Outhouse › Dark Patterns › Pressure

Confirmshaming

Decline buttons worded to make saying no feel like a personal failing.

Why it matters

Any visitor can click No thanks. Far fewer can click No thanks, I prefer paying full price. Confirmshaming moves the cost of refusing from the wallet to the conscience, where it is harder to dispute.

Copywriters are encouraged to imagine the visitor's mother reading the decline link aloud.

How Outhouse measures it

Outhouse looks for decline wording such as No thanks, I'd rather… and I don't want to save in the page text. One scores in full.

This audit counts towards Dark Patterns, with a weight of 2. A category is 75% its two highest-scoring audits and 25% all of its audits, weighted, so a site is judged mostly on what it does most and partly on how many things it does.

How to improve your score

Install Capture. Available on selected plans. See all products.

Related audits

• Urgency, scarcity and social proof: Copy that tells the visitor to be quick because time, stock or other people are running out.
• Countdown timers: Timers counting down to the end of an offer.