Product UX and the Allure and Problems with Deceptive Patterns

[00:00:40] Matt Cromwell: Everyone, this is WP Product Talk, the place where every week we interview an experienced WordPress product owner on strategies, tips, experiences, failures, and successes of running successful and thriving WordPress product businesses. I am Matt Cromwell, co-founder of GiveWP and senior director of customer experience at Stellar WP.

[00:01:01] Zack Katz: And I am Zach Katz, founder of Gravity Kit and Trusted Login.

[00:01:05] Matt Cromwell: And today's topic is product UX and the allure and problems with deceptive patterns.

[00:01:13] Zack Katz: Yeah, and this is a great topic because I don't think it's talked enough about in WordPress, even though we talk about it sometimes in relationship to a couple of businesses. But we deal with deceptive patterns all day and they're so tempting to implement, but there's a conversation to be had there and we're going to have that today.

[00:01:33] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, absolutely. And to talk about this one, we brought on a special guest, Piccia Neri Thanks for being here. Caught her mid-drink. Perfect. That was great timing.

[00:01:45] Piccia Neri: Well, at least I'm hydrated, we know as much now. Thank you so much for having me, it's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you, thank you.

[00:01:52] Matt Cromwell: Can you tell the world just a little bit about who you are and what you do and why you're here? Why did we bring you on?

[00:01:59] Piccia Neri: So I am a UX and UI designer. I do both. And that's another conversation maybe for another day. And I am committed to creating the best possible experiences online for users as well as businesses, because it's really important to understand that really the UX involves the business as well. businesses need to do well. so that they can help their customers better. That's kind of what I'm focused on. And that's why I'm so interested in accessibility, for instance, and things like deceptive patterns that are pretty very much also to do with accessibility. And I design, I talk a lot, I, what else do I do? I come to shows like this one. And I talk at WorkCamps and in fact, at WorkCamp Jeroen last year, Jeroen is in the north of Spain, I gave a talk on deceptive patterns, which I presented also at WorkCamp Europe last year, but didn't hit a nerve. So it wasn't accepted. So I'm very happy to be here to talk about that today.

[00:03:21] Zack Katz: And thank you. if there are people when the people who are watching live, please comment and we will be able to address your comments live on the show. So please comment on YouTube.

[00:03:37] Piccia Neri: Yeah, there's actually, what I'm always wondering is we've been, you started, you did a really great introduction, thank you, but is everybody aware of what deceptive patterns are, is what I want to know.

[00:03:52] Matt Cromwell: That's a good start. What are deceptive patterns?

[00:03:55] Piccia Neri: Let's start from a story. So when I was little, maybe I was seven or eight, I went to a birthday party and I was known for being I was very outgoing, really happy child and could always take a joke. Also, I had a brother who's four years old. I was used to being mistreated. I was fine. You know, I could I could take it. So I went to this birthday party, it was outside in a garden in the summer in Italy, and the mother of the child whose birthday it was said, look, we're going to do a game and you're going to be the protagonist and it's a really fun game and without you we can't do it because you're the best at, you're the one with the best sense of humor and you're the best and... So can you do it? And I'm like, yeah, of course. She flattered me so much and made me think like I was going to be the queen of the party. So I said, of course. And she blindfolded me. And the game consisted in me being guided by the kids shouting and telling me, no, go this way, go this way. I'd forgotten the main details. I was seven a long time ago now. So. and I would be guided and I think someone also held my hands and then at some point the screaming became so, so loud because I think there was a big prize for me at the end. If I made it to the end, there was a big prize that I would win. And what the prize was, was that I ended face flat into a paddling pool. So the end of it was the ludibrium horror humiliation. Everybody laughing at me and I was mortified. was absolutely mortified. I went silent, completely silent for the rest of the party because also I remember that I had a hole in my socks and I was so ashamed because the woman clearly gave me a change of clothes and I was so... ashamed that she would see the hole in my socks. And I was horrified that I was duped into trusting this woman that made me feel so important and so essential. And then everybody was laughing at me. wasn't laughing with

[00:06:30] Matt Cromwell: cheering you all along the way until you're flat on your face.

[00:06:34] Piccia Neri: Honestly, I really shudder when I think about it, and that's bait and switch. It's basically when they make you think that something's going to happen and then it's not. Sorry, I'm going to drag out my folder where I have a few of my Hall of Shame examples. I think there was a very famous example a few years ago of a Windows update.

[00:06:37] Matt Cromwell: Still, absolutely.

