7 ms·

"Content Overload: Accommodations have very rich content, e.g.descriptions, pictures, reviews and ratings." Laughed at that one. Booking.com is so full of dark

"Content Overload: Accommodations have very rich content, e.g.descriptions, pictures, reviews and ratings." Laughed at that one. Booking.com is so full of dark patterns that I dread using it.

Bootwizard 7y ago
What do you mean by "dark patterns"? I'm not familiar with that term
- kennethologist 7y ago
  Dark 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. See more examples here: https://www.darkpatterns.org/ https://www.darkpatterns.org/
  - jwc1 7y ago
    It's amazing how once you put a label on something, you start noticing it _everywhere_. Someone pointed out "confirmshaming" to me a few years ago...and since then I feel like it shows up on > 50% of the sites I visit. https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern/confirmshaming https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern/confirmsh...
    - cm2012 7y ago
      How is confirm shaming a dark pattern? It puts more factual detail near the yes or no options so people know what they're agreeing to or declining.
      - lbotos 7y ago
        It's emotional manipulation. Confirm shaming uses fear. If I'm cancelling amazon prime because it "costs too much" but you say "are you sure you want to miss out on all the fast shipping" someone who is easily manipulated may continue to subscribe because they are weak willed. You could instead ask: "Why are you cancelling?": - Cost - Don't use it enough - ... - Other (please specify:)
      - joegahona 7y ago
        > How is confirm shaming a dark pattern? It puts more factual detail near the yes or no options so people know what they're agreeing to or declining. In its best form, perhaps. But more likely than not it looks something like this: [ ] YES, I want to fight racism by subscribing to CrappyPublisher.net's twice-daily newsletter! [ ] NO, I am a racist (and also a pedophile)!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dekhn 7y ago
  Would you like to learn more about dark patterns? YES or LATER?
  - joezydeco 7y ago
    47 OTHER PEOPLE ARE REPLYING TO YOUR COMMENT RIGHT NOW
  - opportune 7y ago
    I would like you to remind me every day until I submit to your annoyance, I mean tomorrow please
- jhncls 7y ago
  Ben Edelman (Harvard, Microsoft) published a study [0] about how dark patterns in the online travel industry help them reach margins up to 25%. He also mentions the consolidation where most well-known booking sites are owned by just two large groups. [0] http://www.benedelman.org/impact-of-ota-bias-and-consolidation-on-consumers/ http://www.benedelman.org/impact-of-ota-bias-and-consolidati...
  - rhizome 7y ago
    Sounds like travel agents are becoming more and more cost effective every day. I mean, what does the Hyatt website do that a phone call 30 years ago couldn't?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
  Deceiving, tricking and pressuring users into taking actions. For example, LinkedIn having a flow that has an e-mail and password box, which will get a less attentive user to just re-enter their LinkedIn credentials. But it's actually a phishing form for your e-mail, so if your LinkedIn and e-mail password is the same, you have now "consented" to have your address book scraped and your contacts spammed. Or, in the case of Booking.com: * Every step has items designed to pressure you to book NOW because it'll be too late otherwise: - "booked x times in the last x hours" on the listing, or - "Only 1 room left!" (they now add "on our site" after they lost a consumer protection lawsuit) - Showing booked-out listings "You missed it" - Various notifications like "last booked X minutes ago" and "limited supply" popping in while you're scrolling to raise the pressure * Misleading or deceptive claims - "Jackpot, this is the cheapest price you've seen" (emphasis should be on "you've seen", this will be shown even if you look at overpriced properties) - They seem to have stopped the "one person looking at this property" thing (to make you think that it may be gone if you don't book now - that one person is you), probably after being forced to do so by court - a misleading rating system (the lowest possible rating is 2.5/10, and you rate category-by-category, which means that if the staff is friendly and the hotel is in a good location etc. but the rats and cockroaches ate your luggage while you slept, that's an 8/10 property - in practice, you should assume that anything below 8 is not good, below 7.5 is bad, below 7 is catastrophic, below 6 you may not survive) - I'd also assume that they mess with the reviews in various ways, like showing mostly positive ones etc., but I haven't verified that. Overall, I like to compare the booking experience with a drill sergeant yelling into your ear to convert (book) right now, NOW, DO IT, NOW, YOU MAGGOT! They seem to have improved significantly over previous experiences with them, probably due to a combination of me getting used to ignore the yelling, or because they realized that such a bad experience pushes customers away, or because their practices got banned one by one. It's a shame, because other than the drill sergeant, their site is great.
  - Lucadg 7y ago
