Ecommerce, Opinion, Shopify, Websites, WooCommerce

Adding A Pay What You Want PWYW Payment Option

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With COVID-19 changing the business landscape so much, evaluating your selling strategy is on many businesses current to-do list.

Pay What You Want is a payment method that allows you to be flexible in what price you are willing to accept for selected products or services. The buyer becomes a part of the value process and is more broadly oriented to perceived value alongside a willingness to pay. This isn’t to be confused for Pay What You Can which is more synonymous with charity or social enterprise and often associated with an ability to pay.

In Pay What You Want scenarios the buyer is setting a worth-to-them, rather than a standard pricing matrix. It’s a method that disrupts the standard way of price-setting, eg manufacturer, distributor, wholesaler, retailer for example in a retail model.

Especially suited to service-based business or direct to consumer product sellers, a Pay What You Want option allows the provider an opportunity to gain income, where previously there may have been none. This is achieved by gaining both a greater reach and allowing flexibility in pricing, whilst maintaining a level of confidentiality about what is being paid.

It’s not going to suit everyone of course and it relies on:

  • the businesses ability to be flexible with pricing
  • the purchaser operating in good faith

Flexibility in pricing could come down the business having low ongoing over-heads such as:

  • Some SaaS providers (software as a service)
  • Downloads (one-time set-up, multiple sales)
  • Consulting (for lower-cost set services and outcomes)
  • eBooks
  • Live performances

But it’s also worth considering using this pricing strategy to move dead stock or to increase your reach without destroying your profit.

Biggest risks of PWYW and how to avoid them

If you run an e-commerce store with hundreds or thousands of SKUs then opening up your entire stock lines to PWYW would not be recommended (obviously!). Nor would it be wise to advertise it carte-blanche if you’re a service provider with a wide range of options. Before you implement a PWYW payment option ensure you:

  • Implement a minimum price or suggested price
  • Be clear about WHO you are, people are more willing to pay a fair price if they know they are helping a family or smaller business
  • Minimise the risk and start out by offering the PWYW option on chosen items or services

One of the main hurdles to testing this way to receive payment is the lack of technical know-how of how to make it happen on your existing platform.

So here’s a summary of what you’ll need for each of the main web platforms used by NZ businesses.

WooCommerce

There are free and premium plugins available. Free plugins always come with the risk that the software becomes obsolete or support will stop at any time, while the premium plugin prices include support and reliable updates and in general you get a lot more functionality with premium versions.

As free plugins offer far less customisation you need to carefully check that it aligns with what you’re wanting to achieve and will display in a way that you are happy with.

Paid Plugins

WooCommerce Pay Your Price US $29

WooCommerce Pay Your Price is a WooCommerce Extension Plugin using which users can name their own price for the products there by giving your users more importance which is likely to get you More Sales. Pay Your Price can be used to Accept Donations using Pay Your Price by setting your price as Minimum Price and the Donation + Minimum Price as Recommended Price, understand what Prices your Products command in the Market etc. You can force users to pay within a range by setting a Minimum and Maximum Price. You can set a Recommended Price which will be set as initial Price in the text box. You can even give the users complete freedom to pay their own price by not setting a Minimum and Maximum Price. Both Minimum and Maximum Prices are optional. Plugin works on Simple Product, Simple Subscription and Variable Product.

Features:

  • Accept Donations using Pay Your Price by setting your price as Minimum Price and the Donation + Minimum Price as Recommended Price.
  • By letting your users pay their own price you are giving your users more importance which is likely to get you More Sales.
  • Test the Market to see what Prices your Products command.
  • Enable Pay Your Price only for the Products of your choice.
  • You can force users to pay within a range by giving a Minimum and Maximum Price. You can set Recommended Price as guidance.
  • Works on Simple Product, Simple Subscription and Variable Product.
  • WPML Compatible.
  • Translation Ready.
  • Highly Customizable options for Labels, Error Messages etc.
  • Simple and Easy to Use.

Name Your Price US$49 per year

Pay what you want with name your price.

The Name Your Price plugin lets you be flexible in what price you are willing to accept for selected products. You can use this plugin to accept donations or to take a new approach to sell products. You can suggest a price to your customers and optionally enforce a minimum acceptable price, or leave it entirely in the hands of the customer.

Free Plugins

WPC Name Your Price for WooCommerce

This is a brand new plugin from well-known WooCommerce developers WPClever, that’s worth trying if you’re wanting to dip your toe in the PWYW waters without having to buy an app to do so.