[00:07:01] Piccia Neri: that made you do something very similar. And then if you actually did click on it, it would have been an absolute disaster. I think it was something like that. this is what, I've got it here. This was from 2016. The latest Windows 10 upgrade in 2016, a dialog, contains a huge bait and switch. When a user clicks the red X, button in the top right, top right, expecting to dismiss the upgrade because interface X, red X, that's what happens. The upgrade actually initializes and I have never owned a Windows computer, but I am told that upgrades, especially a few years ago could be deadly. So this was a really famous one of bait and switch. And to me, that's the story that the story that I thought is just It's a bit extreme because that was like extreme humiliation, it's basically a manipulation that happens all the time.

[00:08:13] Matt Cromwell: like pushing and encouraging a specific action that at the end of the day, you don't want to happen at all.

[00:08:21] Piccia Neri: Exactly. And deceiving you into thinking that it will be of advantage to you, but it isn't. And an interesting thing to note is that the term used to be known as dark patterns rather than deceptive patterns. And then dark patterns is not really appropriate for a number of reasons. Deceptive patterns is way better. And the person who started talking about the Deceptive Patterns is someone called Dr. Harry Brignel. He's the founder of the Deceptive Patterns Initiative and head of innovation at Smart Pension. And the website that used to be called Dark Patterns is now Deceptive.Design. And I mentioned him because he deserves it, but also because he's got A very good definition, very good and very simple definition of deceptive patterns. Deceptive patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something. For example, trick wording, sneaking, obstruction. But there are many, many, types of deceptive patterns. So many show up in our daily lives and we're so used to them that we don't realize they aren't, we don't have to put up with them, really. And it's one of those things that when you realize what it is, then you can't stop seeing them and you start thinking, no, I don't want this, I don't deserve this. So it's important that we start learning about them because I think that we might inadvertently use them because some of them are actual marketing, I wouldn't call them strategies, I would rather use the word tactics, but yeah, they are.

[00:10:26] Zack Katz: There's marketing tactics, but then there's also, you made me think of deceptive patterns as default settings in plugins and themes. And the default settings that are not the correct default is also, it's deceptive in a way, but it's also deceptive patterns could be unintentionally implemented in your code. And I was just thinking. I'm going to pick on Easy Digital Downloads, a software plugin that I love. We host everything on EDD. And yet, when you set up a new price ID, the default recurring timeline is one day. So I know multiple people who have set up accidentally recurring invoices for customers with like $100 plugins that repeat every single day because

[00:11:17] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:11:17] Piccia Neri: to me with Edd.

[00:11:20] Zack Katz: Yes. And so it's not a deceptive pattern. It's just a bug. It's like, unimplemented. It's like a bad, it's just, hadn't, they haven't fixed it yet, but it's, treats itself like deceptive patterns can be unintentional is what I'm trying to say.

[00:11:35] Matt Cromwell: Accidentally deceptive setting.

[00:11:38] Zack Katz: And that the defaults are powerful and that the defaults that we choose to enable in our checkout process, for example, and having like opt-in marketing checked by default, that is a default setting sometimes. And like by having, by presenting customers with the default of off, that it's more honest than having a default of on for opt-in marketing.

[00:12:05] Piccia Neri: This is something that with the GDPR plugins, for instance, this happens so much, a lot. And GDPR is one of the laws that however annoying it is, it was actually set up to protect people. But the point is that a lot of the plugins, the ones that have toggle options, first of all, already, I shouldn't even be there because it's either accept or reject that that's what needs to be there. Sometimes there's an extra click. and you have to go and adjust and some of them, all the toggles are on. And it's like, no, I shouldn't be doing this. Usually, unless I really need that website, when that is the case, I just leave the site. There is no way that I am, I don't trust you, you're not. You're not trustworthy, I can't trust you.

[00:12:57] Zack Katz: So why is this topic important for WordPress product owners?

[00:13:04] Matt Cromwell: Good question.

[00:13:07] Piccia Neri: Excellent question. Because I think I might be a romantic, it's perfectly possible that I am, but I firmly believe that ethical design ultimately is much better business than unethical design. And which leads me to the concept of ethical design, which is a relatively new discipline. There's a fantastic book called Ethical Design by Trine Faube. I can drop the link in the chat. I can, can't I? Yeah, I can put it here. And it's like accessibility. Yes, you will be fined. Yes, it's better business because you will have a bigger audience. But I do believe that ultimately ethical design, it's better business than unethical design. I've just seen a question from Amber, which is a textbook example of a deceptive pattern. can't recall the exact definition for it. don't think it matters. But Amber is asking, how about pop-ups for opt-ins where the language is something negative, like, no thanks, I don't care about making money. It's awful. This is a typical deceptive pattern. And the thing is that I have seen it done. I have an example of this in my Hall of Shame that is incredible.

[00:14:39] Matt Cromwell: Do have like a presentation you have your Hall of Shame? Like is this something shareable or?

