Disclaimers and Dishonesty

There was an interesting incident in the usability lab, one which researchers typically dismiss as a data point because it’s just one person’s behavior and it was quite unusual, but meaningful nonetheless.   A test subject asked to click through a product acquisition flow immediately scrolled to the bottom of the page and glanced at the disclaimers.   When the proctor asked why she had done this, her reply was that “I want to see if you are honest.”

When asked to explain what she meant by that, she flatly stated that the amount of legal text at the bottom of the page gives her a sense of whether the company she is dealing with is honest.   Most of the page is “just marketing,” she said, and the small print at the bottom is where “the government makes you tell the truth about the lies you just told.”   By her estimation, the company was not trustworthy at all.

In the break between sessions, I slipped away to do some analysis on that page, an acquisition flow for a financial product.  The content of the page, excluding navigation and identity, measured 572 words.  The disclaimers at the bottom of the page, excluding copyright notice, was 1,623 words – meaning for every word of marketing, there were three words that explained the conditions under which the promises that were implied might actually be kept.

Afterward, I did a bit of competitive analysis to see if this was typical of the industry, sampling about half a dozen sites that sold the same product.  The worst of the lot had about four words of disclaimer for each word of content, the average was about 2.5, and the best of the lot had a very low ratio of 0.75 – which is still quite a lot.   It occurred to me afterward that I didn’t click the links that would expose additional disclaimers, so the ratios may be far worse than I am reporting here.

As an insider, I can understand that companies want to put their best foot forward and to lure the public by showing “as low as” rates on loan products and “as high as” rates on investment products.   But when it takes three words of disclaimer for every word of the promise, my sense is that the line has been crossed between putting on one’s best face and being completely deceitful.  

I have the sense that I may be gearing myself up to do a fairly extensive research project to satisfy my own curiosity, checking the promise-to-disclaimer ratio across different industries and cross-referencing this against brand trust surveys … but for now I’m satisfied that the test subject’s opinion that the amount of disclaimer text tells how dishonest the company is entirely reasonable and that companies should be thankful that more people don’t look at the small print very closely (or at all).