>>Why bring up some other site?
Sorry for not being clear. "Drift" is the name of the messaging widget we use to support Kapwing's chat bot. If a user responds to the welcome message on Kapwing, they're automatically prompted for their email (kind of in a side bar to the message box). I feel like this makes the chat bot a bit more annoying to users who choose to respond to the initial message.
>> how does that fact justify using this particular dark UI pattern?
We just made a product call and decided that the benefits, both for us and for our users, of having a chat box outweighed the annoyance. When people have problems using our tool, they really want help, and it isn't that difficult for the rest of our site visitors to swipe away or ignore the chat box.
I disagree. Dark UI is manipulation of the user. For example, hiding 'X' buttons on pop-ups asking for a subscription. (Is refusing to pay for value provided a dark 'pattern' on the part of users?)
This pop-up does not manipulate the user. It is an honest value proposition. So is "Fifty Shades of Grey." I didn't buy it.
The manipulation in this case is that a naive user assumes there's a real person on the other end who has noticed them browsing the site and decided to take some time out of their day to initiate a conversation with them.
It's a classical sales tactics that builds on social pressure, here taken to a more dishonest level - the chat box was initiated by some code, in spite of what the text message implies.
Huh, okay. (Why bring up some other site?)
> Our website is a video editing tool, so we decided ..
I don't quite follow - how does that fact justify using this particular dark UI pattern?