[00:14:45] Piccia Neri: I didn't... So this one that I'm talking about, yeah, I have a few in my own keynote, but I never did the English version because it wasn't accepted, but I didn't insert this one because I think I mentioned it maybe because I do a show with Nathan Wrigley on UXUI. We've just opened the new season today. And at the end, we always do a section. on deceptive patterns. this is something that I think I shared there, but I don't know if I had actually the heart of showing it because this is someone I know and I know she's a good person and she's done something terrible. So she's a cancer survivor and she published a book to help cancer survivors. per message the version of Amber, that Amber is referring, that kind of thing that Amber is referring to. At the bottom, the yes button is, yes, I want to help to change my cancer story. The no button says, no thanks, please do not add this life-affirming offer to my personal life. my God, it just absolutely is shocking.

[00:16:03] Matt Cromwell: I'm

[00:16:08] Piccia Neri: And the thing is that she, the initial offer, the book, I bought the book to help out, it's like $7. This additional offer is 397 pounds. It's a lot of money. And also it's really specifically for cancer survivors, which I'm not, you don't know if I am or not.

[00:16:32] Zack Katz: Yeah, I think for me, the thing about deceptive patterns is that the question that product owners should ask themselves is what is your relationship with customers? And are you in only to make money and you don't care about the customers or are you actually trying to do the best by the customers and develop a working relationship that lasts for years and is based on trust and honesty and integrity? And I think that the... tricking customers is not a good business to be in. regarding that pop-up, example, shaming people is not a good business to be in. Don't treat people badly is a good kind of foundational starting point.

[00:17:03] Matt Cromwell: So. Yeah, it's really easy to think about those things as like, it was just tongue in cheek, but like your users don't know you and they don't know your sense of humor and they don't experience it. And you don't know what's going on in their lives at the moment. Like those types of things can just come across so badly. mean, I think when it comes to like why I think of this one is in terms of why is it relevant to WordPress product owners. And generally speaking, I think it's because deceptive patterns are something that we tend to think about from a product marketing perspective because of how difficult it is for freemium products in particular to have a relationship with their customers. We have so many restrictions around us in terms of the freemium model with WordPress.org that it's that you have to get so creative to think about how can I, the term that's used is de-anonymize my free users. Like how can I get to understand who my free users are? How can I get to see if they're upgrading or not, or if the features that I have are what they want or not, when I don't even have a relationship with them when they install my plugin in the first place. So we have to get so creative that like it makes us think of like, I'll just like. ask them for their email in this way that's really not asking them for their email. Or I'll just glean some information in ways that they probably don't think I'm gleaning information. And it won't really hurt them. It's not going to be a big thing. And I just need it to do this and that and the other. It's a slippery slope into essentially losing trust with our users, essentially. But I'm not trying to pawn off responsibility and say, well, it's because things are hard in WordPress. But I do think that because of our circumstances, it kind of makes us think in a lot more of this kind of path because our options are so limited, generally speaking.

[00:19:21] Piccia Neri: Yeah, I think that in this case, so maybe there is something wrong with the model though. It could be, you know, I think it's a legitimate idea to float. Perhaps it could be, or because for instance, course creators that upload their courses to Udemy don't have a direct, they can email their course, the people who, the students, but they're not directly, it's all through Udemy. And again, that's a huge limitation. Still not a good reason, but it is in this case, specifically, think, maybe the model is not, it's old enough now to maybe rethink. don't know. But anyway, I'm not going to go into that because also I don't know enough about it. But in terms of how it's relevant to WordPress product owners, I work with a lot of WordPress products and this is one of the things that I do. I point out the things that create friction, whether you realize it or not. And if you irritate me, if there's someone else that offers me the same product without irritating me, you can count on me going to them because why should I choose you? And I mean, there are very few products that don't have any competition are there because there are. it's so, so obvious when a product really is just about the good of the customers. It's really so. And I firmly believe in what I call the UX value. Someone called Joe Natoli, who's a great UX practitioner, actually came up with a term. The UX value loop, he calls it. And it's when it's where it's the sweet spot where the users need meet the business's goals. Because if the business doesn't make money, as you were saying, Matt, that can't be good UX. you described exactly the right situation where the UX value loop can't happen because it's very hard for the business to find a sweet spot where not only the customer gets value, but also the business. So that is the tricky bit. And that's one of the things that I strive to do with my work with WordPress products. And it's things that sometimes are inbuilt in your product. One of them, like I'm going to quote, like I mentioned, a really simple one, which is, you're selling a software as a service that has a subscription model, are you sending an email a few days before renewal? This is so simple. If you're not, you may make people feel trapped. Like Skillshare, which is a course platform, never did that. to me and I realized two years after not using the product that I'd given them $200 without ever entering the platform because it was using a card I didn't really look at. So that's another deceptive pattern. So this is one simple way in which you can help your customer and I don't think it costs anything.

