Real Cue or Dark Pattern? A Checkout Page Teardown
Objective: Given three synthetic product/email/pricing mockups modeled on common ecommerce patterns, separate legitimate bias-based persuasion from illegal dark patterns, using the lesson's honesty tests for anchoring, scarcity, and social proof.
You're a junior brand marketer at Chewy, the pet-products ecommerce and subscription company, and legal/compliance has asked you to review three page mockups before they ship, flagging anything that could trigger the FTC's 2024 dark-pattern enforcement.
Read each specimen, mark every bias cue as real or fake, and justify each call against the lesson's honesty rules.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free, easy shareable checklist
The process
Specimens to review
Legal flagged this page for review before launch. For each bias cue, decide: ship as-is, or fix before launch?
PREMIUM DOG FOOD BUNDLE — PRODUCT PAGE DRAFT Was $89.99 → Now $54.99 (39% off) "Only 2 left in stock!" "127 people are viewing this right now" ★ 4.8 (2,340 reviews) — Verified Purchase [Add to Cart] Offer ends in: 00:04:12 (timer restarts every time the page is refreshed)
Specimen: synthetic, realistic
The internal vendor note tells you which claims are real. Which line needs to be cut before send?
CART ABANDONMENT EMAIL DRAFT Subject: Your cart is about to expire! Body: "Sarah from Chicago just bought this 2 minutes ago. Only 3 left at this price. This offer expires in 24 hours, after that we can't guarantee availability." [Internal note from email platform vendor, not shown to customer]: Customer names in the 'X from Y just bought this' line are auto-generated from a name/city list, not tied to real orders. Inventory count and 24-hour expiry are both pulled live from the order management system.
Specimen: synthetic, realistic
Before this ships, flag anything that violates the lesson's 'use anchoring honestly' rule.
PRICING PAGE MOCKUP STARTER — $29/mo GROWTH — $79/mo ★ Most Popular (used by 68% of customers*) ENTERPRISE — $249/mo *Based on internal signups from the last 30 days, updated weekly. [Internal PM note, not shown to users]: Enterprise tier has zero paying customers to date. It was added last sprint specifically to make Growth look cheaper by comparison.
Specimen: synthetic, realistic
Final deliverable
A three-row teardown log marking each bias cue real/fake with a one-line justification citing the lesson's honesty rule it passes or fails.
See a reference example
Warby Parker homepage banner audit (excerpt) Cue: 'Free shipping on orders over $50' — REAL (site-wide policy, verifiable in checkout) Cue: 'Only 4 pairs left in this style' — FAKE (inventory API shows 40+ units; flagged for removal) Cue: '12,000+ 5-star reviews' — REAL (matches Yotpo widget count, verified 2026-08)
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Correctly labels at least 5 of 6 cues across the three specimens as real or fake
- Cites the specific lesson rule (anchoring/scarcity/social-proof honesty) for each fake cue flagged