Avoiding popular verbs: opt out & unsubscribe who?
A Petty Linguistic Analysis
Two things were apparent as I hurried to unsubscribe from the “It’s National Ice Cream Day! 🍦” newsletter:
I have too much free time to analyze a spammy newsletter.
Williams-Sonoma loves dark patterns for design and UX copy.
In the Williams-Sonoma email, I stumbled across the following dark UX copy that gave me pause and brought out the pettiness. The offending sentence read:
“If you no longer want to receive promotional mail, click here."
Sounds fine, right? Let's do some number crunching.
"Opt out" and "unsubscribe" are nowhere to be found in the footer’s 258 words. Yet, Williams-Sonoma had 258 chances to add two of the most popular verbs that someone scrolling to the bottom of an email would expect, but they didn't. It seems almost strategic, doesn't it?
Why the heck would they do that? Critical Thinking
The question is, why would Williams-Sonoma use 11 words to describe a popular desire that could be described in 1 or 2 verbs? The excess of words complicates the meaning on purpose, hoping to give a percentage of users fatigue so they do not unsubscribe. Here are some questions to ask when copy seems muddled:
Does the confusion benefit the company or person sending it?
Can I find a wordy document that can be described in one?
Is the copy that creates profit suddenly crystal clear?
This is how I identify dark patterns and dark copy.
For more information on how I analyze dark copy and designs. Click here for a full analysis of my spam email.
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