When emotions play a role, rationality goes out the window.

# Community of Trust — DHBW Karlsruhe with Michael Rasimus

Michael Rasimus: It isn't stupidity when people click on things like that. It's actually relatively natural behaviour. Nature has designed us that way so we can cope with everyday life.

Our brain is essentially a prediction machine in energy-saving mode. But that also makes us vulnerable to fakes and scams. We don't necessarily stop to think — the visual impression often decides things straight away.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So the first impression, probably.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly. The visual and the emotional impression.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: Dear listeners, welcome to a new episode of our Community of Trust podcast.

Today's topic is why people fall for fake shops and how eye tracking can help us understand why.

We have a fantastic guest with us today: Michael Rasimus, Head of the Eye Tracking Lab at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University, DHBW Karlsruhe.

I'm very pleased you're here, Michael. Welcome.

Michael Rasimus: Thank you very much for the invitation. Hello.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So, the Eye Tracking Lab at DHBW Karlsruhe investigates how people actually perceive websites, rather than just what they say they see.

And in online shopping, unconscious viewing patterns can often influence trust or whether someone abandons a purchase.

Michael, could you explain what eye tracking actually measures and why it is so relevant for online shopping? What exactly do you do?

Michael Rasimus: With eye tracking, we visualise people's gaze behaviour.

Many people are familiar with mouse tracking or web tracking. There, you analyse click paths or how someone moves the mouse.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: Those are the heatmaps.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly. We create heatmaps as well, but we also analyse what happens before the click — namely the gaze behaviour.

That allows us to visualise decision-making patterns very well and gain a lot of insights that people themselves aren't even consciously aware of when they're shopping online.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: How does that work technically? Are you measuring the eyes with a camera, or just the mouse pointer? The mouse probably isn't enough.

Michael Rasimus: No, the mouse pointer alone isn't enough.

It's an illusion to think that our mouse movement always mirrors the movement of our eyes.

Often, I first look around to orient myself and only then does the mouse follow.

That means eye tracking gives us different insights.

And the question is particularly interesting because new technological possibilities are constantly emerging, including through AI.

We still use the good old infrared system. It's very precise and originally comes from medical technology.

Some people may remember Stephen Hawking, the scientist who used his eyes to control his speech computer.

That technology needs to be extremely precise, and we use essentially the same principle.

An infrared beam from the eye tracker hits the cornea, the transparent outer layer of the eye. The reflection is then captured by the tracker.

Because the system is calibrated individually for each person, it can determine very precisely where that person is looking.

There are also camera-based methods using standard eye cameras. Those can provide useful insights too, but they are not as precise.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: That's really fascinating.

I have to ask again because I've never done this myself.

Do you conduct commissioned studies where representative groups come into the lab? How does that work?

Michael Rasimus: Yes, or we work with smaller qualitative groups.

Especially in usability and user-experience research for websites, you don't necessarily need a very large number of people to identify where barriers are or where users encounter problems on their way through to a checkout process.

The same applies to apps. How well does an app work? How smoothly can users navigate it?

We can analyse all of that through eye tracking.

And then there is also classic advertising effectiveness research, where we test advertising material and see how people actually respond to it.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So accessibility is also an area that overlaps with your work?

Michael Rasimus: Exactly.

With web tracking, for example, I want to see the click path until someone reaches a certain destination.

With eye tracking, I can also see nervous gaze behaviour — where someone is searching around and struggling.

I can see which decision paths people take, whether they use free-text search or certain intended click paths.

That becomes visible very quickly through eye tracking.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: Fascinating. I'm learning something new again.

I also read that fake shops deliberately use design, layout and visual stimuli to create trust before critical thinking even starts.

That's really our main topic today.

Are there typical patterns? Where do users tend to look first when they arrive on a shop page?

Michael Rasimus: To put the topic into context, fake shops today can use technological possibilities that simply didn't exist to the same extent in the past.

AI makes all of this much cheaper, easier and more automated.

Fake shops learn quickly.

What we used to do in neuromarketing — psychological optimisation of webshops — can now often be imitated through AI.

That makes it much more difficult for consumers to recognise differences or detect warning signals.

And in online shopping, especially during sales events such as Black Friday, emotions are often running high.

People may have been waiting for the sale for weeks.

At that point, they are no longer in a careful checking mode. They're in bargain mode.