    Reviews have changed now and you can leave an overall rating (at least somewhere, they may be A/B testing). The reaction from Hosts has been negative. They should read your comment as they fail to understand the logic behind the change.
- rhizome 7y ago
  Google's right over there.
capableweb 7y ago
I think both of those statements are true. They do try to manipulate their users, and the listings you see on Booking.com have a lot of content too!
softwaredoug 7y ago
Booking is obsessed with maximizing conversions, which just leads to dark patterns. One lessons from all these things is they maximize for what’s easiest to measure, not what’s most important. Conversions aren’t the end all be all, nobody wants to come back to a store with the pushy salesperson.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > maximize for what’s easiest to measure Just like the unholy abomination that professional project managers have turned “agile methodologies” into.
- duxup 7y ago
  I'll get the phrasing wrong here but "What is easy to measure will be deemed important what is difficult to measure will be deemed unimportant."
  - ohduran 7y ago
    Oh, absolutely! How can you measure "I'm sick of being tricked into buying", "I wish this site treated me with respect", "I'm the client, and I feel like the product"?
    - fludlight 7y ago
      Lifetime value (LTV). It’s tricky to measure in the travel industry because users only transact once every few months or even years.
      - ohduran 7y ago
        If the assumption is that the user is looking for the cheapest option regardless of how he's been treated, this strategy makes sense. But that leaves you at the mercy of the competition, which in an open data business (I mean, airlines are more than happy to tell you which flights they have available) implies that your product is undifferentiated. So eventually you resort to this tactics: as soon as a user gets in, do anything that's humanly possible to convert that sucker. That's in essence what's wrong with Booking. This trickles down, unfortunately: Ryanair hides most of its costs in effectively forcing you to upgrade to Premium in order to be treated as something just a bit more than lifestock, because the assumption that travelers' main concern is price pervades the industry, even if the price they are shown isn't the price they pay in the end.
brendanmc6 7y ago
That's putting it lightly. It's an abomination of a website. Truly an assault on the senses. Just booked through them yesterday, to save a few bucks-- never again. Now I understand why it's so bad-- "user interface optimization models" I refuse to believe this brings real value. The more plausible reality is, they have fantastic SEO and a tightening stranglehold on marketshare, and some AI to squeeze a few more pennies out along the way. Whatever metrics they are seeing, it won't be worth it in the long run. This kind of UX and product won't last.
- joking 7y ago
  Apart from the seo, they use a lot of money from the cut they get from the hotel to outbid the hotel on paid ads. They are more than anything a marketing agency.
tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
This. I still (grudgingly) use them because they also seem to have figured out that its important that your booking process works and it's friction-free, and they often do have the best price. But if I find an alternative that has the same width of offers and a booking process that doesn't feel like a drill sergeant constantly yelling "BOOK NOW YOU WORTHLESS SCUM, BOOK, BOOK, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR YOU IMBECILE, CLICK IT, BOOK, NOW, NOW" - what do they think will happen?
- sangnoir 7y ago
  > what do they think will happen? Booking.com A/B tests everything: the drill-sergeant-like funnel probably has higher conversion rates than any gentler variation. So to answer your question - they think you might not book through them without the shoutiness.
  - softwaredoug 7y ago
    But does it have higher customer retention over the long term? Conversions are only one piece of running an online business
    - sangnoir 7y ago
      > But does it have higher customer retention over the long term? I'm going to guess the answer is no - which is why organizations have to be careful which metrics they measure and incentivize on. Granted, this failing is industry-wide as the longest view on most orgs' dashboards is YoY. When that metric starts freefalling, it most likely will be too late to do anything about it, but most of the staff (up to the CEO) will have padded Resumes with amazing numbers for improved conversion/revenue which will get them to the next job.
  - rixed 7y ago
    Conversion rate, yes. But the parent asked about customer retention, which is also quite important but much harder to optimise for...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
puranjay 7y ago
I've learned to ignore the dark patterns. Still use them because their free cancellation booking process takes a lot of the pain out of picking a hotel.
sAbakumoff 7y ago
i just want to note that "dark patterns" appear because it could be just one more A/B test that booking.com obsessively implements again and again. If the tested pattern does not help to increase conversion rate, it will be shut down. what's wrong with that?