[00:22:36] Matt Cromwell: Well, that's one that I dig into quite a lot. That's one that we deal with on the customer success side of things. there is actually some real good math that people can do, like essentially what do you feel like is a worst experience for your customer? That they get charged unexpectedly and then demand a refund or that they cancel their subscription before they get charged? Of course, when you start pushing out email reminders ahead of an annual renewal in particular. Annual renewals are a much bigger deal than monthly, of course. So if you're not sending out a renewal ahead of time, you're going to see your renewal rate dip because people are like, I want to cancel that before that happens. But if you do it, you should also see that your refunds on renewals also dip a ton. And from what we're seeing in a little bit of a test of what we're doing at Stellar right now, we're actually calculating that That actually is a plus for us that we actually have fewer refunds and fewer and not as much of a hit on the renewal rate, which ends up being a positive. I think that I think generally speaking, that goes towards the whole idea of like doing the ethical way to do it actually is good for business. Not only is it better for the customer themselves, but it also results in better revenue. So I totally agree with you on that.

[00:24:05] Zack Katz: Yeah, we're, we're in the business of only taking customers money who want to give us money and tricking people into giving us money or not canceling their subscription is not a good business to be in. Cause you're always basing it on lies and deception. And I have a question for you though. Is it bad customer experience? This is related to one of the comments we have in the live chat. Is it bad customer experience to have. ongoing sales that just like never end. Is that a bad customer experience? Is that deceptive pattern or what is that?

[00:24:41] Piccia Neri: Do they think we're idiots? Do they think we will not notice? Yes, that is a really, really bad one. Or like the fake Black Friday, just to be on seasonal theme, that in the end you realize that it's not really a discount. It's just that you've inflated the price and now you've taken it off, but really you're cashing the same thing. the, you know, like the buy... By three you get two. That's what it makes you feel like. So yes, would absolutely say that the perpetual sail is a deceptive pattern without a doubt. It's manipulative, fake.

[00:25:29] Matt Cromwell: I think what that's grounded in is every marketer will say that you have to drive a sense of urgency in these types of things. And I think that folks have to learn how to actually do sales, to actually run discount campaigns in order to drive urgency instead of just having like perpetual, there's no such thing as like perpetual urgency. Like that's an oxymoron. So if you're going to run a discount sale, run a discount sale and then be like, no, literally tomorrow is the last day and we're not going to do this again. Or, you know, not for a while at least. So, that's, that's exactly what Black Friday campaigns are built upon is that this is happening right now. And if you look across all of our stellar sites in particular, they're all saying exactly when the dates are. Now there might be like, a couple brands who might be like, a surprise extension. We're to do one more extra day. And that totally happens sometimes. Maybe it's even planned ahead of time a little bit. But it doesn't change the fact that like the sale actually physically ends. And this is the time to buy. And we go around telling people folks, telling folks that, like, this is the time if you were ever thinking about getting a whole bunch of these things, now is the best time to do it.

[00:26:52] Piccia Neri: Yeah, so thank you, Matt, for mentioning scarcity and the sense of urgency, which is something that was actually mentioned in the comments, I think, by Kevin, because that's something that has a lot to do with ethical design and how deceptive patterns actually are an accessibility matter. And there's a really great example in the ethical design book. that I mentioned earlier, which is about, let me find it, because I made a note of it. So some people with certain types of illnesses can be hugely affected by manipulative design patterns. People with dyslexia, for instance, may find those weird wordings that are meant to shame you really confusing. Or if you have the example that's in the book, she says, It's someone called Bruce who has multiple sclerosis, which is a disease in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This damage disrupts the ability of parts of the nervous system to communicate, resulting in a range of signs and symptoms, including physical, mental, and sometimes psychiatric problems. Sorry. Mangled that word, but never mind. So Bruce, when his MS is playing up, experiences actual physical symptoms because it triggers his MS. For instance, he's saying, when he's confronted with intrusive nags, such as, only two rooms left, 900 people are looking at this right now, five seconds left before you lose the deal of a lifetime and things like that. He says, my heart races. Adrenaline kicks in and it leaves me feeling shaky and tired given that fatigue is also very common. I'm reading the quote. Given the fatigue is also a very common symptom of MS. I don't need extra help in becoming tired. And really, do we need to do that? And he cites travel and travel websites, Ryanair. You want

[00:29:15] Zack Katz: If people haven't flown Ryanair, it's kind of worth flying Ryanair just to experience the deceptive patterns that they implement. with Spirit Airlines in the US. Fly Spirit and you'll know what Peach is talking about here.

