I started an e-commerce brand on a Shopify site. I swore to myself I would never put up one of those stupid things that pops up "Someone bought X product an hour ago!" messages in the corner of the screen.
I ended up trying it. Boosted conversion rate meaningfully. Worth the price I pay in mild self-loathing.
Chesterton's popup, I guess.
That's the real problem. Being aggressively annoying works. Dark patterns work. Popups that grab your attention work. Flashing text conveying urgency works. Thumbnails with open-mouth YouTube-face work. Moving buttons around so people mis-click works. Tiny [X] buttons that make people accidentally click an ad work. You're never going to convince someone to stop doing something that is making them money.
Yes, but on whom does it work?
Does it work because you're taking advantage of a group of people who are extremely vulnerable to manipulation? People who already struggle with impulse control, who are prone to making bad financial decisions? The elderly, kids?
We have to escape this mentality that anything that makes money is valid, that the money itself is the validation of "rightness".
Some of us, just some think that maybe enterprises that prey on the vulnerable just don't deserve to be in business. Otherwise everything might as well be payday loans and online gambling. I'm not saying OP is definitely in that category, but I would encourage them to think long and hard about weather or not using dark patterns to goose their sales is really the kind of world we want to be fostering.
Well, if you own an online casino, I guess your moral compass is already so skewed that you simple don't care. On the other hand, if you own an online mom & pop store that sells clothes for puppies, you rationalize that the impact of those manipulations is not that big of a deal. You're not ruining anyone's live by the single act of persuading them to purchase $100 worth of apparel for mr. pancake.
>Yes, but on whom does it work?
Hitting the nail on the head here-> know your target audience.
On the extreme side, things like blackmail and fraud are generally illegal, even if they can make you money. Most of these dark patterns that "work" tend to follow a similar pattern: by taking advantage of the target, one can extract more money from them.
I would possibly be a terrible salesperson, because these all give me the ick. Your product should provide an offer of genuine value.
The tech field is increasingly devoid of any resemblance of morality.
I guess it's the inevitable parable of anything started by '70s hippies: sooner or later, we all sell out.
Leaving money on the table is never easy.
I think most fields are like that..?
Spamming image based penny stocks emails also worked; doesn't make it right.
Advertising should.be illegal.
That's the real problem: selling drugs works! Forming a cartel to produce and distribute addictive products, killing anyone who gets in your way? It's effective! You're never going to convince someone to stop killing people and dumping their bodies into culverts when they're making money. It's just not reasonable to expect that, or do anything about it.
Nuance: if someone actually bought the product 1 hour ago, it's fine. If not, it's fraud.
And if the drugs do make you feel good, that's not fraud either.
Absolutely. Maybe the answer is that everyone should just rank them up to 11 until it stops working and then people have to get creative again.
Very much agree, but also (not saying you're saying otherwise) stealing, lying, entitlement (which is possibly just stealing and lying), and scamming "work." These are checked in large part by a person's aversion to it not just by its lack of working. Of course dark patterns work. If what one says increasingly inches towards 100% misrepresention (but shy of it), people will "mistake" what's being said. "Mistake" doing a lot of blame shifting.
"You're never going to convince someone to stop doing something that is making them money." Reasonable, but I would soften from "never". There was less of it at one point—and it seems logical to guess we have less today than we'll have tomorrow. The main reason is likely that we simply didn't know about these tricks yet, but somewhere below that on the list of the reasons is that some people dropped off from doing it at lesser forms of misrepresentation. Or they made the case against it at work resulting in them either winning (and their projects perhaps did less well) or them losing and being overrun by those more willing. With losing possible also leading towards leaving, not getting promoted, or getting fired. This is just a way to say that there are people who do forgo money, they just might not be around or visible for various reasons. And, as implied by the difficulty of convincing people to not make money, their (former) coworkers prefer that on some level even if they don't believe they agree with stealing or lying. But losing or earning less money is not the same as having no choice.
This reminds me the clickbail title and thumbnail on YouTube. One of my favorite channel apologized for it but explained that the difference compared to NOT doing this is phenomenal and they can't afford stopping.
If this is the only way to get people to watch your videos, maybe your channel sucks. But glad you are making money tricking people into wasting their time so you can get one more ad impression.
Don't get me started on "like and subscribe".
Out of all the annoying website things, always thought that one was pretty tame. Almost feels like a spiritual successor to the visit-o-meter. Obviously as long is it doesn't put a (1) on my tab or makes a noise and doesn't steal mouse focus.
Genuine curiosity - is the pop up vaguely factual or sort of randomly generated?
Always randomly generated!
I salute your honesty! But [he hastens to add, looking furtively around] I also frown disapprovingly at your choices
You’re saluting the honesty of someone who is not the original person who’s lived experience you were asking for lol
Ha!
Is there a law of society / business where everything we hate is on average something that made the society able to function ? it's similar to chesterton but it's not a fence, it's the tree we live on.
I actually kind of like those, though I've always been suspicious that those events are fabricated because that's the sort of thing marketing people would do.
This is not in the same sport let alone league as the things demoed in OP.