Most people know that feeling.

And that makes us vulnerable because our decision-making becomes very shortened and automated.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So we're not even talking about dark patterns yet. That's another specific category.

Even completely legal shops, or shops operating in a grey area, naturally use emotions.

But coming back to the gaze itself: where do people actually look?

Let's say you want to buy a new piece of electronics. Are you first going to look at the energy-efficiency label? Probably not.

Michael Rasimus: No.

We distinguish between stimulus-driven and concept-driven attention.

If I'm looking for a specific device, that's concept-driven. I have a clear idea of what I need and where I want to go.

Stimulus-driven behaviour is different. There, I allow myself to be inspired.

I see a promotion and think, "Oh, that might interest me too," and then I'm guided somewhere because the stimulus has attracted me.

In principle, the classic checks we know from consumer advice still apply when we want to assess whether a website is legitimate.

We can look at the legal notice, payment methods, terms and conditions and all the things that are supposed to create security.

But some of those things can now be copied relatively easily as well — including trust symbols.

That's where eye tracking becomes interesting.

We can see whether someone merely looked at a trust symbol or actually checked it.

Was the seal linked?

Did the user interact with it?

What happens after the person notices that information?

Did they perceive it? And if so, what was their next step?

That is why eye tracking is so useful.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: We'll come back to trust in more detail in a moment.

But to understand the studies a little better: what tends to surprise you most?

Do people actually see what they believe they have seen, or something completely different?

Michael Rasimus: One of the interesting things is that people often think they checked certain things, but afterwards we can see that they didn't — or not in the level of detail they would have needed.

With fake shops, a major problem is that strong emotions are created.

Once that happens, people no longer question things as rationally.

The goal of a fake shop is often to get users into a kind of flow.

You can also think of nudges that gently push users in a desired direction.

The idea is to create as little friction as possible so there is no point at which the person stops and thinks: "Is this really legitimate?"

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So, essentially, get them to buy as quickly as possible.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly. Quickly, without distraction, straight through the checkout.

And sometimes the emotional stories are incredibly manipulative.

You also shouldn't look at the fake shop in isolation. You need to look at the social-media environment around it.

Ads often appear inside an environment people already trust — in their social feed, in between posts from friends and acquaintances.

That gives the whole thing an additional sense of trust.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: That was also raised at the German Consumer Day last year.

One of the demands was that ads for fake shops on Facebook and Google should be banned or at least tackled more strongly, because those platforms are often the channel through which people enter fake shops in the first place.

And of course the large platforms make a lot of money from advertising and don't necessarily have a strong incentive to stop it.

But it's interesting that your research confirms the importance of the whole customer journey into the fake shop.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly.

It's a kind of cat-and-mouse game, and the question is whether platforms should be held much more accountable.

Another point with social media is these emotional videos.

You may see an elderly man supposedly producing handmade figurines, and then the narrative says he's being attacked or forced out of business.

That triggers a protective instinct or a willingness to help.

At that point, people may no longer act rationally or critically. They may want to support the person and buy something.

Later, they may say: "I really should have noticed at that point," or "You could actually see that the video was AI-generated," or perhaps the person didn't even look consistent throughout the video.

But that is precisely the problem: trust is created.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: Or at least the appearance of trust.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly.

Sometimes a local connection is also suggested.

We're in Cologne, for example. A website may suggest that this is a local Cologne shop that is closing down after generations in business.

Or perhaps it's some artistic craft that supposedly needs support.

Or there is a very emotional personal story about why a shop has to close.

Then emotions come into play and rational thinking fades into the background.

In reality, it may simply be a fake shop, or at least a shop shipping from China rather than the local family business it claims to be.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: That's another version of it — you may actually receive something, but it isn't the local SME that supposedly has to close. The goods simply come from China under dubious conditions.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly.

The local connection is only associated or implied in order to create a sense of closeness.

You think, "I could even drive there if the parcel doesn't arrive."

But if I had checked the payment and delivery terms or the legal notice beforehand, I might have realised that the shop isn't in Cologne at all.

Then I might also discover that returns are extremely expensive or complicated.

Those should be warning signs.

But often we never even get that far.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So people don't really think it through. The visual impression already makes the decision.

The first impression.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly. The visual and the emotional impression together create the overall package.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: I think I understand it much better now.