[00:29:31] Matt Cromwell: But at the same time, it highlights so much why Southwest in the States is so amazing. Like I love with Southwest, you always know exactly what you're buying and nothing more. Like it's always just like so simple. you only buy it from them and you're going to get your seat. like they make everything simple. It just highlights the huge difference. And I feel like they zeroed in on that. They looked at all the other US airlines and how hypersensitive and how chaotic and how intense everything was and they're like, let's just make everything easy instead. I mean, they're not perfect. No airline is perfect, but like, I feel like they zeroed in on that. Like, let's get rid of the stress and airline stuff as much as possible. And I think that that should speak really highly of products too. WordPress products should be able to dial in and say, I kind of, was a early in the, I've mentioned this a couple of times, the first like three or four years, I give WP, I was really like opinionated about we don't do discounts like ever under any circumstance. We never did them for at least like four years. And it was because our target audience were nonprofit organizations. Like what's your nonprofit discount? Like why would we have a nonprofit discount? They're all supposed to be nonprofit. So we're pricing it towards the value that you're supposed to get. Why would we discount it? I love the simplicity of it. And in many ways I had people who would respond and be like, I actually really appreciate that. and I, we, we did start doing discounts and I actually did see counter to my hopes and aspirations that there were plenty of buyers who really would specifically buy because of the 15 % off discount, which just baffled me. I just didn't understand. And that's one of those marketing things where it's like, even though we would love for, for some of these practices to not be true, they're based on actual psychological things. When there is a sense of urgency, people do tend to buy a little bit quicker. And that doesn't mean that we should lean into it so heavily. But I'm just saying, as much as these tactics, in my mind, can get overblown, they are based on data as well. you kind of have to be able to navigate between like, well, I don't want to just say, don't do anything that actually works. I need to be able to navigate it correctly.

[00:32:04] Piccia Neri: Yeah

[00:32:05] Matt Cromwell: Just a little bit of the pushback on some of this stuff because we need a third voice and if we're all like, yeah, all of this is terrible, then then it's not a fun show. So I have to be a little bit of the pushback here.

[00:32:18] Piccia Neri: No, no, I think it's an essential point to make because that's the point that a lot of people make. say, yeah, but they work. And the UX value loop that I mentioned earlier does mean that you as a company need to make money because otherwise you can't offer anything to your customer, let alone a deceptive pattern. My point is though that, I mean, a discount is... Really, is it a deceptive pattern? I don't like them. I don't want to offer them because it makes me think, whoa, so does it mean that my offer before was pumped up?

[00:32:56] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, am I constantly inflating my prices? Yeah, I know.

[00:32:59] Piccia Neri: Especially because it's not like, I mean, with clothes, I understand because you need to get rid of them. They're on the shelves. But with a digital product, it's not like, you know, it's go WP is a bit stale or actually, you know, I'll give you I'll give you the the not updated version for less money. It's like it doesn't work like that. So even though this, for instance, the ethical design book, it's this is an aspect that it touches on and It's, I've got a quote here. Some companies are bound to it to be able to prove that dark patterns convert better than ethical design patterns. Maybe. However, what can happen when a dark pattern is discovered by users and afterwards shared publicly is that conversion drops and your reputation drops and your brand perception drops as well. don't, I honestly do not think that it ever pays. And I've seen it happen so much like I remember, for instance, a very famous online course for WordPress community people. were really good, a very good product, but they kept doing this kind of stuff. And you would be in the program and realize that you paid three times as much than the person who enrolled three months after you. And you were like, why? And it was so bad and I know people who, know, in the end left and they were just not happy with it anymore. And that was a membership site. So potentially people could have left. And that again is, you know, a membership is a product. I have seen products that I have worked with. I don't know if I'm allowed to mention an ethical product that I've worked with, but I was astounded at how their focus was so much just on the client, on the customer, that I actually had to tell them, you got to be a bit more selfish here. I don't get that you value loop because you do too much for your customer. Are you sure you're making enough money? So you can be done. I really will die on this hill that it can be done. And I know so many entrepreneurs that, that do. I'm thinking right now of examples outside the word. WordPress environments, but I know people who sell courses and they have built an empire selling courses for membership for $99 a year and they're multimillionaires and they could sell the same thing for 2000 a year. Easy, easy, easy, easy. And they do 99 and they're multimillionaires and they work 10 hours a week.

