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Pricing is one of the most powerful levers for influencing user behavior. At Irrational Labs, we spend a lot of time working on and thinking about pricing—because it’s not just about the numbers. It’s about the feelings those numbers evoke and the ease with which users understand the value they’re getting.
Google Gemini’s pricing page missed the mark. It’s wild this has passed so many legal and design reviews and saw the light of day. This is a full-on pricing page fail. Sometimes in these teardowns, we learn from examples of what's working. This, however, is a case where we learn from something that's deeply broken.
When promo messaging misses the mark
The first thing that caught my attention was the upsell promo within Google Docs. But it caught my attention because it used some awkward jargon, dropping the word "sellers" like someone on an internal market sizing slide deck. What’s a seller? Who are we talking to here?
Then there’s the confusion around what the offer actually is. Is it a free trial, or are you saving 30%? Phrases like "try at no cost" technically mean "free," but they lack the emotional pull of that magic word. Free feels exciting and tangible—“no cost” just feels like legal jargon. Even worse, after I clicked “Learn more,” the messaging still didn’t align with what was initially promised.
Lessons from the product pricing page
The key thing a pricing page needs to do (its “job to be done”, if you will) is help people decide between multiple products. The customer is thinking: which is right for me? The faster they can make this decision, the more likely it is that they will convert.
To do this, a common tactic is to use heuristics that help simplify decision making. These can be everything from labeling something as having a discount to labeling it as “popular” or “recommended.” Google nailed using heuristics when they labeled their products “new”, but forgot the key piece —it needs to be on ONE product, not ALL the products. When you plaster "new" all over the place, it loses value fast. It becomes white noise.
The same goes for calling everything an "add-on." If everything is an add-on, nothing stands out. The design team seemed to prioritize these labels over the actual product description, which was weirdly cut off mid-way through, leaving you to click “get started” to uncover the actual differences between products.
What’s with the middle option?
There’s something odd about how Google positioned their pricing tiers. I highly recommend watching the video to actually see it. TL;DR: Enterprise pricing, typically seen as the high-end choice, was placed in the middle. The middle! Yes, the highest-priced option was smack in the middle of the line-up. In behavioral science, we know that positioning matters—users naturally compare things side by side. We call this relativity. When options aren’t intuitively laid out for people to compare, you’re creating cognitive friction due to lack of fluency. People expect to see the most expensive options last (or the new trend if first), but for sure not sandwiched between two others.
Google also missed a key framing opportunity: for smaller numbers, percentages resonate more than dollars. Users would much rather see “20% off” than "$2 off" because the percentage feels more impactful, even when it’s the same amount. It’s an easy win to motivate users, but Gemini leaves it on the table. And let’s not forget—the “no cost” offer from the original promo was nowhere to be found. Inconsistent messaging like this erodes trust quickly. Where you at, legal team?
Where are the features we should care about?
One of the most frustrating elements of the pricing page is how it hides the product's strongest features. Real-time translated captions? That's a fantastic offering, but it’s buried and doesn’t include a key companion: transcripts. This is a glaring miss for a feature that could otherwise be a huge draw.
To make matters worse, trying to find a full list of features feels like a scavenger hunt. Clicking through to help articles just to find what should be easily accessible on the main pricing page is not how a user journey should work. When critical features are hard to find or incomplete, it suggests a lack of transparency—and that’s enough to make many potential customers walk away.
Despite all the cool features Google Gemini could offer, the pricing page flow was so complex (multiple clicks and small type) and confusing that I bailed before converting. The upside is that small changes can have a big impact—head nod to the CFO who should be pushing to allow potential buys to “add users” within the buy flow. This could be a massive revenue upside.
Regardless, I’m looking forward to future versions of this page to see how it evolves.
3 key takeaways from this teardown:
💡 How to frame discounts to be optimally effective
💡 When you should and shouldn’t use labels on your pricing page
💡 How to design a marketing promo to help increase conversion
Working on a pricing/positioning challenge? Irrational Labs is taking on new pricing projects and would love to chat. Feel free to DM me on Substack or message via Irrational Labs.
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Questions about your product? Email kristen@irrationallabs.com.
Want to increase conversion, retention, engagement? Reach out to Irrational Labs.
We design products that change behavior, using behavioral science. Check out our case studies to see it in action.
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