Show Me the Money

There seems to be a growing trend to be vague about the nature of products.

Recently, I’ve been frustrated to visit a number of sites that don’t mention anything about price—such as whether they are free or not. Even their FAQ sections mention nothing about price. Even if a product is free, wouldn’t you want to make that clear? Surely that must be a frequently asked question!

In a single day I found two great looking apps on offer—one a writing app and the other a security app—whose sites mention nothing about price. Each, however, has a prominent Download button. Perhaps this is the new world we live in—one where people are happy to Download first and ask questions later. For me, at least, that doesn’t work. I want to be very sure about what I’m getting myself into before I download anything. I don’t want to chew up bandwidth downloading something—and let it dig its tentacles into my machine—only to find out I don’t want it.

So what’s the deal? It seems a judgement has been made that vagueness is a good selling strategy. Most apps, CMSes and other products are so vaguely described or explained that I have little idea of what they are about or why I should try them. It’s the same with most TV advertising. Often, after enduring some silly feel-good story, I have no idea what the product or service actually is for. Yet it seems sellers and advertisers are confident that this kind of presentation will work.

Am I just abnormal? Or is there something else going on here?

Is this kind of vagueness a showstopper for you?

Update:

I emailed some services doing this, and received some interesting replies. The answers fell into two camps:

• it is a marketing decision;
• the company is keeping its options open about pricing while product in beta.

I personally feel that both approaches overlook the psychological aspect of keeping users in the dark. I don’t know why being coy about pricing is supposed to help sales; but even where there’s doubt about pricing (as in the beta situation), I’d just like the company to be up front about where things are at. That makes all the difference to me.