As part of releasing our new version, we took time to review all of the data that we’d gathered from running a marketplace platform. We looked in depth at everything, and no stone was left unturned.

Other than significant brand, UI and UX overhaul, there are two main outcomes reflected in our v2.0 release. Rather than overload your puny earthling brains with both revelations simultaneously, we’ve focused on sharing the first major change in this article…

Removing the price from Paperclip

We’ve removed the price from our marketplace. This means that you’ll no longer see a ‘guide price’ on items in the app. Of course this could be a ridiculous move, but below is our rationale for such a bold move;

Our proprietary user data, combined with insights collected from user surveys and focus groups all pointed towards removing the price.

We found that;

• 88% of buyers lowballed the hell out of sellers in their initial offers. Whilst this is, of course, a fundamental to negotiation, we realised that price served as an upper boundary to negotiation
• 12% of buyers made a cash offer for the actual price; which means that sellers never get more than their list price for the item they’re selling
• 82% of buyers indicated that a high price was actually putting them off making an offer, while…
• 60% of buyers admitted to inflating their list prices, knowing that they’d get lowballed
• 68% of people saw the £ sign and their first thoughts were on a monetary transaction; they forgot all about the massive value that they have just laying about their attic. In other words – people forget all about swapping when they see a price, because money is quite literally on their mind

With the above in mind, it’s clear that having the price on the marketplace was causing bounded rationality in a sense, and so we’ve made a bold decision… and that decision is to remove the price.

Asides from the statistical wet-dream outlined above, what are the benefits of this to the end Paperclip user?

GREATER SATISFACTION, LESS RESENTMENT: It’s psychology, innit. Just bear with me on this while I explain, using a role play scenario;

You’re a buyer that wants to get £50 for a spare bike that you have. Now that your price is hidden from the buyers, you’re likely to receive bids anywhere from £10 to £100 for that bike. Therefore, if Johnny Buyer wants to bid £60 for your bike, and you accept, you’re both going to be happy. Why? Because Johnny Buyer is getting the bike for a price that they are prepared to pay for it, and Sarah Seller is selling her bike for more than she expected to get out of it. So everybody is happy, and it’s all because the price is removed.

LESS TIME TURNING DOWN OFFERS, MORE TIME PLAYING POKEMON

In an effort to prevent these low-ball offers, we’ve also introduced some handy, advanced item features;

• Offer preferences: you’ll now be able to state your preference of offers (ie. cash only, swaps, cash plus swaps, etc)

• Minimum bid price: when selling an item, you can now enter a price that you’re not willing to sell below. This price will be invisible to buyers, and if anyone tries to make an offer below that bid price they’ll be kindly (but firmly) requested to up their offer, saving you the hassle of telling them that yourself

So there you go, a couple of rational reasons for removing the price.

What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to send any feedback to us at hello@paperclip.co or on our Facebook page.

– we welcome your feedback, even if it’s a simple ‘I like banana pancakes’.