Practical Sales Training™ > How To Convert > Was / Now Price
Was / Now Price
What Is It
A Was / Now Price shows the original price crossed out, directly next to the new, lower price. “Was £99. Now £49.” Both numbers stay visible at once.
Nothing is left for the buyer to calculate themselves. The saving is right there in front of them, already worked out.
Why Does It Work
The crossed out price acts as an anchor. Once someone sees £99, the £49 next to it looks like a genuine bargain by comparison, regardless of whether £49 would seem cheap or expensive entirely on its own.
The strike-through itself carries meaning too. It reads almost like something being taken away in the buyer’s favour, a small visual signal that a deal just happened specifically for them.
It also removes effort. A percentage off makes someone do mental maths before they feel anything. Two numbers side by side, one struck through, need no calculation at all to land.
How Can You Use It
Keep Both Numbers On Screen At Once
Don’t hide the old price behind a tooltip, a toggle or a separate line further down the page. The contrast only works if both numbers sit together in the same glance, so the comparison happens automatically.
Make The Crossed Out Price Genuinely Prominent
Don’t shrink the “was” price into fine print. Give it real visual weight, similar in size to the new price, so the contrast itself becomes the message rather than something a buyer has to squint to notice.
Use It Sparingly Enough That It Still Means Something
Save it for genuine price changes, not every single listing on your site. A buyer who sees it everywhere, all the time, quickly stops believing the “was” price was ever real in the first place.
When It Works Best
This works best on physical retail signage and ecommerce product pages, especially for recognisable products where a buyer already has a rough sense of what the item usually costs. The more credible the original price feels, the harder the contrast works.
When It Becomes Dangerous
It becomes a serious problem if the “was” price was never genuinely charged. Beyond the trust damage, inflating a price purely to manufacture a bigger looking gap can land a business in real legal trouble under UK pricing rules, not just a bad review.
It’s also risky if it runs constantly with barely any real saving behind it. Once buyers spot that the “now” price barely differs from the “was” price, the whole device starts working against you instead of for you.
Common Mistakes
Inflating The Was Price To Manufacture A Bigger Gap
If the original price was never genuinely charged, the saving isn’t real either, and increasingly savvy buyers do check. A caught-out fake “was” price damages trust far more than a modest, honest saving ever would.
Running It Permanently Until Nobody Believes The Was Price
A “was” price that never seems to go away eventually stops looking like a discount and starts looking like the actual price with a sticker on it. Keep it for genuine changes, not a permanent fixture.
Making The Saving Too Small To Justify The Fanfare
A crossed out £52 next to a new £49 draws attention to a saving barely worth mentioning. If the gap isn’t genuinely meaningful, skip the treatment entirely rather than undermine the technique with a weak example of it.
Was / Now Price – An Example
It doesn’t get much simpler than a sale sticker reading “Was £99” with a red line through it, sitting directly above a bold “Now £49.” No percentage, no explanation needed. The two numbers do all the persuading on their own, in the half second it takes to glance at the tag.
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