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Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

gkogan.co

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Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#171

Post by jessriedel »

autonomousErwin wrote: post #111
jessriedel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatedly, there seemed to be no acknowledgement of the possibility of dark incentives: many businesses have found they can increase sales by removing pricing details so that prospective customers get deeper into the funnel and end up buying because of sunk time costs even though they would have preferred a competitor. Example: car dealerships make it a nightmare to get pricing information online, and instead cajole…

Would you consider doubling your prices so users perceive your product as having higher value a dark pattern?

Only if this were untrue, i.e., I was motivated by the fact that it made my customers believe my product was better than a worse product.

For me the principle is based on not exploiting the gap between the consumer and a better informed version of themselves. (“What would they want if they knew?”) There’s a principle of double effect: I don’t have to expend unlimited resources to educate them, but I shouldn’t take active steps to reduce information, and I shouldn’t leave them worse off compared to me not being in the market.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#172

Post by nicbou »

latexr wrote: post #137

Here’s a followup for the author: follow your own advice. Remove the “Psst... Get the next post in your inbox” interruption midway through your post. Dare to remove the stupid button that follows you around as you scroll. I counted five obvious ways to subscribe on that page alone. Five! Do you really need to shove them in our faces and in the middle of the freaking content? Do you think you get more subscribers by i…

I agree with you, but the data does not. These annoyances serve the business's goals really well. It's good to remember that most businesses exist to make money, not to be pleasant to us HN readers.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#173

Post by nicbou »

latexr wrote: post #152
blueboo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIUC the lesson of blog SEO is that, if you want to grow your readership, copious attention-co-opting calls to action are unambiguously worth the annoyance foisted on discerning readers. What’s respectful to users is a separate (but not wholly unrelated) question…

Even if that’s true (I’m not convinced it’s unambiguous), my points still stand: Are undiscerning readers the kind of subscribers you really want? Perhaps so if you are, as per my last paragraph, the kind of person concerned with profit over quality. If you are, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you don’t see removing stuff as obvious and your mind only thinks of adding more junk.

In my post history, I asked about newsletters and newsletter popups, and a few people confirmed that they work really well.

The goal is to get paying customers. We discerning readers are the high effort, low reward cohort that aren't worth losing sleep over.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#174

Post by whakim »

gk1 wrote: post #153
whakim wrote: post #65

I don’t get it. Presumably the pricing model didn’t change, so all you’ve done is push the burden of doing the math onto the user (or more realistically, hope they just don’t even bother?) If users are frequently estimating costs that are off by orders of magnitude, surely the correct response is to change the pricing model so it’s easier for customers to understand?

Once they’re using the product they can see their actual usage and cost metering. So they can either extrapolate that to larger scale or test it at scale for a short time to see hourly/daily cost and then extrapolate for the month or year. In other words it’s not much of a burden and they get much more reliable information.

But they can still do that even if there's a cost calculator upfront. Removing the calculator simply obfuscates the ability to estimate cost with the happy justification that fault lies with the customers who all seem to be bad at estimation.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#175

Post by latexr »

nicbou wrote: post #173
latexr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that’s true (I’m not convinced it’s unambiguous), my points still stand: Are undiscerning readers the kind of subscribers you really want? Perhaps so if you are, as per my last paragraph, the kind of person concerned with profit over quality. If you are, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you don’t see removing stuff as obvious and your mind only thinks of adding more junk.

In my post history, I asked about newsletters and newsletter popups, and a few people confirmed that they work really well. The goal is to get paying customers. We discerning readers are the high effort, low reward cohort that aren't worth losing sleep over.

> In my post history, I asked about newsletters and newsletter popups, and a few people confirmed that they work really well.

Ignoring for now that’s 100% anecdotal and that “a few people” is far from enough to make definitive claims, what post history are you referring to? Do you have a link?

> The goal is to get paying customers. We discerning readers are the high effort, low reward cohort that aren't worth losing sleep over.

I understand that. I’m lamenting we live in a world where we find it acceptable to purposefully produce shit to exploit others.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#176

Post by latexr »

nicbou wrote: post #172
latexr wrote: post #137

Here’s a followup for the author: follow your own advice. Remove the “Psst... Get the next post in your inbox” interruption midway through your post. Dare to remove the stupid button that follows you around as you scroll. I counted five obvious ways to subscribe on that page alone. Five! Do you really need to shove them in our faces and in the middle of the freaking content? Do you think you get more subscribers by i…

I agree with you, but the data does not. These annoyances serve the business's goals really well. It's good to remember that most businesses exist to make money, not to be pleasant to us HN readers.

> I agree with you, but the data does not.

Do you have the data that you can share?

> It's good to remember that most businesses exist to make money, not to be pleasant to us HN readers.

HN does not have a monopoly on discerning users. We are not special. It would be unrealistic to think the number of people who care about this is but a subset of people who frequent one website.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#180

Post by bee_rider »

M95D wrote: post #125
raghavbali wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not fix the calculator in a way that avoids/mitigates scenarios where users get to wrong quotes and then do an A/B test? This setup seemingly tilts towards some sort of a dark pattern IMO

Because the results were probably wrong because the inputs were wrong (exagerated by over-cautious users). There is no automated way to avoid that in a calculator; only a conversation with a real person (sales, tech support) will reveal the bad inputs.

I wonder if some of that could have been automated. Have a field to indicate if you are an individual, small business, or large business, and then at least flag fields that seem unusually high (or low, don’t want to provide too-rosy estimates) for that part of the market.
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