A human touch for ecommerce pricing
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Backed by Founders Factory, 60Seconds thinks ecommerce should be more human. Scroll down to find out how.
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60Seconds brings a human touch to ecommerce pricing
There’s not much room for haggling in modern Western retail. Unless you’re negotiating on the price of a house or a car, chances are the price on the ticket is what you’ll pay. That’s certainly the case in almost all ecommerce.
60Seconds wants to change that with an ecommerce platform plugin that allows shoppers to bid for a discount on items where the initial price might be off putting.
As founder and CEO Ivan Kadić puts it, London-based 60Seconds is built around the idea that pricing shouldn’t be fixed.
Currently available for Shopify, with WooCommerce support to follow, 60Seconds triggers a pop-up when a consumer appears to be about to leave a product page. It displays a slider that allows the customer to adjust the price to one they’d be prepared to pay.
If the price the consumer picks is within the bounds the seller has set for that product, the sale goes through. If not, well, at least they’ve got some useful data about what customers see as the best price. Sellers can approve individual bids manually if they prefer.
The startup’s name comes from the short time limit sellers can set to create a sense of urgency about accepting a discount via the plugin.
The human touch
Given that many sellers would prefer to make a profitable sale at a lower price than no sale at all, the pain points 60Seconds wants to solve here are clear. And there’s scope for boosting brand loyalty, by fostering a more involved interaction between buyer and seller, Kadić suggests.
Automated price optimisation plugins are nothing new, but Kadić believes that putting the control in the hands of consumers is the best way to figure out the optimum price for an item.
“[Other plugins can] give only a probability of the ideal price, but you never know the real price the consumer will pay if he's not able to tell you.
“In the Western part of the world, we think about the price as fixed, but not all cultures are the same. For example, in Arab culture, when you buy something you it's more than welcome to negotiate about the price.
“In our case, it's negotiation until we make a deal. Our competitors just use artificial intelligence that give you a probability about the best price, but it's fixed in the end.”
I do wonder whether many customers will just move the slider to the lowest price available (because who wouldn’t want the lowest possible price they can see?) and get rejected, leading to fewer additional sales and less useful data for retailers.
But from what Kadić says, 60Seconds seems to be working. It’s up and running on more than 200 online stores. Kadić says that around 50% of these stores are based in the US, which bodes well for making further inroads into the largest Western ecommerce market.
60Seconds has got all 5-star reviews on the Shopify app store, albeit from just 25 reviews at this point. Some reviewers note that they appreciate its similar functionality to the way bidding works on eBay.
The startup offers three price plans, currently starting at $9 per shop per month. That covers revenue of up to $1,000 per month generated through the app. Once a seller exceeds that, they can move onto the $49 per shop per month plan which additionally offers analytics.
A custom price plan with API access and greater customisation is also available.
Background
Kadić grew up in Serbia. After completing his university education in Italy, he split his time between Serbia and the UK, working on app development projects, until he got the startup bug.
He says an enthusiasm for ecommerce pricing, having worked on ecommerce tech projects for clients, led him to come up with the idea for 60Seconds. After he teamed up with accelerator and venture studio Founders Factory, work began on building the product in October 2020. It went live on the Shopify app store in September 2022.
60Seconds is currently a team of eight, including four developers. Unusually for a startup of this stage and size, Kadić says content is a priority as an important marketing and customer education channel.
“Content is crucial to building a loyal customer base. We are giving merchants that are paying for our tool the opportunity to learn more about the trends, the possibilities, and the opportunities that are out there, so they can improve their customer experience and their store conversion rate.”
Go deeper on 60Seconds
Learn more about their investment, vision, competition, and challenges:
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