Ethical alternatives to revenue-generating deceptive patterns
Avoiding deception and building trust: the power of ethical revenue generation with transparent patterns.
Have you ever felt tricked into spending more money or agreeing to something you didn’t actually want? If so, you may have fallen victim to a deceptive pattern. Deceptive patterns are design strategies that intentionally deceive or manipulate users into taking actions they might not otherwise take. They often trick users into spending more money and consenting to something they wouldn’t have agreed to otherwise.
While deceptive patterns might beef up the revenue numbers in the short term, there are many negative long-term impacts that businesses often overlook. The usage of deceptive patterns raises serious ethical concerns; by intentionally deceiving or manipulating users, businesses expose themselves to many legal and regulatory risks. Recently, Epic Games (the maker of Fortnite) had to pay $520 million to settle allegations of using deceptive patterns to trick games into making unintentional in-game purchases.
Even with the increasing awareness of decelptive patterns, companies may implement them in their product design despite best intentions. Deceptive pattern designs can occur because they seem like easy wins. However, it’s worth noting that products that focus on sustainable, ethical, and long-term design solutions tend to outperform their short-sighted competitors in the long run. Therefore, it is crucial for product teams to remain vigilant and proactive in avoiding such design patterns. In this article, we’ll explore the ethical alternatives to revenue-generating deceptive patterns, such as sneak into basket in e-commerce, hidden costs during checkout, price comparison prevention in pricing pages, roach motel in account deletion, and forced continuity in auto-renewing subscriptions.
Sneak into Basket
The ‘sneak into basket’ deceptive pattern adds items to a user’s cart without their knowledge or explicit consent. This is often used to increase the average order value (AOV) and generate more revenue for e-commerce businesses. It relies on the assumption that many users will not notice or bother to remove the additional items from their cart to make users spend more than they intended.
However, this deceptive pattern can backfire; it makes the user feel manipulated and may lead to negative reviews and a tarnished reputation. It can also result in increased cart abandonment rates, which could result in lower net revenue overall.
In the Sports Direct e-commerce example above, the site added a magazine and ‘free mug’ for $1 during the checkout process without the customer’s consent. Other real-world examples of the ‘sneak into basket’ pattern include airlines that pre-select travel insurance or priority boarding options, e-commerce sites that add additional products to the user’s cart, and mobile apps that automatically opt users into additional paid subscriptions.
Offering discounts and promotions to users who add certain items to their cart or after a cart minimum has been reached is a more ethical way to increase the average order value (AOV) of a business without resorting to deceptive practices. This tactic encourages users to voluntarily add more items to their cart by offering them incentives. This way, users are aware of the offer and can make an informed decision about whether or not to take advantage of it.
Hidden Costs
The ‘hidden cost’ is a design technique that intentionally obscures the full cost of a product or service. This deceptive pattern is often used in e-commerce or subscription-based services, where the full cost of the product is not immediately apparent, leading users to believe that the product is more affordable than it actually is.
For example, an e-commerce site may offer a product for a low price, but add high shipping or handling fees during the checkout process. Another example would be a subscription-based service that advertises a low monthly fee but hides additional charges, such as activation or cancellation fees. Through obscurity, businesses believe that they can attract more users and generate more revenue without disclosing the true cost of the product. However, once users become aware of the hidden costs, the business may suffer irreversible reputational damage.
Designers can avoid using the ‘hidden cost’ deceptive pattern by focusing on building transparent pricing models that disclose all costs and fees associated with the product or service upfront. In the case of Airbnb, where the hosts set cleaning fees, incorporating measures like limiting additional fees to a certain percentage of the base cost and making such information more transparent can prevent bad actors from damaging the business’s reputation.
In response to the massive internet backlash, Airbnb made conscious improvements to price transparency in 2022 to display the total price upfront. This allows listings with fair ethical pricing structures to stand an equal chance compared to deceptive listings that have low base rates and high hidden costs.
Roach Motel
The ‘roach motel’ deceptive pattern makes it simple for users to enter or sign up, but almost impossible for them to exit or cancel. This pattern gets its name from the Roach Motel cockroaches bait device; their iconic tagline was, “Roaches check-in, but they don’t check out!”
At one point Amazon and LinkedIn were criticized for using this technique to maintain a high retention rate of users. Once users had registered, they had to contact customer care as the platform didn’t have any account deletion mechanism in place. While this practice may increase customer retention in the short term, it ultimately creates abandoned ‘zombie accounts’.
In the Amazon account deletion example above, users are forced to navigate through a series of intentionally confusing and unclear steps to get the contact information required to delete their account. This not only makes the process more difficult for the user, but it also significantly reduces the likelihood of that customer ever returning.
