Chris Coyier has an interesting article on CSS Tricks, in which he talks a bit about pricing tables, and whether they are best put cheapest to most expensive, or vice versa.
We were recently re-doing the signup page for Are My Sites Up, and we were looking at the way we were ordering our plans. At the time, it was from least expensive (free) to most expensive (Premium Pro). We looked around at a couple of other web services to see how they were doing it, and at first look it seemed like everyone was doing it the opposite way…
Personally, I think the cheapest option should generally be on the left. English speakers read from left to right, and they count from zero upwards. (They also like prices to be low numbers…) It makes sense to put them in that logical order.
If you offer a free or cheap plan for a service, generally you want to introduce as many people as possible to it, so they get hooked, then you offer more with your pricier plans. Right?
This question borders on the fine line between design and consumer psychology. It’s definitely open for discussion, and discussion there surely is over at the CSS Tricks post.
