Identifying dark patterns in your business practices

Dark patterns are tactics used by websites or apps to nudge, manipulate, or trick customers into spending more money than they’d planned or providing personal data that’s not needed.

As much as 30% of Australians stop using a website or app when they encounter dark patterns, which they often consider manipulative or deceptive (according to research by the Consumer Policy Research Centre).

Whether you create and maintain your own website or rely on another company to do it for you, it’s important to ensure you make ethical, fair choices about how you promote products and services to customers.

Choose web designs or marketing packages that don’t include dark patterns to protect your customers and your brand.

Common dark patterns

Learn about the common dark patterns to understand how they can be problematic and avoid using them to make sales.

Scarcity cues

Scarcity cues are designed to create a sense of urgency or anxiety in customers, urging them to make rushed decisions so that they spend more than they planned or make a purchase when they had only intended to browse.

Scarcity cues include countdown timers for shopping carts, or warning messages about expiring discounts and low stock.

These cues can form part of regular marketing and promotion, but you need to be careful that the language and tone used doesn’t have a negative effect on your brand or the customer experience.

Trick questions

Trick questions use confusing language to urge customers to make certain decisions. They are commonly used when customers try to cancel a subscription or auto-purchase agreement, and for data collection (particularly cookies—information your website stores about customers when they visit).

There will be problems for your business if customers feel that they made a purchase or subscribed for a service because of confusing or deceptive language.

Activity notifications

Activity notifications tell customers what other people are doing on your website or app (e.g. ‘Someone in Oakey just bought the XYZ Swag’ or ‘3 people are currently looking at this hotel room’). These notifications appear seconds apart and are often bundled with scarcity cues to create or enhance a sense of urgency for the customer.

This tactic may become problematic if the activity described is fake or is showing real purchases from a long period that are set to repeat on the website to suggest constant business.

Confirm shaming

Confirm shaming is loaded language designed to make customers feel silly or worried if they don’t agree to buying what your business offers. It is typically used with subscription offers and big-ticket items.

This is another tactic that is not illegal, but is designed to manipulate, so you need to be careful about the language and tone you use.

Forced continuity

Forced continuity is when you make it hard for your customers to unsubscribe from a service or cancel an account.

If this tactic results in a financial loss or breach of consumer rights, there could be serious consequences for your business.

Redirection or nagging

Redirection or nagging is when you use pop-ups and offers to try to move customers away from what they want to do. It may be offers of discounts or to sign up to your marketing content when they are trying to leave your website.

While this is not an illegal practice, consider the effect on the customer experience and their satisfaction if they are faced with an excessive number of notifications or prompts.

Data grabs

Data grabs are design features or functionality built into websites or apps specifically to collect more consumer data than your business needs to provide a product or service.

There are laws that protect your customers’ privacy—there are restrictions on the information you can collect and how you use it.

False hierarchy

False hierarchy is a web design feature that tries to influence consumers towards a particular product or service you provide, using image or font size, colour or placement of options.

For example, your preferred choice could be presented as big, bold and well-placed on the page, while your non-preferred choice is listed in smaller font and muted tones at the bottom of the page.

Like other dark patterns, you should consider the effect on your brand and the customer experience when using this tactic.

More information

• Read about marketing, advertising and promotion.
• Understand a business’s legal obligations and consumer laws.
• Learn about your business’s responsibilities when collecting and storing customer information.