WPC Name Your Price is a described as simple plugin for enabling open pricing and letting your customers request a preferred price to pay or simply make a donation of their choice. This plugin allows an open negotiation concerning prices and lets customers choose how much they can pay. It’s a truly intuitive and easy-to-use plugin without much to learn.

Live demo

Visit the live demo here to see how this plugin works.

Features

  • Simple & user-friendly interface
  • Two types of pricing choices: default input & select a value
  • Set up predefined price choices with min/max price & steps
  • Possibility to use decimal price values
  • Enable/Disable at the system or product level
  • Enter separate values or a value range for prices
  • Customize the text suggested price, price, and minimum price
  • Compatible with all WPClever plugins, major WooCommerce plugins, and WP themes
  • Suitable for simple products, variable products and all product types created by WPClever plugins.

Product Open Pricing (Name Your Price) for WooCommerce

Product Open Pricing for WooCommerce plugin lets you create open price (i.e. “name your price” or “pay your price”) products in WooCommerce.

For each product you can optionally set:

  • Default (i.e. Suggested) price
  • Minimum price
  • Maximum price

In general settings you can also:

  • Customize frontend template
  • Enable/disable open price input on shop and category pages
  • Set input style and pattern
  • Enable/disable quantity selector
  • Set price step on frontend
  • Enable/disable step ticker
  • Optionally show the original price (for reference)
  • Customize user messages

Shopify

If you’re running a Shopify site then consider:

Negotio ‑ Name Your Price App – 1% of converted offers

Add Negotio's Name Your Price button to your products

Once you enable the app, you may apply the Name Your Price or Make an Offer button to any or all products in your store. We automatically calculate and suggest an Accept price and Decline price based on your existing Sale price and Cost entered for each item. We allow you to make pricing rules for Collections/Categories at a time. This means you can have the Negotio button installed on hundreds or thousands of products in seconds.

There is another app, https://apps.shopify.com/pay-what-you-want, but the reviews are patchy and I’d proceed with caution.

Squarespace

Squarespace has Donation Blocks which aren’t exactly right for this but we still make use of them for a Pay What You Want scenario.

You can enter suggested amounts if you wish, and there’s a blank field that can be used to enter any number. It’s a bit clunky but it does the job.

Donation Blocks appear as Donate buttons on the page. When a visitor clicks the button, they’re led to a page where they can enter and submit a donation amount. You can customize the button text, suggested donation amounts, and change the button design. You can also add a custom form to collect specific information from donors.

You will need to be on a Squarespace Business or Commerce Plan.

Paypal Button

You can put a Paypal button anywhere on any website using an HTML block but you don’t have the minimum or recommend price setting or criteria checks, purchasers simply fill in the amount they want to pay and that’s the amount you’ll get.

You’ll see some tutorials will recommend you select the Donate button option. I’m not a fan unless you specifically are not providing anything in return and they are far less customisable than the standard Buy Now button.

Jump into Paypal and head to:

  • Go to Tools
  • Pick All Tools from the dropdown
  • Click the Paypal Buttons area
  • Hit the Create New Button link

If you want to control the number of offers you get, you can use the Inventory section. Set the quantity and once depleted your offer will show as Sold Out.

If you don’t need to track inventory then just leave this section as is.

Copy the HTML code and insert it where you want the button to appear on your website. When visitors click on the button they will see this screen and be able to enter an amount into the Price per item box.

Facebook Groups or Page

Deal or No Deal or Make An Offer Posts

There’s no fancy app to worry about and you can choose to keep everything visible by answering the offers directly on our page or group post or you might prefer to keep negotiations private by getting your customer to PM you with their best price for an item.

In The Real WorldLucy G Creative

Lucy Gauntlett from Lucy G Creative NZ Art & Splashbacks used a ”make an offer” post on her Facebook page this week.

Lucy says “I ran it as a sort of a merge between a tender, auction and competition and asked for people’s offers and their story – I haven’t done this before but it was some beautiful gold foil artworks that for some reason no one has really purchased but I think it was because nobody had seen them.”

How Did It Go?
“It was very successful and I really got to connect with some of my fans and know a little bit more about them. I think I will do it again at some point with some other artworks. I accepted the higher offers as well as some of the lower offers which was good as everyone is in different situations and having different issues.”

In The Real World Redhead Digital

I’ve been using PWYW for my Mailchimp and Gsuite domain authentication service (to increase deliverability and stay out of spam filters), so far all the businesses have paid my full, or very close to, my full rate.

I’d love to hear your successes (or failures) with this payment option, please tell me about your experience in the comments or if you think PWYW would work for your business?

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