I've seen that myself.

I'm still on Facebook — my children always make fun of me and say anyone over 30 is on Facebook.

And I get these ads for shops that look really good.

They look very professional, sometimes even like traditional medium-sized businesses.

But then you realise there is no proper legal notice.

If I stop and ask, "Who am I actually buying from?", then I stop.

But otherwise there are definitely things I might have bought because they look interesting.

So I'm vulnerable too.

Michael Rasimus: We all are. That's the problem.

That's why I would recommend not buying directly through the ad.

Go one step deeper and look at the shop itself.

And we'll probably come back to how you can research it properly.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: We've already anticipated quite a lot, but I'd like to go a little deeper into the psychological and visual mechanisms behind fraud.

People scan websites.

The first impression is decisive, emotions are triggered, and after that the critical questioning may never happen.

I hear this from friends all the time: "I bought there because the site looked so good. It looked so professional."

So not only emotionally appealing, but professionally designed.

At Trusted Shops, we've seen for years that fake shops copy our Trustmark, especially before Christmas.

They simply copy the graphic.

You can't click it. It's only an image.

But for many people, simply seeing it is enough. They don't even click.

Or there is no legal notice at all, or the legal notice contains nonsense — but users never get far enough to check.

So attention span is also part of this.

Why are we so easy to influence?

Michael Rasimus: That's an important point.

Again, it isn't stupidity when people fall for these things. It's relatively natural behaviour.

It's also how we're designed to cope with everyday life.

Our brain is a kind of prediction machine in energy-saving mode.

It tries to anticipate the next steps while using as little energy as possible.

The brain is relatively small — only around two to three per cent of total body weight — but it consumes around 25 per cent of our energy.

So it makes sense to save energy by using mental shortcuts in decision-making.

Imagine standing in front of a supermarket shelf with a huge number of options, or in an online shop with an enormous assortment.

You would never finish if you tried to process every single piece of information.

So we use mental shortcuts.

We say: "That seems good enough."

And most of the time, that works perfectly well in everyday life.

But it also makes us vulnerable to fakes and scams.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So I want to finish the decision quickly.

In a supermarket, that might mean taking the product at eye level instead of bending down to compare the cheaper one on the bottom shelf.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly.

Or choosing a certain brand because it acts as a trust anchor.

You think: "I've always had good experiences with that brand."

That's another shortcut.

Most of the time it works.

But when you're looking at a fake shop, those same shortcuts can lead you onto very thin ice.

Professional design, for example, automatically suggests trustworthiness or legitimacy.

That's a halo effect.

We associate the appearance with the quality of the underlying shop.

In everyday life, that often works. But with fake shops, it can become dangerous.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: And as you said, AI allows fake shops to copy highly professional brands very deliberately.

I've heard examples where an entire Otto-style shopping environment can basically be recreated at the press of a button in seconds.

And I assume they test what works well and then simply reproduce it.

That's also why we developed #trstd Login.

The strongest brands are particularly attractive targets for fake copies precisely because they're so well positioned and trusted.

Are there also typical gaze errors or gaze patterns that fraudsters deliberately exploit?

Michael Rasimus: There are definitely typical viewing patterns.

In our part of the world, people tend to scan from the upper left towards the right and then down.

If you think about Google search results, that used to be described as more of an F-pattern.

Today it may look more like a cupcake because Google Maps, ads and other elements interrupt the page.

But the general principle remains: attention drops as you move further down.

The content above the fold gets the most attention.

In search results, users often focus on the first few entries and may not go much further down.

Fake shops are designed around these same patterns — just like legitimate shops are.

Everyone wants to optimise usability and reduce friction.

Fake shops do the same, while hiding relevant information somewhere the user is unlikely to notice it, if they include it at all.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So by the time the important information appears, it's already too late.

I get caught at the top of the page and then stay in that tunnel.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly. That can absolutely happen.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: How would you recognise that in your data?

Does some kind of alarm bell go off in the eye-tracking data when someone trusts a fake shop?

Michael Rasimus: We can see what happens.

Not only where someone clicks, but also how the decision develops and what they look at.

Take the example of copied trust seals.

I can see that someone looked at it.

But what happened next?

Did they test whether there was a mouseover?

Did they check whether the seal was linked?

Just seeing it isn't enough.

With eye tracking, we can see the sequence in which people perform checks.