Limiting customer churn and keeping retention high is important, but it’s important to understand some degree of natural customer churn is a common and expected reality for any business (2–8 percent is considered ‘good’). The best practice is to implement ‘churn surveys’ and ‘customer resurrection’ initiatives instead of inflating your retention metrics with zombie accounts. A churn survey is designed to gather feedback from customers who have churned (i.e., canceled their subscription, stopped using the product, or deleted their account). The survey may include questions about the product’s features, pricing, user experience, customer service, and overall satisfaction with the product. The information obtained through a churn survey can help the team make improvements to retain more customers in the future.
Resurrection initiatives meant to re-capture churned customers are a critical part of customer retention and can take various different forms. For the best results, each resurrection initiative should be tailored for each individual user. For example, a meal subscription service might target a churned customer who canceled due to pricing concerns with a ‘resurrection campaign’ showcasing their more affordable subscription tier and offering a welcome back promotion, such as a $120 discount, if the customer returns.
While resurrection initiatives can be a powerful tool for re-acquiring churned customers, it’s essential to ensure that they are tailored for each individual user based on their churn reason. Generic campaigns that fail to address specific churn reasons tend to be unsuccessful and could even alienate them further.
Price Comparison Prevention
The ‘price comparison prevention’ deceptive design pattern is used by businesses to prevent customers from comparing the prices of their products with other competitors. This comes in the form of hiding prices, making it difficult to find product details, or creating product bundles that make it challenging to compare prices with similar products from other competitors. For instance, some supermarkets sell packaged products without showing the price per weight, making it impossible to work out whether it’s cheaper to buy loose items or packaged items.
This practice is often combined with the controversial practice of charging different prices (aka ‘price discrimination) to different customers for the same product or service based on their willingness to pay. Businesses use various methods to price discriminate, such as offering discounts to certain groups, charging different prices based on time of purchase or location, or using custom pricing algorithms.
While these tactics can result in customers paying higher prices and choosing the product based on a false perception of its value, it can lead to a loss of customer trust. In the worst-case scenario, it can even result in customers choosing other competitors who offer more transparent pricing, leading to a loss of potential revenue, and harming the business.
Value-based pricing is an ethical alternative to price discrimination. It presents customers with different or additional offerings for a higher price point, rather than charging different prices for the same offering. To effectively implement this pricing strategy, businesses should identify higher-margin offerings that can be upsold to premium customers at a fair value.
For example, a service-based business might charge $5k to most customers with a 1-week deadline, but charge $25k to deliver within 24 hours. In this case, the businesses willing to pay an extra 20k are getting a positive return on investment (ROI), as the extra value comes from time saved. Value-based pricing ensures that customers receive fair value for what they pay, which can help build trust and long-term relationships.
Forced Continuity
The ‘forced continuity’ design pattern refers to the practice of automatically enrolling customers into an auto-renewal subscription (often charging the full annual fee at renewal). Businesses using this deceptive pattern tend to offer a free trial or low-cost introductory offer to attract customers, while simultaneously requiring the customer to provide payment information upfront. If the customer forgets to cancel the subscription before the trial period ends or is not aware of the automatic renewal, they may end up paying for a service they did not want or use.
Lensa, a photo editing app, is an example of a freemium mobile app that uses forced continuity. As a customer, you are offered a seven-day free trial, but upon expiration of the trial, you are then pushed into a recurring auto-renewal subscription that is advertised as $4.99. However, the subscription is actually charged on a weekly basis, rather than monthly, and to receive the advertised price, users must purchase a full year’s subscription upfront. This deceptive pricing practice misleads customers into believing they are signing up for a monthly subscription at a low cost, only to be charged much more frequently and for a much larger upfront fee.
It’s important to clearly communicate the terms and conditions, including information about automatic renewals and cancellation policies, and allow customers to opt-in to a subscription rather than automatically enrolling them. A great example of this is Blinkist implementing more transparent pricing resulting in 23 percent more trial signups, 55 percent fewer customer complaints, and a 74 percent push notification opt-in.
Another alternative is to offer ‘subscription pausing’. This option allows customers to temporarily stop their subscription without completely canceling it. For the customer, it provides the ability to take a break from using the service without losing access to it entirely. For the business, it can help prevent customer churn by retaining the customer, who can resume their subscription at a later time. Here, both sides can come out as winners.
Conclusion
In this article, we explored revenue-generating deceptive patterns such as: sneak into basket, hidden costs, roach motel, price comparison prevention, and forced continuity. While these tactics may increase short-term revenue for businesses, they will ultimately harm the user experience and damage the trust and loyalty that businesses rely on to build long-term success.
Businesses that are transparent, honest, and fair in their design and marketing practices build long-standing trust with their customers. By avoiding the use of deceptive patterns, businesses can cultivate a loyal customer base and drive sustainable growth over the long term. As designers, it is our mandate to focus on creating positive user experiences through ethical designs leading to value creation.
Ready to level up your design skills and reach your full potential? Subscribe to The Ambitious Designer newsletter for weekly doses of UX insights, frameworks, and practical career advice.
