Ecommerce
Tactic

Display Ugly Rejection Options

You could uglify rejection options with weird fonts, unbalanced positioning, or wide letter-spacing.

Buy Now with "Later" option underneath, and this option looks visually ugly

Overview

Purchase buttons should look pretty.

When customers view a button, they contemplate the decision: Hmm, should I click?

A pretty button can activate positive emotions, which become attributed to the decision: Hmm, should I click? Something feels right. I must want to click.

Rejection options are different. You don't want people to click them. Therefore, follow the opposite advice and reduce the fluency of these options.

Visual Fluency

You could design an ugly button — weird fonts, wide letter-spacing, unbalanced, etc.

Customers misattribute this disfluency to the decision: Hmm, should I click to reject? Something is telling me to click the other option.

Linguistic Fluency

Or insert phrasing that sounds unnatural.

When customers see a button, they read this text inside their head. It's called inner speech.

If it sounds natural — something they would typically say — clicking feels more appealing. Therefore, choose unnatural text.

"No thanks" is common, but too polite and natural.

Instead, try "Postpone the decision".

Or maybe a blunt "No."