A comparison table or pricing grid is one of the highest-converting sections on a sales page, and also one of the most annoying to hand-code responsively. Nexter Blocks’ Data Table and Pricing Table blocks are built specifically so neither problem requires touching CSS. But picking the right block is only half the job. How you structure the tiers, which plan you highlight, and whether the table stays usable on a phone screen all move conversion far more than the visual polish does.
Pricing Table: Built for Conversion, Not Just Layout
The Pricing Table block ships with pre-designed layouts (single column, multi-plan comparison) rather than a blank grid you style from scratch. It supports a highlighted recommended-plan styling, a tooltip option for explaining a feature inline without cluttering the row, and a read-more/toggle option for long feature lists on mobile where a full table would otherwise force awkward horizontal scrolling.
Also Read: Nexter Blocks Countdown, Progress Bar and Infobox: Building a High-Converting Landing Page Section, since a Pricing Table commonly sits alongside these same conversion-focused blocks on a landing page.
How Many Tiers, and Which One to Highlight
Before touching the block editor, the structural decisions matter more than the styling ones. Pricing research consistently finds that three-tier pricing pages convert meaningfully better than two-tier pages, while four or more tiers tends to add decision friction rather than capture more revenue; three to four plans is the practical range for most SaaS products and service businesses. Within that structure, which plan you visually highlight isn’t a coin flip: a 2025 UX study found pricing pages without a clearly highlighted “recommended” tier converted roughly 22% worse than pages that highlighted one. The Pricing Table block’s built-in highlighted-plan styling exists specifically to capture that lift, so use it on the plan you actually want most customers to pick, not automatically the most expensive one.
This is also where the classic “decoy effect” comes in: a deliberately less-attractive middle option, positioned next to your target plan, makes the target look like the obvious choice by comparison. It’s a well-documented pricing-psychology pattern, not a Nexter-specific feature, but it’s worth deciding your tier structure with it in mind before you start filling in rows, since restructuring three built tables later costs more time than planning the comparison up front.
Data Table: For Comparison Content That Isn’t Pricing
Where Pricing Table is purpose-built for plans and tiers, the Data Table block handles general tabular comparison content, such as feature matrices, spec sheets, and side-by-side product comparisons, without forcing that content into the pricing-specific layout. Both blocks inherit your Nexter Global Styles brand colors and typography by default, so a table matches the rest of the site without manual color-matching.
Building a Responsive Comparison Table
- Enable the Data Table or Pricing Table block under Nexter Blocks → Blocks.
- Choose a pre-made layout as a starting point, or build the column/row structure manually.
- For a Pricing Table with a long feature list, enable the read-more/toggle option rather than shipping a table that forces horizontal scroll on mobile.
- Apply a highlighted state to your recommended plan or featured comparison column, if the layout supports it.
- Test the table at a narrow mobile width specifically, since a table that looks clean at desktop width often needs the toggle option enabled to stay usable at 375px.
Also Read: Nexter Theme Global Styles: How to Set Up Brand Colors, Fonts and Spacing Sitewide. Set this up first so your table’s colors and typography inherit correctly.
Why Tables Break on Mobile (and How the Toggle Option Fixes It)
A wide comparison table with five or six columns simply doesn’t fit a 375px phone screen at readable font sizes, and the two common fixes both have real downsides if applied blindly. Forcing horizontal scroll keeps every column intact but hides most of the table off-screen, so a visitor has to actively discover and use the scroll gesture to see the comparison they came for. Collapsing the table into stacked cards (a common CSS pattern that hides the header row and repeats each label next to its value) solves the width problem but, done with a blunt display: block override, silently strips the semantic table roles from the accessibility tree, and a screen reader user loses the header-to-cell relationship entirely.
Nexter’s Pricing Table read-more/toggle option sidesteps both problems for feature-heavy plans: it keeps the table’s real structure intact and simply lets a visitor expand a truncated feature list on demand, rather than either hiding columns behind a scroll gesture or rebuilding the table’s semantics from scratch. For a general Data Table with many columns and no natural toggle point, the safest fallback is still a labelled horizontally-scrolling wrapper (overflow-x: auto, with tabindex="0", role="region", and an aria-label on the container) rather than a card-collapse hack.
Table Accessibility: What’s Handled for You and What Isn’t
WCAG 2.2’s Info and Relationships criterion (1.3.1) requires that a table’s structure, meaning which cells are headers and which data cells they describe, be conveyed in markup, not just visually through position or bold text. A block-based table generally handles the semantic markup correctly out of the box (real <table>, <th>, and <td> elements rather than styled <div>s), which is the part hand-coded tables most often get wrong. What still depends on how you fill the table in: giving each column a genuinely descriptive header (not a blank cell or an icon with no text alternative), and avoiding merged or nested cells in a pricing grid unless the layout truly requires them, since those add complexity a screen reader has to parse correctly to keep the header-cell relationship intact.
