Pricing Pages: What Users Actually Read (and Miss)

Your pricing page converts at 2.3%. Industry average sits at 2-5%. You're technically fine. But here's what that number conceals: of the 97.7% who leave, roughly two-thirds abandon at predictable friction points that eye-tracking studies have mapped with remarkable consistency.

Research from the Baymard Institute analyzing 247 B2B SaaS pricing pages found that 67% of visitors who spent more than 30 seconds on pricing left without taking action—not because they rejected the price, but because they couldn't extract the information needed to make a decision. The gap between what companies emphasize and what users actually need to know represents millions in unrealized revenue.

Understanding this gap requires moving beyond conversion optimization platitudes. We need to examine what users actually read, what they systematically miss, and why the mismatch persists despite decades of best practices.

The Reading Pattern Nobody Designs For

Eye-tracking studies from Nielsen Norman Group reveal a consistent F-pattern on pricing pages, but with a critical deviation. Users don't read pricing pages like content pages. They scan in a Z-pattern across tier names, then drop vertically down feature lists, then zigzag back across price points. This creates three distinct attention zones, each with different information needs.

The top zone—tier names and headline prices—captures 89% of initial attention. Users spend an average of 3.2 seconds here before making a preliminary judgment about fit. But here's where design fails users: 73% of pricing pages lead with tier names that communicate internal product taxonomy rather than customer outcomes.