Were the important criteria checked early on, or perhaps not at all?

What is noticed, what is ignored, and what captures attention?

Emotional images and videos attract attention.

Colours and layout can also direct attention to exactly where the designer wants it to go.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: That means some of the classic consumer-centre advice can only go so far.

They often say: check the legal notice and see whether there is a commercial-register number.

My first reaction is: that can be faked too.

And as you're saying, many people never get that far anyway because the purchase impulse has already been created.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly.

That advice alone is no longer enough.

In the age of AI, creating fake shops used to be extremely labour-intensive.

Today, you can automate it: translate texts, generate images and videos, design complete shops, create social-media accounts and fake reviews.

It has become very easy and inexpensive.

And these systems keep getting optimised globally.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: And as soon as one fake shop disappears, another one appears immediately.

You simply can't solve that through laws alone.

That brings us to something we think is a promising answer: #trstd Login.

I don't know whether you've seen it yet.

We now have this switch button positioned prominently at the top of the site.

You activate the login and then see your personal #trstd Secret, so you know you're on the real website.

Would you say that's something new that moves in the right direction?

Michael Rasimus: Yes, definitely as part of a combination.

In neuroscience and neuromarketing we often say: same brain, same game.

The brain works very similarly in many different situations.

How do we create trust in everyday life when we're unsure?

We turn to people or organisations we already trust.

That is one mechanism.

Because so much can now be faked, you need a serious, trusted provider in the background that gives you reassurance.

The right approach is therefore a combination of sensitisation, reflection and digital competence, together with technical e‑commerce protection mechanisms.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: One question that comes to mind is agentic commerce.

It's the big hype topic at the moment. Everyone is talking about AI agents.

I also hear consumer-protection organisations discussing regulation around them.

But in some ways, agents could actually be helpful because they won't necessarily be misled by the same emotional patterns.

An agent can look very rationally at delivery time, price and other structured signals.

That's one reason we're developing the #trstd <protocol> with AWS — to provide genuine, machine-readable trust signals, essentially infrastructure for trust.

How do you see agents?

Is it positive that they are less susceptible to this kind of visual manipulation?

Of course there are other problems, such as prompt injection, where the agent itself can be misled through malicious instructions or false data.

But do you see the move towards agents as progress?

Michael Rasimus: I do see it as progress.

But again, it's a cat-and-mouse game.

You always have to keep optimising and stay on top of developments.

We need protection mechanisms that genuinely work and that we can rely on, because these things can become almost impossible to recognise at first glance when they are so easy to fake.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: I'd like to deepen the design and UX side a little more as we come towards the end.

We've learned that professional design can trigger a halo effect.

In other words, good visual appearance is equated with legitimacy.

And fake shops deliberately optimise for exactly that.

Then there are trust elements, buttons, reviews and fake reviews.

I see this increasingly: a page shows stars, but where do they come from?

Who is the source?

How was authenticity checked?

Is that another typical element?

Michael Rasimus: Absolutely.

In eye-tracking studies, we repeatedly see that people use those elements.

They look at them and notice them.

But they often don't verify them.

Take a quality seal from an organisation such as Stiftung Warentest.

People recognise the seal and remember the brand behind it.

But they may not remember the actual rating.

The details often don't matter very much.

The element itself is seen and initially increases trust.

If that element is fake, then we have a serious problem because the user is trusting the wrong signal.

The halo effect is something we know from many other areas of life as well.

Physical attractiveness, for example, can influence assumptions about competence.

Those are classic reaction patterns.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: I saw another court decision today about reviews where the shop didn't explain how authenticity was verified.

That's considered misleading as well and consumer organisations take action against it.

But again, laws and courts don't help much when the fake shop is somewhere in China or nobody knows where it is actually based.

Even if you manage to shut one down, the next one can be online a second later.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly.

And if we don't have other ways to assess things, then people naturally orient themselves around the elements that are available.

Add other triggers such as time pressure or scarcity — "only two left in stock" — and the effect becomes even stronger.

Those are dark patterns, although similar mechanisms are sometimes used by legitimate businesses too.

Marketers need to think carefully about how far they want to go with customers.

But the psychological effect works. A large body of research shows that people are susceptible to these mechanisms.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: Dark patterns are supposed to be addressed in the Digital Fairness Act, with a first proposal expected in November.

