embraced AI in coding, for example Shopify has written over a million lines of code with GitHub Copilot (as referenced by VP and Head of Engineering Farhan Thawar in this YouTube video).

Another example I like: using a GPT to create draft release notes for a product roadmap to speed up the process, and improve the note quality and legibility.

Part Four - Useful resources

Articles and guides

I always find this annual SEO report useful reading from Aira

https://aira.net/state-of-technical-seo/

Events

5th June, London

Direct mail workshop for ecommerce managers run by Sweet Analytics and @godirect:

https://frombrandtohandtheultimatedire.splashthat.com/?

22nd & 23rd May, Birmingham

IRX & eDX, where I’ll be hosting the B2B track on the 22nd and lots of top retail/ecommerce speakers from brands including Look Fabulous Forever , Bare Kind Socks | B Corp , Farrow & Ball and Oh Polly .

You can still register for free here.

16th May, online

Loyalty Connect from LoyaltyLion sharing loyalty and retention strategy tips.

Register here.

Five To Follow?

???? Five more magical ecommerce wunderkids to connect with on LinkedIn.

1. Lisa Popovici , co-founder of Siena AI
2. Charlotte Kent , Head of Ecommerce at Dr. Marten's
3. Nicky Lomax , CRM expert
4. Liam P. , experienced digital director
5. Michael Parkin , MD at Function, brilliant ecom agency

*****

Your guide to building a compelling business case for technology change.

More than 50 years' combined ecommerce experience, for free. Really.

Why?

There is a lot of noise in the market about which tech offers the best cost model and why you should choose platform X or Y.

From experience, projects get blocked for avoidable reasons e.g. not having defined potential investment objections and having a plan to tackle each of them.

In this collaboration with Vervaunt and Rotate° , we share real-world examples and a 5-point checklist for getting leadership buy-in.