"Content Overload: Accommodations have very rich content, e.g.descriptions, pictures, reviews and ratings." Laughed at that one. Booking.com is so full of dark patterns that I dread using it.

Bootwizard 7y ago

What do you mean by "dark patterns"? I'm not familiar with that term

kennethologist 7y ago
Dark 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. See more examples here: https://www.darkpatterns.org/ https://www.darkpatterns.org/
- jwc1 7y ago
  It's amazing how once you put a label on something, you start noticing it _everywhere_. Someone pointed out "confirmshaming" to me a few years ago...and since then I feel like it shows up on > 50% of the sites I visit. https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern/confirmshaming https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern/confirmsh...
  - cm2012 7y ago
    How is confirm shaming a dark pattern? It puts more factual detail near the yes or no options so people know what they're agreeing to or declining.
    - lbotos 7y ago
      It's emotional manipulation. Confirm shaming uses fear. If I'm cancelling amazon prime because it "costs too much" but you say "are you sure you want to miss out on all the fast shipping" someone who is easily manipulated may continue to subscribe because they are weak willed. You could instead ask: "Why are you cancelling?": - Cost - Don't use it enough - ... - Other (please specify:)
    - joegahona 7y ago
      > How is confirm shaming a dark pattern? It puts more factual detail near the yes or no options so people know what they're agreeing to or declining. In its best form, perhaps. But more likely than not it looks something like this: [ ] YES, I want to fight racism by subscribing to CrappyPublisher.net's twice-daily newsletter! [ ] NO, I am a racist (and also a pedophile)!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dekhn 7y ago
Would you like to learn more about dark patterns? YES or LATER?
- joezydeco 7y ago
  47 OTHER PEOPLE ARE REPLYING TO YOUR COMMENT RIGHT NOW
- opportune 7y ago
  I would like you to remind me every day until I submit to your annoyance, I mean tomorrow please
jhncls 7y ago
Ben Edelman (Harvard, Microsoft) published a study [0] about how dark patterns in the online travel industry help them reach margins up to 25%. He also mentions the consolidation where most well-known booking sites are owned by just two large groups. [0] http://www.benedelman.org/impact-of-ota-bias-and-consolidation-on-consumers/ http://www.benedelman.org/impact-of-ota-bias-and-consolidati...
- rhizome 7y ago
  Sounds like travel agents are becoming more and more cost effective every day. I mean, what does the Hyatt website do that a phone call 30 years ago couldn't?
tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
Deceiving, tricking and pressuring users into taking actions. For example, LinkedIn having a flow that has an e-mail and password box, which will get a less attentive user to just re-enter their LinkedIn credentials. But it's actually a phishing form for your e-mail, so if your LinkedIn and e-mail password is the same, you have now "consented" to have your address book scraped and your contacts spammed. Or, in the case of Booking.com: * Every step has items designed to pressure you to book NOW because it'll be too late otherwise: - "booked x times in the last x hours" on the listing, or - "Only 1 room left!" (they now add "on our site" after they lost a consumer protection lawsuit) - Showing booked-out listings "You missed it" - Various notifications like "last booked X minutes ago" and "limited supply" popping in while you're scrolling to raise the pressure * Misleading or deceptive claims - "Jackpot, this is the cheapest price you've seen" (emphasis should be on "you've seen", this will be shown even if you look at overpriced properties) - They seem to have stopped the "one person looking at this property" thing (to make you think that it may be gone if you don't book now - that one person is you), probably after being forced to do so by court - a misleading rating system (the lowest possible rating is 2.5/10, and you rate category-by-category, which means that if the staff is friendly and the hotel is in a good location etc. but the rats and cockroaches ate your luggage while you slept, that's an 8/10 property - in practice, you should assume that anything below 8 is not good, below 7.5 is bad, below 7 is catastrophic, below 6 you may not survive) - I'd also assume that they mess with the reviews in various ways, like showing mostly positive ones etc., but I haven't verified that. Overall, I like to compare the booking experience with a drill sergeant yelling into your ear to convert (book) right now, NOW, DO IT, NOW, YOU MAGGOT! They seem to have improved significantly over previous experiences with them, probably due to a combination of me getting used to ignore the yelling, or because they realized that such a bad experience pushes customers away, or because their practices got banned one by one. It's a shame, because other than the drill sergeant, their site is great.
- Lucadg 7y ago
  Reviews have changed now and you can leave an overall rating (at least somewhere, they may be A/B testing). The reaction from Hosts has been negative. They should read your comment as they fail to understand the logic behind the change.
rhizome 7y ago
Google's right over there.

