They probably shouldn't put the average amount paid so far on the website. The idea is to get people to pay what they think the games are worth, not what other people think the games are worth.
Anyhow, the idea was to simplify the workflow and simultaneously abuse the power of defaults and user psychology. I also intentionally ditched some parts of the offer which I don't think add business value, such as fine-grained control on the split.
(I'd A/B test including "65% of people pay this much" on the #1 step, probably with a subtle yellow highlighting.)
I don't think the find-grained control adds any business value, but I think they put it in there for people who had already paid for some of the games, since some of them are fairly popular. World of Goo did a pay what you want approach a few months back.
Still, it's a good idea to put some number for anchoring, and the current average is not a bad one. And a number that seems to come from other people could be more influential than a "recommended contribution".
Edit: As others point out, there are already some other anchoring points on the page, so having an average lower than those may be hurting them. It might have been wiser to make the "Top contributors" tab the default (or only) tab in their realtime stats display.
Funny, when I saw that I thought it was genius. Nobody wants to be a cheapskate so by showing the average you encourage people to put in a price above the average. Over time it will trend upward. On the other hand, maybe people will enter in a value just under the average. Right now it is reporting $7.97 as the average. Let's see where it ends up.
I also notice in the promo video it has the average right next to the entry form. On my form it defaults to 29.95 and says "For instance: 10, 20.50, or 100.00." as help text. It seems like they played around with the form a bit.
This is the type of thing that could benefit from a nice A/B test. Might be hard to run on a very public one-time promo like this though.
For me, I made sure to pay something above the average so I feel more generous than the average. If other's think the same, the average will naturally grow :)
I upvoted you, but I'm not entirely convinced. The creators of this site seem to know what they are doing: they told the "retail" price of the bundle in the second paragraph, then subtly suggested reasonable price points (the lowest being $10) in the form. Maybe they are expecting the $1 to $5 crowd to pay something closer to the average?
Agree, they should have left only the "$80 value" as anchor price(plus that strange list of suggested prices). Btw, i i remember right the developer of World of Goo already did this, so i guess there is a tested rationale behind the choice to show the average and that list of suggested prices.