[00:35:53] Zack Katz: I think this is a good time to transition into story time. And Pichu, you talked about your story already with being tricked into being made to look foolish, which is very cruel. I have a story that kind of touches on the allure and the problems with deceptive patterns, which is the cancellation flow for subscriptions. So I use a lot of products by awesome motive. I'm going to name them. Awesome motive does this. And I think everybody in WordPress knows that they do this. So I might as well say the, say their name out loud. when you go to cancel awesome motive products, there are, you have to go through the ringer. have multiple steps where they try to convince you not to cancel and each of the steps. plays on a different psychology. It makes a lot of sense. Like, you go through one step and it says, well, if you select that you're canceling because of money, they'll show you on the next step, hey, keep your subscription, we'll give you 50 % off the next year and we'll throw in these other couple things that are nice too. And you say like, I want to keep canceling. And then it says, oh, are you sure? Because we have a great team of support. If there's something wrong, we're happy to help. You have to keep on clicking. Yes, yes, yes, I want to cancel. So when we looked at our own cancellation flow, because making it too easy to cancel can be a problem for customers. Because if people don't have an active subscription, they don't get support, they don't get updates, they don't get the added value that you provide. So we want to provide our customers with the most value. If they cancel, they do lose some of our value. That's the whole point of the UX, the flow. So we wanted to add... figure out how to make a good subscription flow for ourselves. So we condensed all of the reasons why they shouldn't cancel onto one page, put it in a list, and at the bottom of the list, yes, I still want to cancel, and we wanted to find out why they are canceling. So we have a little why are you canceling form at the bottom. The cancellation form at the bottom allows them to cancel right away, and then it has follow-up questions that are emailed to them after they cancel that are based on their responses that say, If you want to reactivate, here's the reason why you should reactivate based on your cancellation reason. We think it's a good idea. Here's an easy way to do it. In advance of the Black Friday this year, I was looking at our cancellation flow again, and I realized, because we recently changed our pricing, that one of the things customers might not know about is that their locked in subscription rate is lower. And if they cancel, they will not have that access to that same lower rate. So I added a... a notice at the top of the cancellation page that calculates the amount that they're currently saving and says, hey, if you cancel, you will not have access to this lower price. So I'm trying to find a balance between using information that's helpful to the customer, trying to convince them on our merits that they should not cancel and following up with reasons they provide, but not allowing, not preventing them from canceling in a way that's easy.

[00:39:13] Matt Cromwell: I want to I want to like wave a hanky or something. Bring out the choir. That's a great one. I mean, so many people, so many people are so pissed off about the way awesome motive does that. I have gone through it. It is terrible. It is torturous. Um, and I took notes too, just

[00:39:17] Piccia Neri: Hahaha, sweet!

[00:39:33] Zack Katz: It's impressive. Yeah, I took screenshots. It's a magnum opus.

[00:39:37] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, they're like taking every single psychological reason and walking you through all of them. Like certain that one of them will ring true for you. I love your middle ground there. That sounds awesome.

[00:39:49] Piccia Neri: Yeah, that's very, what you're doing is you're giving very helpful information. The only thing that I hope is that the form is not compulsory because really maybe I don't want to tell you right now.

[00:40:01] Zack Katz: is not compulsory. Right. Or the form is compulsory, you can just click the submit button without filling out a field. Not a field is required, but yeah.

[00:40:12] Piccia Neri: fine. So that's I didn't know whether you were allowed to mention people because Nathan Wrigley, who's one of the nicest most

[00:40:21] Matt Cromwell: We whatever we want to help each other. You can say whatever you like.

[00:40:25] Piccia Neri: Okay, so in that case, the company that I thought was too good to the customers was Paid Memberships Pro. was like, really, is there any limit to the free service to people?

[00:40:35] Matt Cromwell: They're great Ironically, Kim is the like me and Kim started this show together a long time ago. Really?

[00:40:48] Piccia Neri: I didn't know that. Well, they're awesome. But because the thing is that what we need to remember is that when people are doing something such as canceling or buying a flight or buying anything, even for some people, even buying a WordPress plugin may be God knows how much research they've done, what's behind it, what they're going to use it for, how much money they have. It can be a stressful moment. So if you make it so easy for them to buy it, you need to make it as easy for them to come off it when they need to. some of the back to the fear of missing out, like the, you know, the canceling thing, you know, wait a minute, are you sure when it's done like that or using tricky wording such as, you know, no, thanks. I, I want to, I want to give up on the best plugin that ever existed like that. Then. people can have real anxiety attacks. And it really isn't even an exaggeration. And they may think, my god, am I doing the right thing? And start doubting themselves, especially if it's a client that maybe is not a WordPress expert. They don't know whether they're not entirely sure if they're doing the right thing. And suddenly they're like, maybe not. But they don't really want it. So I think that that's something that's really essential to bear in mind, that we do not want to actually cause an anxiety of attacking people. That's never good.

