Why you click on the headline of this story, without actually knowing why…

A sum­ma­ry of a num­ber of extra­or­di­nary news­wor­thy items, with­out it actu­al­ly reveal­ing what the arti­cle is about, the pur­pose of which is to encour­age read­ers to click on the arti­cle. This relates to the vague head­lines of arti­cles which gen­er­ate just enough inter­est for peo­ple to click on them. These are also known as click­bait arti­cles, and they form the basis of the suc­cess of sites such as Buz­zfeed. It is a well-known form of online per­sua­sion, which mar­keters use to steer con­sumer behav­iour with a spe­cif­ic objec­tive. Is click­bait a trans­par­ent trick, or can it be termed smart marketing?

Click­bait is a tried and test­ed tech­nique which you use to get more peo­ple to click on the basis of attrac­tive head­lines or mis­lead­ing visuals/images. They often involve sen­tences con­tain­ing phras­es such as ‘things you won’t believe’ and ‘that will blow your mind’. The par­o­dy site Click­Hole is ded­i­cat­ed to click­bait, and is filled with – in its own words – ‘the most click­able, irre­sistibly share­able con­tent’. The site is a prime exam­ple of how writ­ers try to tempt peo­ple with head­lines and images. It is pri­mar­i­ly intend­ed as a joke, but this tech­nique is used by a huge num­ber of websites.

Click­bait head­lines draw attention

The tech­nique is used pri­mar­i­ly by con­tent plat­forms to attract vis­i­tors. In this respect, it often is not even about offer­ing a good sto­ry, but about cre­at­ing such attrac­tive head­lines that con­sumers click on the arti­cle and vis­it the web­site. The per­son who cre­at­ed the head­lines ben­e­fits from these extra vis­i­tors, because their earn­ing mod­el is based on this: the larg­er the num­ber of vis­i­tors, the more adver­tis­ing income the web­sites receive. In this sense, click­bait arti­cles are good for the writ­ers and their bank bal­ances, but not for the readers.

It is a cheap and quick method for attract­ing large num­bers of peo­ple, and even if you only have their atten­tion for a brief peri­od, they have vis­it­ed your site. But are they sat­is­fied with what they read after click­ing on the tempt­ing head­line? It demon­strates that there is a grey area between writ­ing a tempt­ing head­line at the top of an arti­cle, and whether or not you ensure that the con­tent match­es this title. In the case of click­bait arti­cles, it is clear from the start to read­ers that this strat­e­gy is being used. After all, it is an extreme­ly obvi­ous attempt to steer behav­iour, and peo­ple have by now become famil­iar with it. It is up to the read­ers as to whether to click or not in order to read more, but what if that choice has already been made for them, and they are there­fore uncon­scious­ly being influenced?

The uncon­scious steer­ing of behaviour

Uncon­scious steer­ing takes place through what are known as ‘dark pat­terns’. These are pat­terns on web­sites which are delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed to steer behav­iour uncon­scious­ly in a mali­cious man­ner, in order to trick the user. Exam­ples include a menu on which the most expen­sive ver­sion is put in a promi­nent loca­tion and the oth­er ver­sions are not. This increas­es the risk that con­sumers choose the more expen­sive ver­sion from the menu. Anoth­er exam­ple of a dark pat­tern is pre-com­plet­ed reply fields on web­sites. Some air­lines, for exam­ple, force you to buy insur­ance if you do not uncheck this option.

And there are many more exam­ples of dark pat­terns out there, all intend­ed to steer behav­iour uncon­scious­ly. And this is where the prob­lem lies in terms of ethics, because is it sen­si­ble for a brand to do this, hop­ing that peo­ple will go for the most expen­sive ver­sion, or take out the extra insur­ance? In my view, this approach is com­ing from the wrong direc­tion: if mar­keters know that they can steer behav­iour, why do they not use this in a pos­i­tive way? Because dark pat­terns can also be used in a pos­i­tive sense, if you make the con­sumer the cen­tral focus.

Mak­ing things as easy as pos­si­ble for the consumer

For exam­ple, if design­ers know that vis­i­tors do not read the small print care­ful­ly, build in a func­tion so that the web­site asks for con­fir­ma­tion twice. Or like in Microsoft Word when sav­ing a file. The ‘Save’ func­tion is already marked (this is known as a ‘smart default’), so that the user only needs to press Enter to save the file. This means that the user doesn’t need to take the trou­ble to select some­thing else. The same applies to lan­guage use. When design­ing the web­site, you can also leave out unim­por­tant infor­ma­tion, so that con­sumers more clear­ly see the infor­ma­tion which is impor­tant to them. If you are try­ing to achieve con­ver­sion, tempt the vis­i­tor to take the right steps on the basis of a pos­i­tive cus­tomer experience.

Learn­ing to under­stand the effect of dark pat­terns also means that you can opti­mise the oper­a­tion of your web­site, putting the cus­tomer first rather than your turnover. Turnover remains the ulti­mate objec­tive, but the more sat­is­fied con­sumers are, the high­er the con­ver­sion rate will become.