capableweb 7y ago

I think both of those statements are true. They do try to manipulate their users, and the listings you see on Booking.com have a lot of content too!

softwaredoug 7y ago

Booking is obsessed with maximizing conversions, which just leads to dark patterns. One lessons from all these things is they maximize for what’s easiest to measure, not what’s most important. Conversions aren’t the end all be all, nobody wants to come back to a store with the pushy salesperson.

commandlinefan 7y ago
> maximize for what’s easiest to measure Just like the unholy abomination that professional project managers have turned “agile methodologies” into.
duxup 7y ago
I'll get the phrasing wrong here but "What is easy to measure will be deemed important what is difficult to measure will be deemed unimportant."
- ohduran 7y ago
  Oh, absolutely! How can you measure "I'm sick of being tricked into buying", "I wish this site treated me with respect", "I'm the client, and I feel like the product"?
  - fludlight 7y ago
    Lifetime value (LTV). It’s tricky to measure in the travel industry because users only transact once every few months or even years.
    - ohduran 7y ago
      If the assumption is that the user is looking for the cheapest option regardless of how he's been treated, this strategy makes sense. But that leaves you at the mercy of the competition, which in an open data business (I mean, airlines are more than happy to tell you which flights they have available) implies that your product is undifferentiated. So eventually you resort to this tactics: as soon as a user gets in, do anything that's humanly possible to convert that sucker. That's in essence what's wrong with Booking. This trickles down, unfortunately: Ryanair hides most of its costs in effectively forcing you to upgrade to Premium in order to be treated as something just a bit more than lifestock, because the assumption that travelers' main concern is price pervades the industry, even if the price they are shown isn't the price they pay in the end.

brendanmc6 7y ago

That's putting it lightly. It's an abomination of a website. Truly an assault on the senses. Just booked through them yesterday, to save a few bucks-- never again. Now I understand why it's so bad-- "user interface optimization models" I refuse to believe this brings real value. The more plausible reality is, they have fantastic SEO and a tightening stranglehold on marketshare, and some AI to squeeze a few more pennies out along the way. Whatever metrics they are seeing, it won't be worth it in the long run. This kind of UX and product won't last.

joking 7y ago
Apart from the seo, they use a lot of money from the cut they get from the hotel to outbid the hotel on paid ads. They are more than anything a marketing agency.

tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago

This. I still (grudgingly) use them because they also seem to have figured out that its important that your booking process works and it's friction-free, and they often do have the best price. But if I find an alternative that has the same width of offers and a booking process that doesn't feel like a drill sergeant constantly yelling "BOOK NOW YOU WORTHLESS SCUM, BOOK, BOOK, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR YOU IMBECILE, CLICK IT, BOOK, NOW, NOW" - what do they think will happen?

sangnoir 7y ago
> what do they think will happen? Booking.com A/B tests everything: the drill-sergeant-like funnel probably has higher conversion rates than any gentler variation. So to answer your question - they think you might not book through them without the shoutiness.
- softwaredoug 7y ago
  But does it have higher customer retention over the long term? Conversions are only one piece of running an online business
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    > But does it have higher customer retention over the long term? I'm going to guess the answer is no - which is why organizations have to be careful which metrics they measure and incentivize on. Granted, this failing is industry-wide as the longest view on most orgs' dashboards is YoY. When that metric starts freefalling, it most likely will be too late to do anything about it, but most of the staff (up to the CEO) will have padded Resumes with amazing numbers for improved conversion/revenue which will get them to the next job.
- rixed 7y ago
  Conversion rate, yes. But the parent asked about customer retention, which is also quite important but much harder to optimise for...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

puranjay 7y ago

I've learned to ignore the dark patterns. Still use them because their free cancellation booking process takes a lot of the pain out of picking a hotel.

sAbakumoff 7y ago

i just want to note that "dark patterns" appear because it could be just one more A/B test that booking.com obsessively implements again and again. If the tested pattern does not help to increase conversion rate, it will be shut down. what's wrong with that?