This talk was given at the Madgex Innovations Event (December 2010) at the Soho hotel in London.
It’s a revised version of the original Dark Patterns talk given at UX Brighton 2010, containing a fair amount of new material, and a different intended audience: this talk is aimed at marketers and brand owners.
16. Everyone wants to improve their conversion rates
- This in itself is healthy.
100
75
50
25
0
October November December January
17. HONEST PATTERN DARK PATTERN
Candid Persuasion Tricks and traps
18. DARK PATTERN: FRIEND SPAM
• Users don’t like their “voice” to be co-opted without their
permission
• Read more: http://darkpatterns.org/Friend_Spam
25. “Having requested credit card details “to
complete the report” I then find that they
have taken 2 x payments of £7.99 from
the card without my authority. These
people are [...] devious and unscrupulous
[...] obtaining revenue by small print
deception.”
http://www.reviewcentre.com/review738914.html
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29. DARK PATTERN: FORCED CONTINUATION
• Users don’t like surprises in their credit card bills!
• Read more: http://darkpatterns.org/Forced_Continuity
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36. DARK PATTERN: TRICK QUESTIONS
• Users hate deceitful forms - they feel scammed, regardless
of whether it’s legal!
• Read more: http://darkpatterns.org/Trick_Questions
37. All Dark Patterns have one thing in common:
POOR EXPECTATION
MANAGEMENT
38. I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING:
Why should I care about this stu ?
39. Your organisation is probably using tricks like this
without you realising
You need to replace these Dark Patterns with
Honest Patterns!
40. MADGEX CASE STUDY
How we used honest patterns to deliver great
conversion rates for our job board email
alerts
41. • About 9 years ago, our SEARCH RESULTS PAGE
User clicks “email me jobs like these”
original job board
platform required users
to register to create email LOG-IN / REGISTER PAGE
User clicks register
alerts
• User Experience research REGISTRATION PAGE
showed huge potential User completes registration form,
for improvement
• Analytics showed Email EMAIL ACTIVATION
User checks email, clicks link
alerts give DOUBLE the
application rates our
clients were getting from EMAIL ALERT CREATION PAGE
organic tra c User fills in form
47. OPTION 2: AUTOMATICALLY CREATE EMAIL ALERTS
FOR ALL SEARCHES
This is what primelocation.com does
for logged in users
48. OPTION 2: AUTOMATICALLY CREATE EMAIL ALERTS
FOR ALL SEARCHES
This is what primelocation.com does
for logged in users
Benefit: Massively inflate alert creation rate
Cost: Massively annoying for users who feel tricked
49. OPTION 3: BROADEN USERS’ SEARCH CRITERIA
SO EMAIL ALERTS ARE ALWAYS SENT
“We couldn’t find you any matching jobs in Brighton
today, so we emailed you some jobs in Birmingham
instead...”
50. OPTION 3: BROADEN USERS’ SEARCH CRITERIA
SO EMAIL ALERTS ARE ALWAYS SENT
“We couldn’t find you any matching jobs in Brighton
today, so we emailed you some jobs in Birmingham
instead...”
Benefit: Inflate number of emails sent
Cost: Users ask for one thing but get another
51. OPTION 4: REMOVE REGISTRATION BARRIER
Benefit: Inflate alert creation rate
Cost: there is no cost, everybody’s happy!
52. HONEST PATTERN DARK PATTERN
Candid Persuasion Tricks and traps
53. So, we went for option 4: removing the
registration barrier from email alert creation.
We also removed the barrier from email alert
deletion.