The FT dates its offer and starts at $1

The psychology

Why it nudges

The FT uses urgency with a named end date, and struck-through prices as reference points. The $1 trial also leans on present bias. Our visit from a UK address was redirected to US pricing, so UK prices may differ. Results are not public.

● Strong evidence · More on urgency (deadline effect), with sources →

Context

A premium business publisher's subscription page. Prices shown were in US dollars.

Honest nudge or dark pattern?

Conditional

Honest nudge if the offer ends on the 28th and the struck-through prices are real former prices. The $75/month rollover should sit next to the $1 CTA. Repeating 'ends on' dates would be fake urgency. See deceptive.design/fake-urgency.

Steal this, honestly

Give a limited-time offer a real date.
Show the full price next to the trial price and the first-year price.
Put the post-trial monthly price on the trial card.

What to test: Dated offer vs undated 'limited time'. Measure conversion and how many people come back after the date.

Next: run it on your product

Apply this with your agent

Take the steps above into your own flow. The prompt carries this teardown, the honest-vs-dark line and the steps.

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

Pattern: Financial Times: The FT dates its offer and starts at $1
Bias: Urgency (deadline effect): A limited time to act prompts action now.
Why it nudges: The FT uses urgency with a named end date, and struck-through prices as reference points. The $1 trial also leans on present bias. Our visit from a UK address was redirected to US pricing, so UK prices may differ. Results are not public.
Our verdict: Conditional. Honest nudge if the offer ends on the 28th and the struck-through prices are real former prices. The $75/month rollover should sit next to the $1 CTA. Repeating 'ends on' dates would be fake urgency.
Source page: https://nudgeswipe.com/examples/ft-limited-time-offers-dated/ (JSON: https://nudgeswipe.com/api/teardowns/ft-limited-time-offers-dated.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.

Open in ChatGPT Open in Claude Open in Grok Open in Cursor

ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Cursor open with the prompt filled in (it is also copied, in case the prefill doesn't load). Gemini and Codex don't support prefilled links, so the prompt is copied and the app opens; paste it in.

Sources

Our capture of ft.com, 16 Oct 2026
Inman & McAlister (1994), Do coupon expiration dates affect consumer behavior? Also Shu & Gneezy (2010). doi.org/10.2307/3152229
deceptive.design: fake-urgency

The FT dates its offer and starts at $1

Why it nudges

Conditional

Apply this with your agent

Related teardowns

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