Name: The Subtle Tricks Shopping Sites Use to Make You Spend More
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The Subtle Tricks Shopping Sites Use to Make You Spend More

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when much of the United States was still , Amazon made an extraordinary decision. As the company struggled to fulfill a in orders related to the pandemic, it subtly tweaked its website to encourage consumers to buy less, not more.In addition to modifying shipping timelines and inventory, Amazon disabled a recommendation feature that displays items frequently bought together, like batteries to go with the toy already in your cart, reported. The changes underscored, in a roundabout way, the extent to which digital retailers carefully calibrate their websites to maximize the amount that visitors spend. These tactics are often largely benign, such as offering free shipping for orders over a certain amount, but others can be more deceptive, falling into a category often referred to as “.” is made possible by Omidyar Network. All WIRED content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.Dark patterns are digital design elements that manipulate users into making decisions they otherwise wouldn’t, often to a corporation’s benefit. You might hand over your email address for marketing messages if the affirmative widget is larger and brighter than the option to decline, for instance. The term was coined a decade ago by user experience designer Harry Brignull, who created a of dark patterns, many of which prey upon humanity’s psychological weaknesses. More recently, the issue has been taken up by Congress, which considered a last year that would regulate how dark patterns are used. They’re found all over the web, but some of the most egregious examples are on , where profits are directly at stake.Last year, researchers from Princeton University and the University of Chicago published a looking at roughly 11,000 shopping sites, and found dark patterns on more than 11 percent of them, including major retailers like Fashion Nova and J.C. Penney. The researchers discovered that the more popular the website, the more likely it was to feature dark patterns. Arunesh Mathur, a graduate student at Princeton and the lead author of the paper, says the prevalence of dark patterns online is harmful to people—and has the potential to impact more than just their wallets.“Dark patterns are being used to undermine privacy, and to rob users of their ability to critically reflect on their actions,” he says. “Design and behavioral science have become weaponized to solely benefit online retailers and to exploit users.”For their study, Mathur and his coauthors developed a bot that scanned thousands of shopping sites looking for text-based dark patterns, which they organized into 15 different types. One variety relies on a sort of peer pressure. Hundreds of the websites the researchers looked at used activity notifications, alerting visitors that “Sally just bought this dress,” or “35 people are looking at this item right now.” They found that on some sites, the messages were artificially fabricated—merely lines of code, not indications of real consumers buying things. The goal is to dupe you into believing other people are interested in a product, convincing you it’s worth buying.It can be hard to determine the line between clever marketing and outright deception.Another type of dark pattern takes advantage of “scarcity bias,” people’s tendency to place higher value on items in short supply. Brick-and-mortar stores capitalize on the same inclination by stating that a product is available for a “limited time only.” Amazon, for instance, often displays to shoppers how many of a certain item it has in stock. Etsy goes so far as to warn people how many other customers already have a product in their carts, implying it might soon be unavailable. In their study, Mathur and his coauthors found that shopping websites frequently don’t specify an exact stock quantity, leaving you to interpret for yourself what “low-stock” means. Even worse, on 16 websites they looked at, the researchers found that the stated stock numbers were entirely fake, and decreased in a “recurring deterministic pattern according to a schedule.”Many retail websites exploit scarcity bias by using countdown timers, which indicate that a sale or special offer will expire after a certain amount of time. The researchers found deceptive timers on 140 of the shopping websites they examined. After the allotted time passed, some simply repeated again. On other sites, the discount was still available even after the clock had run out. The timers were there to urge people to impulsively make a purchase, rather than notify them about a sale with a legitimate expiration date.Most PopularAnother class of dark patterns is more subtle. They work by steering you toward a specific decision by downplaying other options. Some shopping websites offer a discount if you provide your email address, for example, and attempt to shame those who refuse. They often have messages that say “No thanks, I like paying full price,” or “No thanks, I hate saving money,” instead of a simple decline button. On one site, the researchers found that the button to opt out of marketing emails was grayed out, “creating an illusion that the option is unavailable or disabled even though it can be clicked.” A similar tactic is to ask customers trick questions. Some retailers introduce double negatives to confuse you, like “Uncheck the box if you prefer not to receive email updates.”Mathur and his coauthors couldn’t detect every dark pattern that may have been present on the websites they studied. Because they looked only at text, they were unable to analyze varieties that are predominantly visual, such as using a larger font size or brighter colors to emphasize one option over another. The researchers also note that it’s not always clear whether a dark pattern is intentionally misleading, and experts and users may reasonably disagree—it can be hard to determine the line between clever marketing and outright deception.Take again the recommendation system Amazon temporarily disabled in the spring, for instance, which suggested to customers items that are frequently bought together. On one hand, it nudges people to buy stuff that they perhaps otherwise wouldn’t. But it also may help some shoppers remember things they genuinely forgot, like tennis balls to accompany a new racket.Most dark patterns are design choices, but others are arguably just fraud. In their paper, the researchers identified a handful of instances where reviews on shopping sites were of “uncertain origin,” indicating that they might be fake. In one case, they found the same reviews on two different ecommerce sites under different customer names. Faking customer reviews is a widespread practice, and one that the Federal Trade Commission has taken to combat.Many of the dark patterns found on shopping websites established tactics used in physical stores, such as psychological pricing. Retailers often set prices at slightly less than a round number, for instance, tricking you into believing that items cost less than they really do. But Mathur says digital retailers have advantages that brick-and-mortar ones don’t. Online, they can easily “design, test, and integrate new dark patterns,” he says. It’s difficult to rearrange a store, but designers can quickly alter a website, as Amazon did during the early stages of the pandemic, or even run different versions of it at same time.To avoid being duped, take careful note of what behaviors a retailer appears to be encouraging, and how those nudges make you feel. It’s not enjoyable to panic over a “flash sale,” for example, or get anxious watching an ominous countdown timer. You can also employ tools to help, like , a browser extension that “freezes” checkout pages until a specified period of time has passed, keeping you from making impulse buys. You can also intentionally add more friction into your shopping experience by declining to use automatic payment options like PayPal and Apple Pay. The extra step of entering a credit card number may give you the time to reflect on whether that purchase is really worth it—and whether you genuinely wanted to make it in the first place.Do you use social media regularly? Take our short survey.More Great WIRED Stories is a freelance writer covering tech. She was formerly a staff writer at WIRED covering Amazon, TikTok, and digital platforms.

when much of the United States was still , Amazon made an extraordinary decision. As the company struggled to fulfill a in orders related to the pandemic, it subtly tweaked its website to encourage consumers to buy less, not more.In addition to modifying shipping timelines and inventory, Amazon disabled a recommendation feature that displays items frequently bought together, like batteries to go with the toy already in your cart, reported. The changes underscored, in a roundabout way, the extent to which digital retailers carefully calibrate their websites to maximize the amount that...

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Louise Matsakis

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The Subtle Tricks Shopping Sites Use to Make You Spend More

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