[00:42:23] Zack Katz: Yeah, and Matt is probably going to rejoin us soon. I saw a study a few years ago that made me think of things that we can't do in digital world, the patterns that exist in the physical world, apparently when stores are warmer, people buy fewer products at a lower price. So keeping stores artificially cold is a way that people can manipulate you into purchasing things. just the amount of ways that people trick and deceive and manipulate psychology to make purchases happen is endless.

[00:43:09] Piccia Neri: Yeah, that's an interesting one. I don't know. I hate cold shops, especially clothes shops. It's like, do you want me to try this on or not? Because I'm not going to. It's freaking cold. So I find that a really weird one. But as a general consideration, we are really living in a very difficult, completely new age. The digital age is still very young. We're not used to it. It's incredibly manipulative. And it's a surveillance society. It's basically surveillance capitalism. I mean, WordPress products don't necessarily do that. But when I am pestered by constant notices on the dashboard or emails or, you know, things, messages flashing in, in pop-ups and things like that, I feel like you are monitoring me. You are... following my every move and it bothers me a lot. I I'm not going to go into what social media is doing in this sense of fear of missing out or manipulation and all the terrible, terrible things that it's doing. So I feel like it's our responsibility to do things ethically. think that, that's a, I just noticed very relevant to what I was saying. Kevin's question, how do you draw the line on ethics? Is it subjective? And this is a conversation I've been having with some other WordPress world friends. And one of them was saying, well, can't, companies are there to make money. You can't expect them to be ethical as well, unless there's a law prohibiting them from doing certain things. I don't agree with that. And I would be interested in

[00:45:03] Zack Katz: If murder were illegal, would I go around murdering people? That's the question.

[00:45:10] Piccia Neri: And it's yes, they need to make money, but they need to also make their clients happy.

[00:45:16] Matt Cromwell: I mean, like making businesses sound so one-sided, I think it's just so small-minded and it's just not the way like real business people operate either because like business people in general are not just trying to make money. They're trying to build their team. They're trying to provide a living for their employees. They're trying to build something that actually benefits the world in one way or another. Like we so easily slip into this mindset where like the big corporations out to get the little guy all the time, which You know, has merit, but like so many businesses, like the ones that we all run and are part of are just like trying to do good work. You know, there is this little side conversation happening over here too, that I want to clarify on a little bit. one of our co-hosts, Amber is, in the comments helping out and, and, Kevin is also saying, so discounts in general are deceptive, just accepted deception. That was. to a conversation we were having earlier about discounts in general, that like the discounts work. And Amber is asking, why do you think that they are deceptive? Because people don't expect the renewal at full price. And that's really some of the kicker there, is that especially in the WordPress space, most often, not always, but most often, they're providing a discount for the first year only. And that is a highly deceptive practice when the discount is presented and it's not made clear that it's for the first year only. If it's like there's a slash in the price and here's your new price and it's not said, this counts for first year only. The people buy in thinking like, this is a great price. I'm happy to pay this for several years. And then they find out that the next year is a lot more expensive than they expected. That's completely unethical, I would say. So that's one part of it. But then... are discounts themselves. Kevin follows up with a clarifying. Matt was talking about how they are essentially a trick to get people to buy. I really wasn't trying to say that discounts are a trick to get people to buy. That it tends to be an incentive that the studies actually say does actually work. There are, it's there's something about our lizard brain that essentially is like more likely to buy something.

[00:47:22] Zack Katz: They're an incentive.

[00:47:38] Matt Cromwell: because it's discounted. Like we're probably going to buy that thing anyway. But then like when we see that it's not discounted, we're like, not today. But then it's like, I was probably going to buy this anyway. It's 15 % off right now. Then I'm going to buy it. And that's the only reason why they buy today instead of later, because it happens to be discounted when they're looking at it. So I don't think that that's necessarily deception. It's literally giving people some money back of what they were intending to purchase in the first place. But it is strategic and it is intentional. But I do think the use of discounts, the way that you make sure that it's clear what are you getting with this discount is super important and it can be a slippery slope into deceptive practices, especially when it comes to any kind of subscription-based model.

[00:48:28] Piccia Neri: On that note, I have been doing some audits for Hostinger and one of the things that they do, and I mean, that was the whole like kind of, it felt like an, what's it called? An obstacle race course, a bit like Ranaire, but anyway, one of the things that I pointed out to them is that they, Give you they say that they give you a free domain But then in the end you realize it's not a free domain It's free for a year so but it's written so small that I would never have seen it and then in a year's time I have to pay for a domain that I only set up because it was the only way I could actually move the site over so those are that's a kind of case where you know, you do a you do a It's not even a discount. It's a free thing and that is deceptive because you are going to make me pay for something that I never would have got if it hadn't been free in the first place and I actually do not I Honestly do think that a lot of people do this do not stop and think this is unethical It's a deceptive pattern because some of these are like really have been taught as marketing strategies for years and years and years and now people are starting to say Actually, no, they're not. It's just bad. It's wrong. You're tripping people.

