Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#11

Post by Sightline » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 9:36 AM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #10

mgrund wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect that it contributes to sales both by creating a fake sense of validation from others and by creating a fake sense of urgency (get it while in stock!), both of which are good tools to compromise decision making of the buyer.

On top of validation and urgency that are negative, you have also a true sense of popularity that indicates that the product works, has good reputation, fits a common purpose or is priced correctly. Crowd selection isn't negative, in fact without it we d just be picking fruit at random in the forest with a good chance of dying of poisonning, instead of chatting online... on a popular forum we think like minded people…

Crowd selection lead to Hitler, Jan 6th, COVID denial, Jonestown, etc..

Just because everyone believes the world is flat doesn't make it so.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#12

Post by PeterisP » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 9:36 AM UTC

Perhaps it's relevant to look at previous prohibition of manipulative "last item available!" practices e.g. the EU vs Booking.com (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-booking-hldg-eu-idUSKBN1Y... and other reports) - fear of missing out works, but misleadingly creating a fake sense of urgency is prohibited at least in some places.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#13

Post by rrrhys » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 9:39 AM UTC

skilled wrote: post #3

Is the idea that multiple people are looking at a product supposed to inspire me to purchase it? I really struggle to understand the logic.

These dark plugins really do work, short term at least.

When marketing enables them, the conversion rates increase by a significant fraction straight away.

Looking at increase in real dollars it becomes a hard sell to turn them back off again.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#14

Post by can16358p » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 9:39 AM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #7

I guess the shop's competitors could sue them for unfair practices in many countries?

Probably in China, will just vanish overnight and launch under the name $(RANDOM_ONLINE_STORE_NAME)

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#15

Post by can16358p » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 9:40 AM UTC

The funny part is that it actually could be implemented server side in a much more realistic manner easily, and no one could figure out. They care literally nothing so didn't even bother and went client side.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#16

Post by mojuba » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 9:44 AM UTC

can16358p wrote: post #15

The funny part is that it actually could be implemented server side in a much more realistic manner easily, and no one could figure out. They care literally nothing so didn't even bother and went client side.

Or: I've seen incompetent Node.js developers who couldn't tell which parts of their code would be client or server-side. I've seen people who didn't even care.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#17

Post by tharkun__ » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #8

skilled wrote: post #3

Is the idea that multiple people are looking at a product supposed to inspire me to purchase it? I really struggle to understand the logic.

This is very likely, and any kind of popularity information helps making decisions. In fact I mostly buy steam games in the popular section to sort out the trash. Each time I choose a niche unfeatured thing it turns out to be random trash nobody wanted... unsurprisingly. Why do you think your brain wouldnt rank a product with 500 views right now above a product with 3, or be wrong about such ranking ? I think it help…

Even if we assume for a minute that this information isn't being faked (which it very often probably is - see other thread) I think there are nuances there.

Looking at something and actually buying it are different. If we really wanted to help the customer decide we might want to also show the number of customers that returned the item. Or wait: allow reviews of them ;)

Would it help anyone to see that "200 people are reading xwolfi's comment"? Not really. That's just because there are not many comments yet and says nothing about the quality of it. It's much better to rank comments by votes and let that affect sort order. "200 people found xwolfi's comment so insightful they clicked the vote link" is a much better indicator of quality.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#18

Post by rsstack » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 9:56 AM UTC

I implemented this functionality for a certain SaaS with many large customers. I made sure to have a scalable way to measure unique viewers across different time frames. Only after we launched it, we realized all our competitors just put a random number that looked nice.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#19

Post by bb101 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 9:58 AM UTC

Another dark pattern is listing a page of products, and marking one as "Sold out". Makes one wonder how much stock is left of the other items, and when those might also become sold out.

Re: Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020)

#20

Post by can16358p » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 10:03 AM UTC

mojuba wrote: post #16

can16358p wrote: post #15

The funny part is that it actually could be implemented server side in a much more realistic manner easily, and no one could figure out. They care literally nothing so didn't even bother and went client side.

Or: I've seen incompetent Node.js developers who couldn't tell which parts of their code would be client or server-side. I've seen people who didn't even care.

Yeah, they're probably the same kind of people working on sketchy scam projects/plugins like this, so it makes sense.