ClickUp: Von Restorff effect example to copy

What to steal

Make one plan look different in colour, not only with a badge, and pick the plan most buyers should choose.
If you offer a money-back guarantee, link its terms from the same pill.

What to test next: Black Business card vs all cards white with the same “Most Popular” label. Measure plan mix and refunds within the guarantee window.

In plain words

Why it works

ClickUp uses the isolation (Von Restorff) effect: the item that differs from its neighbours is the one people notice and remember (von Restorff 1933). Four plans sit side by side. Free Forever, Core and Enterprise are white cards; Business is the only black card, with the only “Most Popular” label and a white “Get Started” button. Its price reads “$17” with “$25” struck through, “user / mo · billed yearly”, and Yearly is the selected billing option. Above the plans, a pill says “100% Money-back Guarantee”, which uses the certainty effect: a guarantee turns a risky purchase into a sure one (Kahneman & Tversky 1979). The captured section does not give the terms of the guarantee. Whether the black card moves people to Business is not public.

Honest nudge or dark pattern?

Conditional

Conditional: all four plans and prices stay visible, and Business is not the most expensive option. It is honest if “Most Popular” is true; the share is not public. The guarantee pill shows no terms in the captured section.

Sources: Captured by Nudgeswipe, 4 Nov 2026 (pricing page, logged out, Yearly selected, USD shown)

Context

ClickUp pricing page, logged out, on 4 Nov 2026, with Yearly selected as loaded. Prices showed in USD. The toggle says “Save up to 33% with yearly”. Core reads “$9” with “$12” struck through.

The research

The research behind it

● Strong evidence (provisional) · More on isolation (von restorff) effect, with sources →

Next: run it on your product

Try it on your own product

Opens your assistant with this teardown, our verdict and the steps above. It asks about your product first, then suggests tests you can run.

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You are helping me apply a behavioural-design pattern ethically.

Pattern: ClickUp: ClickUp turns its Business plan into the only black card
Bias: Isolation (Von Restorff) effect: An item that stands out from the rest is more likely to be noticed and remembered.
Why it nudges: ClickUp uses the isolation (Von Restorff) effect: the item that differs from its neighbours is the one people notice and remember (von Restorff 1933). Four plans sit side by side. Free Forever, Core and Enterprise are white cards; Business is the only black card, with the only "Most Popular" label and a white "Get Started" button. Its price reads "$17" with "$25" struck through, "user / mo · billed yearly", and Yearly is the selected billing option. Above the plans, a pill says "100% Money-back Guarantee", which uses the certainty effect: a guarantee turns a risky purchase into a sure one (Kahneman & Tversky 1979). The captured section does not give the terms of the guarantee. Whether the black card moves people to Business is not public.
Our verdict: Conditional. Conditional: all four plans and prices stay visible, and Business is not the most expensive option. It is honest if "Most Popular" is true; the share is not public. The guarantee pill shows no terms in the captured section.
Source page: https://nudgeswipe.com/examples/clickup-business-most-popular-black-card/ (JSON: https://nudgeswipe.com/api/teardowns/clickup-business-most-popular-black-card.json)

Rules: say a brand "uses" a tactic, never that it "worked"; outcomes are not public unless the company published them; no invented uplift estimates; flag mixed evidence. Honest nudge = true, visible, easy to reverse, and in the user's interest. Dark pattern = hides costs, fakes scarcity or popularity, shames, or makes leaving harder than joining. Quote company-published results as "X reports", with the source link, and don’t generalise them. Don’t cite retracted or failed-to-replicate studies as support (e.g. Ariely & Wertenbroch 2002). Don’t state study figures unless they’re on this page or in a source you can link. If an idea crosses the line, link the matching deceptive.design pattern.

Tasks:
1. Ask me for my product, the flow (URL or screenshots) and the goal.
2. Audit where this pattern already appears, or could, in that flow.
3. Propose 2-3 ethical experiments: hypothesis, variant copy or UI, primary metric, and a guardrail metric (refunds, complaints, cancellations).
4. Flag every dark-pattern risk and say how to stay on the honest side.

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Grok and Cursor open with the prompt filled in. Gemini and Codex can’t take a prefilled link, so the prompt is copied and you paste it in.

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Sources

Our capture of clickup.com, 4 Nov 2026
von Restorff (1933), Über die Wirkung von Bereichsbildungen im Spurenfeld. doi.org/10.1007/BF02409636
Captured by Nudgeswipe, 4 Nov 2026 (pricing page, logged out, Yearly selected, USD shown): clickup.com

ClickUp turns its Business plan into the only black card

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Why it works

Conditional

The research behind it

Try it on your own product

5 new nudges, every Friday