Not putting the price straight up-front. do you buy this?

Hello.

So many websites I came across do not put their prices clearly up-front. One excellent example is dating sites, which always tell you in many places on each page that sign-up is free... no price anywhere for further services..

This is a known catch, I understand. you get people to sign-up and then you hope by sending them email you would keep them coming back... and eventually you would lure them to subscribe to paid services.


so that was about dating sites.


Now I am often coming across many sites that simply never show the price of their product anywhere..... as if they would like to force you to push the order button in order to see the price...

Surprisingly, some places even when you start the ordering process, still do not show a price....

Take this example, ezine announcer, http://www.ezineannouncer.com/order.html

Even after pushing the order button, there is still no price displayed anywhere...

Does not this discourage you from trusting the company and proceeding with the order?

I don't know what names you are going to call me, but I feel there must be an ugly reason for them not to put the price clearly .....

right??

It's all about marketing... nothing else. The further someone goes to find out the price, the more details you can gather from them in steps, and the more chance you've got of them going through with the sale, or being able to contact them about it later. Personally, if a site advertises a product (not a service such as dating sites) I wouldn't bother with it unless there's a price that I can find. For service based sites like the dating sites that you've mentioned, there's always 90% of people that use those sites for the free features only and are happy to do so. It's the ones that want more the pay the price for it. But, it's still the same principle, there should be a price clearly stated when you decide to purchase, no need to have it there before that.

It's purely a personal decision that's more based on ethics then anything else. If you don't like it, don't do it. The more people that do that, the more sites that use that practice will shut down thanks to lack of customers.