[00:49:58] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. That's a good point, too. Like, there's no reason why we should take traditional things that have always been and always worked and just assume that they're continuing to be OK. Things definitely are moving and towards the good, I would say.

[00:50:16] Zack Katz: So for the next generation of product owners who are watching this show or listening to it, what do you recommend? What's your best advice for new product owners?

[00:50:28] Piccia Neri: Start from this. My best advice is find that sweet spot that I've been mentioning since the beginning. Always ask yourself, hopefully when you actually get the product started from the very beginning, ask yourself, where is that magical place where I make a lot of money because that's what we all want. I actually firmly believe that we all the world would be a better place if everybody had loads of money, and it's possible. So where is that really wonderful place where my business thrives and makes a lot of money, but also my customers have their problems solved and they love us for it? How can I make that happen? That is the best advice I can give. And I am kind of pretty sure that that happens with ethical design and not with deceptive patterns. And fine print, fine print, there's a comment mentioning fine print. Yeah, no fine prints. don't care if it always existed. It's horrible and it is painful and it only helps the business maybe, but unless I misunderstood the, the unless I misunderstood the comment, the way I understood it fine print things are things that get miss.

[00:51:55] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, we should. Whoops, wrong one. Hold on. Yeah, definitely bring that up. That's my my partner in crime for a long time. Devin Walker coming in the comments. Fine print is nothing new. It's common practice everywhere, including in WordPress. Totally true. Are you suggesting we get rid of fine print offers? I would would. I think there is a sense in which there are like. fine print offer in which like the fine print is so tiny that no human can read it. I think that we absolutely 100 % should get rid of that crap. That's garbage. But I think the purpose and the intention behind a fine print offer is that this discount or this offer has limitations in one form or another. And the fine print gives you the opportunity to make those limitations explicit. I think that that's excellent. If you need to put some sort of limitations around an offer in one form or another, you absolutely should be explicit about that. But you should make sure that those guidelines or those limitations are legible. That's the only difference. Like, let's make sure that somebody can read them and they don't need a microscope in order to read them.

[00:53:00] Piccia Neri: Yeah, so Apple, yeah, does this everywhere. And I don't think that Apple are a particularly ethical company. They're super successful. Fine. I was a super early Apple adopter. My sister used to call me the Apple Taliban. I love them so much. I was absolutely fanatic about them. They've lost me entirely. I only keep buying their products because I don't have a choice. I don't really have a choice. But if I could, I can assure you. I would not buy, and that's quite funny, bump up one pixel phone, I would not buy Apple because the way also the products they've built is very shady. The fact that a company is successful doesn't mean it's ethical. And I mean, we haven't even touched on Airbnb, which don't activate me on that point.

[00:53:51] Matt Cromwell: Actually, really, we do need to wrap up. I would love to hear Zach's

[00:53:57] Zack Katz: So my best advice that I find is really helpful is saying what you're about to do to someone else out loud and Seeing how you feel about it while you're saying it if you feel like you're getting away with something if you feel like Or if you feel like you're being tricky or if you feel a sense of shame Take another pass at it. Don't do it. Don't do it Yeah

[00:54:23] Matt Cromwell: I love that. That's a really good one. I think my best advice is literally keep it simple. Like I really think in general, don't try to complicate stuff with all kinds of like caveats and weird quirks and things like that. If it's not really clear what's going on on your sale or on your product, that's the problem. The problem isn't that people aren't buying. It's not that you need to trick them. It's not that you need to do something flashy and special. It's just that you need to be clear and simple and straightforward. and once your offer and your value is super clear, the people who need it will buy it. so I would just always try to keep it simple. So cool. Cool. Well, Picha, this was amazing. I'm so glad we had you on and such a timely topic too, right? Right before black Friday. So watch out for black Friday.

[00:55:13] Zack Katz: Don't judge my email flow, please. There's a lot of fear missing out on my email flow, I'm sorry. Nobody's perfect, right? We can always strive to be better.

[00:55:26] Piccia Neri: It's so much fun.

[00:55:29] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. Zach, do know what we got going on next week?

[00:55:33] Zack Katz: Matt, I don't, but I do want to thank Post Status for being our green room. If you're enjoying these shows, listening to them or watching them live, please hit like, subscribe, share with your friends, add us to your newsletters. And Matt, what is going on next week? If you could bring us in on the loop. Matt has frozen. So I hope to see you all next week. Thank you so much, Picha. It's been a pleasure and goodbye.

[00:56:03] Piccia Neri: Bye bye.