Native Block vs. a JavaScript Table Plugin: Why It Matters for Performance
A lot of hand-built WordPress pricing pages reach for a jQuery-based table plugin (DataTables and similar libraries are common) to get sorting, filtering, or responsive collapse behavior. That approach works, but it ships an entire JavaScript library, its CSS, and often jQuery itself as a dependency just to render what is, for a pricing page, usually a static comparison, and nobody needs to sort a 3-column pricing table by price. Nexter’s Pricing Table and Data Table blocks render as native block markup with CSS-driven styling, so the responsive toggle and highlighted-plan behavior don’t carry that JavaScript-library weight. For a page whose entire job is converting a visitor into a signup, avoiding an unnecessary render-blocking script is a real, if unglamorous, performance and Core Web Vitals win, especially since pricing pages are frequently a paid-traffic landing destination where load speed directly affects ad-spend efficiency.
A Worked Example: Structuring a 3-Tier SaaS-Style Pricing Table
Putting the tier-count and highlighting guidance together, a typical three-plan structure looks like this: a Starter plan priced to be an easy, low-commitment entry point; a Pro plan in the middle, set as the highlighted/recommended tier, priced to be the plan most visitors are steered toward; and a Business or Agency plan priced noticeably higher, whose main job is making the Pro plan look reasonably priced by comparison (the anchoring effect) rather than necessarily converting a large volume of buyers itself.
- Row 1: Plan name and price: keep the price the single largest, boldest number in the column; don’t let feature-row text compete visually with it.
- Row 2: One-line positioning: a short phrase naming who each plan is for (“solo creators,” “growing teams,” “agencies managing multiple sites”) helps a visitor self-select faster than scanning every feature row.
- Middle rows: Features, most-important-first: put the features most visitors actually care about at the top of the list, not buried under minor technical specs; if the list is long, this is exactly where the read-more/toggle option earns its place on mobile.
- Final row: The call-to-action button: vary the button label by plan intent where it makes sense (“Start Free,” “Get Pro,” “Talk to Sales”) rather than repeating an identical generic label across all three columns.
None of this requires custom development in Nexter. It’s a content and structure decision you make while filling in the Pricing Table block’s existing fields, not a styling problem to solve with CSS.
Common Mistakes When Building a Pricing or Comparison Table
- Too many tiers: five or more plans usually depresses conversion rather than capturing more revenue; three to four is the range worth defaulting to.
- No highlighted plan: leaving every tier visually equal removes a documented conversion lift; pick one plan to visually recommend, deliberately.
- A feature list so long it forces scroll on mobile without the toggle option enabled: this is the single most common reason a pricing table that looks great on desktop gets abandoned on a phone.
- Using Data Table for a pricing comparison out of habit: it works, but skips the conversion-specific styling (highlighted plan, tooltips) that Pricing Table was actually built for.
- Icon-only column headers with no text label: looks clean, but leaves screen reader users and quick-scanning visitors alike without a clear header-to-column relationship.
Checklist Before You Publish the Table
- Load it on an actual phone, not just a resized browser window, since touch-target size and real viewport quirks don’t always show up in a desktop responsive preview.
- Check every feature row for a genuinely descriptive label, not just a checkmark or a cross with no accompanying text for that row’s feature name.
- Confirm the highlighted plan is the one you actually want chosen. It’s an easy default to leave on whichever plan happened to be built first rather than the one that should be recommended.
- Read every price and feature value against the actual current pricing page. A comparison table quietly going stale after a price change is a common, avoidable trust problem.
- Tab through the table with a keyboard to confirm the call-to-action buttons are reachable and clearly focused, not just clickable with a mouse.
Conclusion
Pricing Table and Data Table solve two related but distinct problems: conversion-focused plan comparison versus general tabular content, and both remove the responsive-table CSS work that makes hand-coded comparison tables painful to maintain. Pick based on whether you’re actually selling tiered plans or just presenting structured data side by side, keep the tier count to three or four, highlight the plan you actually want chosen, and test the toggle behavior at mobile width before you consider the table finished.
FAQ
Are these blocks responsive by default?
Yes, both are built to be responsive; the Pricing Table’s read-more/toggle option specifically addresses long feature lists on small screens.
Can I use Data Table for a pricing comparison instead of Pricing Table?
Technically yes, but Pricing Table’s purpose-built conversion features (highlighted plan, tooltips) make it the better fit specifically for plan/tier comparisons.
Do these blocks require Nexter Blocks Pro?
Check your current Nexter Blocks version for the exact free/Pro feature split; core table functionality is broadly available, with some advanced styling options tiered to Pro depending on release.
How many pricing tiers should I actually show?
Three tiers is the general sweet spot; three-tier pages tend to outconvert two-tier pages, while pushing past four plans usually adds decision friction rather than revenue. Start at three and only add a fourth if there’s a genuinely distinct buyer segment it serves.
Does highlighting a plan actually make a measurable difference?
Studies on this specific pattern have found double-digit conversion gaps between pricing pages that highlight a recommended plan and those that leave every tier visually equal, so it’s worth treating as a default rather than an optional flourish.
Suggested Reading
- Nexter Blocks Countdown, Progress Bar and Infobox: Building a High-Converting Landing Page Section
- Nexter Theme Global Styles: How to Set Up Brand Colors, Fonts and Spacing Sitewide
- Nexter Blocks Smooth Scroll and Glassmorphism Effects: A 2026 Design Tutorial
