Show your fullest option first, offer three clear packages, choose prices that suit what you sell, put real reviews where people decide, and don't cut your choices just because of one famous study. Each of these has research behind it, but the strength of that research varies a lot, so each one below comes with an honest note on how far to trust it.

Big companies spend fortunes testing how people react to prices, layouts and wording. Some of what they've learned is solid and easy to borrow, some of it comes from studies that haven't held up, and a few of the tactics are now illegal in the UK.

1. Anchoring

Strong evidence

Show the most expensive option first, so everything after it feels reasonable by comparison. It's one of the most repeated findings in behavioural science, first described by Tversky and Kahneman in 1974.

How to use it: List your fullest package first on your price list or website, then the smaller options.

2. The decoy

Moderate evidence

Add a third option that makes one of the others look like obvious value, like a medium popcorn priced just below the large. Huber, Payne and Puto first showed it in 1982, and later work found it works best when the options are easy to compare side by side.

How to use it: Offer three packages with the middle one as the clear best value, and only include options you'd be happy to sell.

3. Prices ending in 9

Strong evidence, with a catch

£19.99 feels cheaper than £20 because we read the first digit and move on. Thomas and Morwitz (2005) found the effect is real, but only when the first digit changes, and a 9 also reads as a discount.

How to use it: Use 9s for products people compare on price, and round numbers for considered services, where £200 reads as confident.

4. Social proof

Moderate evidence

Telling people what others like them do changes behaviour. In a well-known 2008 hotel study, a card saying most guests reuse their towels worked better than an environmental message, although a later German replication didn't find the same effect.

How to use it: Put real reviews next to the place people decide, like your price list or booking button. Fake reviews have been illegal in the UK since April 2025.

5. Too much choice

Mixed evidence

The famous jam study found fewer people bought when they saw 24 jams than when they saw 6, but a 2010 analysis of 50 experiments found the average effect was close to zero and depended heavily on the situation.

How to use it: Don't cut your menu because of this study alone. Make your options easy to compare, with clear names and what's included in each.

The rule I'd keep

If you'd be embarrassed for a customer to see why you set something up the way you did, don't do it. That covers more than manners now, because since April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act has banned fake reviews and hidden fees outright, and the Competition and Markets Authority can fine businesses directly.

Read your own price list like a stranger

  1. Check whether your fullest option comes first, or whether people meet your cheapest one and stop there.
  2. See if there's a clear middle option that most people should pick, and say so.
  3. Make sure a real review sits within one scroll of your prices or your booking button.

Sources

Emma Winnard, founder of AEAN Studios

Designs websites and social media for small businesses, and book covers and YouTube thumbnails for creatives, from a small studio in Wigan.