You are a cell phone retailer, and you’ve bought a whole lot of Angbandroid cell phones. These phones are usually not sold to individuals: corporations buy them in bulk for their employees for about $50 apiece directly from the manufacturer. Besides, mainstream attention is focused on the upcoming CryPhone 3 which will sell at $349. And this gives you an idea, because you’re a filthy, conning cell phone retailer.
So, you bait some victims by running ads for a $299 CryPhone 3. Customers start flowing into your shop, and you switch by telling them that the price was so low you’ve sold all your CryPhone 3 models in minutes, and to apologize you will let them buy the enterprise-only, high-quality Angbandroid models for the bargain price of $319.
A lot of people will just leave because they were looking for the CryPhone 3 and no substitute will do. A few will decide that:
- They’ve come all the way to your shop, they might as well buy something
- You sold the CryPhone 3 at -15%, so the $319 Angbandroid is probably a good price.
- The Angbandroid costs more than the CryPhone 3, so it must be better.
- The Angbandroid is an enterprise-only phone, so this must be an unique opportunity.
- $319 is within their $349 budget for a CryPhone 3.
Five good reasons for buying the phone, and you just made an 84% margin.
Bait-and-Switch is a type of fraud, and it’s illegal in many countries. The principles behind it are well-known powerful cognitive biases such as bad assessment of sunk costs, price anchoring and post-purchase rationalization, so they can be applied in many situations that would not legally qualify as a bait-and-switch fraud.
For a real-life example, consider this: Pixmania (an online retailer) advertises low prices on price comparison web sites, such as €48 for a flatbed scanner instead of an average market price of €51. However, delivery costs (which you only discover once you’re midway through the ordering process) are at least €6, which brings the price up to €54—and even picking up the flatbed scanner from their warehouse in Paris counts as a delivery. Other retailers do not charge anything if you pick up the item yourself, so you can actually find that flatbed scanner for €51. The Pixmania trick is too small to count as a fraud, but it relies on the same basic principles.
And then, they started spamming me weekly because I had entered my e-mail address when I started ordering. /me waves a flamethrower at Pixmania.
Bait-and-Switch is dangerous. If your customers suspect that you’re using bait-and-switch techniques to sell them something when they were actually looking for something else, you’re in trouble. Not only will they stop buying from you, but they will also tell everyone who listens to them—god forbid that they should be an influent twitter user. And you should be extra careful because this can happen even if you honestly never intended to use bait-and-switch at all.
Bounce Rates
I personally use bait-and-switch a lot. I don’t really mean to, but that’s just how search engines work.
My page on how Doodle God does Marketing is on the first results page for «Doodle God Easter Eggs», which brings me a healthy number of daily visits looking for such easter eggs. Some of these people are bound to think that I’m a jerk trolling for Google hits when in fact I’m just really good at unintentional SEO (I should start a consulting gig…).
My page on how Magento was pretty secure in early 2009 is literally the first result for «Hacking Magento», and it has been the most visited page on this web site so far. There’s no doubt here that 99% of the people who read that page are looking for a way to hack into a Magento store, and will be pretty disappointed when they find out I didn’t write a how-to guide.
On the other hand, I’m pretty happy that the person who looked for «web sex performer nicollet» yesterday was not satisfied by this blog.
The bounce rate is the percentage of first-time visitors who leave your web site after viewing only one page. If they’re coming from a search engine, this could mean they didn’t like what they found there, because if they did, they would have explored your web site a little further.
My Doodle God page has a 91% bounce rate – only one person in ten decides that the rest of my blog would be worth exploring. The Hacking Magento page has a 83% bounce rate – one person in five. Most people who end up on those pages did not find what they were looking for.
By contrast, the bounce rate on my About Me page is 0% – all the people who end up there (usually looking for “Victor Nicollet”) are happy with what they found.
Then again, who wouldn’t? 
Hi. I'm Victor Nicollet,
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