I’m sure most of you know that a $29.99 price looks deceivably a lot less than $30.00, even though it’s just a penny cheaper. Although some people may now call it, “charm pricing,” it’s a very old trick that retailers have been using for decades to make an item look more affordable. However, trying to use this trick when pricing items at Zazzle is not that simple for several reasons:
Zazzle does not only offer a standard 15% discount on all items but may also decide to offer a higher discount at anytime.
Many items in individual posts make items available in different sizes and brands with higher or lower prices.
Zazzle items are sold world wide, in a variety of currencies.
Personally, I think prices that end with the numbers, “8” or “3,” look less attractive, than if they end with the numbers, “5” or “0,” but this I also find difficult to achieve.
In conclusion, I think spending more time with creating and posting new designs will be more beneficial to you, than trying to manipulate pricing so that they reflect “charm pricing.”
I learned all about it in my college business classes, and while I absolutely do think it works in a traditional business, I agree that it is not worth the time here on Zazzle. My dad is actually one of those weird people that sees $29.99 as $29. I on the other hand see $12.25 as $13, sometimes my brain even adds the tax and goes up to $14 automatically haha. But trying to keep up with the constant changes here on Zazzle would be like playing whack-a-mole for the rest of your life. For all of the reasons you mentioned, and also base prices will continue to change, quantity discounts, we can only update once per month, etc. And if you look at any search result feed, it’s a huge chaos of numbers, designs, etc. I think people are focused on finding the design they want versus worrying about the price being a ‘feel good number’ (aside from obviously being in their range of course).
Changing base prices and sales makes it harder to do for sure. Once upon a time, the screen where we set the prices was different - all the information was adjustable - you could put $19.95 on the price line and the other info would change to meet that. Although you could still ‘tinker’ with how much you wanted to earn and the percentage, designers had more control over the price they wanted the item to list for. I never understood why they eliminated that.