But you're laughing just like I am.

We create more rules for European SMEs that actually comply with them, more legislation and more opportunities for legal warnings.

Meanwhile, Chinese providers or outright fraudsters simply ignore them and may even gain another advantage.

Michael Rasimus: That's always the problem with fake shops.

If individual players don't follow the rules, you can create as many rules as you like, but that alone doesn't solve the problem.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: Can you see differences between user groups?

You said small groups can already be enough for certain usability insights.

But my daughter is 13 and obviously behaves very differently from my father, who's 84.

Are there differences by age or experience?

Who is particularly vulnerable from your perspective?

Michael Rasimus: There are differences, but broad generalisations are difficult.

Take people who shop online a lot.

They're experienced.

But that experience can also create risk because they may stop checking individual elements carefully.

Everything moves very quickly because they're used to the process.

Someone who is inexperienced may sometimes check more closely precisely because they have a higher level of mistrust.

We often call the younger generation "digital natives" and assume they're automatically highly competent.

I have my doubts about that.

Studies also show that they can click and swipe, no question.

They know how to use devices.

But recognising manipulation and reacting correctly still has to be learned and trained.

And then you have older people who now also have email accounts and regularly receive fraudulent messages.

The same principle applies again: same brain, same game.

We generally don't question everything we see, because everyday life wouldn't work if we did.

That makes us vulnerable.

The challenge is to learn where the right moment is to become cautious and say: "I shouldn't complete this transaction."

That's why we recommend taking a pause whenever the pressure increases.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: That's also something discussed in consumer policy — introducing a kind of reflection period to take the emotion out of the decision.

I don't think it's very practical to legislate that.

It's more a question of education.

Can you use your research data to detect fake shops earlier?

Can we derive something from the patterns you observe?

Michael Rasimus: We can identify classic patterns.

But the more fake shops imitate legitimate ones, the harder it becomes.

Still, the idea of deliberately taking a pause is useful.

The more emotional I become, the less rationally I tend to think.

So the first step is to pause.

Then ask: why is this making me so emotional?

Reflect on the situation.

Then get an overview.

Perhaps run a search to see whether anyone has already warned about the shop.

Are there lists that identify it as suspicious?

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: There's also the Fakeshop-Finder from the consumer advice centres.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly.

Or simply do a horizontal comparison.

What other offers exist?

Does the price make sense, or is something clearly wrong?

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: Of course, that's all quite a lot of work.

And without making this too much of an advertisement, that is exactly why we've developed #trstd Login.

The idea is to reduce the complexity.

You have a switch button.

You've registered once.

Then you check whether you're on the genuine website.

It's essentially one click.

And if you have the app installed, you can receive a notification and know you're really on the authentic site.

That's especially useful for brands that are frequently copied.

Michael Rasimus: Yes.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So perhaps one final question.

If you could wish for one thing, how could online shops or platforms use your research to protect consumers better?

Michael Rasimus: As I said earlier, I think the best solution is a combination.

We should use the insights from research to build stronger user competence.

That means encouraging people to check things.

The method we recommend is: pause first, then reflect, then verify.

Take a closer look.

Don't order directly through an app or ad. Research the shop and check whether it is legitimate.

Use trusted lists and organisations that have already done part of the verification work.

And then combine that with technical e‑commerce protection mechanisms.

I think the combination of both is ideal.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: So, in simple terms, take some of the emotion out of the process and switch the brain back on.

Then not too much can go wrong.

Michael Rasimus: Exactly.

Be especially alert whenever a lot of emotion is involved.

Dr. Carsten Föhlisch: Michael, thank you very much for these fascinating insights into your research on human perception and decision-making — where we look in online shops and what role emotion plays.

What I've learned is that your eye-tracking research shows very clearly how fake shops work and why they can be so successful.

They catch me immediately on the first page, I switch off critical thinking, and perhaps all of us should consciously switch it back on more often and pay attention to genuine trust signals.

Dear listeners, that's it for today's episode with Michael Rasimus from the Eye Tracking Lab at DHBW Karlsruhe.

If you enjoyed the episode, give it a thumbs-up and subscribe to the podcast. We have more exciting episodes coming.

Michael, thank you again and have a safe journey back to Karlsruhe.

Michael Rasimus: Thank you very much. And thank you for the invitation.