How OnlyFans Design Hooks You Up
Being a huge fan of behavioral psychology, I like to analyze popular apps design to see what techniques they use to attract and engage users. Today you will learn how OnlyFans onboards new customers, creates habit loops, drives our behavior, and hooks us up. Also, in this article I investigate OnlyFans design and mechanics but not its influence to people’s lives (that’s another story). Get on board! 👇
OK, you’ve heard about it. Almost every media including NYT and Financial Times have already written about OnlyFans. It’s a content subscription platform that allows you to create and earn money. Sure, you can post any kind of content you want (there are accounts of fitness coaches, chefs etc), but let’s be honest — nudes are the fuel of OnlyFans.
Sign Up
Everything starts with the sign-up screen. And I’ve got a feeling I’m back to the 2010s. This kind of web design was was a blast that days. Smartphones mock-ups on the left, sing up form on the right — it’s kinda old school. OK, I’m not here to judge the visual design, my main goal is to understand more important aspects of design — interaction, user flows, and psychological methods. Because in my strong opinion, design is about how things work and solve problems, not how they look.
OnlyFans isn’t interested in design trends, that’s for sure. Is it bad? Well, it depends on your goals. Trendy design shouldn’t be the primal goal, it’s rather a method used to create great products. That’s how our brain works — good-looking apps are perceived as more trusted. I guess the OnlyFans designers know why people are using their service, and it’s not about the visual design 😏
It’s interesting how OnlyFans uses smartphone mock-ups while they don’t have any mobile app (App Store and Google Play won’t allow them to publish because of adult content). But the platform knows that mobile traffic is the most profitable nowadays, so they reassure users they can use this service on their phones even without the app.
Screenshots show interesting information — the number of registered users, creators, total earnings as well as other features — displayed as the part of the phone UI. These numbers work as the social proof, a heuristic that allows our brain to make decisions. If a lot of people are doing something, we are more likely to do the same thing. So, if 100M of people are already using OnlyFans, we perceive it as worth paying our attention and joining the club.
The sign-up form is pretty easy — you have to provide your email address, name and create password. You don’t have to verify your email right in a middle of the registration, that is good. OnlyFans' designers know the core of people’s motivation:
If you want people to do something, make it as easy as possible.
That’s the core of the behavioral theory by BJ Fogg. You need three things to nudge a person to do something — Motivation, Ability, and Trigger. Together they create an easy formula of human behavior. To do something, people need the desire, ability to do this, and a trigger that will nudge you to act. It’s hard to manage people’s motivation, but you can make the ability to do something as easy as possible.
So, if the email verification isn’t mandatory to create an account, it’s better to ask about it later. Let users start using your service as soon as possible. Also, OnlyFans allows signing up using your Twitter or Google account. That’s another way to make the registration process easier by providing more ways of how to do it.
First steps
After a short registration, we dive right into the feed. And w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶o̶r̶n̶?̶ it’s quite minimalistic. I said before I don’t want to check OnlyFans visual design (it’s a very subjective thing) but the app looks like a combination of Twitter and Instagram. The layout, color scheme, icons — it really reminds you of that popular social media. From some point it’s good for users. According to the Jakob’s Law
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
So it’s easy for new users to understand the navigation and start using the website. On a desktop the website looks a little weird as the layout scales from the mobile instead of adapting to bigger screens.
Feed
The feed is quite minimalistic. You can see a list of the latest posts and a small slideshow of suggested accounts to follow on the right. OnlyFans doesn’t use special techniques to nudge users to select a particular account. From the small banner you can only see the account name, avatar, cover image but not the number of subscribers and posts. They are typically used to help people make decisions — the more followers a person has, the more likely you will follow them too. Or at least check their profiles that also leads to increasing the possibility of following the account.
And here we can see something interesting. Alongside with likes and comments under the post, there is also a ‘‘Send Tip’’ icon. Clicking on it, we can see a popup that allows to send money to the post author. It’s easy to donate on OnlyFans once you’ve added a card — provide amount, add an optional message, and you’re good to go. As we know, making an action easy to do, you’re increasing the chance that the action will be performed. As the monetization is the core of OnlyFans, designers made this process quite simple and easy to drive users pay more.
Creator Profile
That’s an important screen where a user makes a decision — should I subscribe to this author and spend my money or not. On OnlyFans like on Patreon to see someone’s content, you have to subscribe first. It can be free or paid subscription, the author decides it, OnlyFans puts them in charge of their earnings. How much would it cost, would it be a single subscription or a set of bundles — you decide it.
So how to decide who to follow? You can’t see the creator content until subscribed, but you can see their avatar, cover, the numbers of subscribers and posted content, and a bio. Then it’s an author job to think how to attract potential subscribers. Generally they use erotic selfies, teasing descriptions, Spotify playlist. The number of subscribers works as the social proof — the more people follow someone, the more likely the other people will follow them too.
The blocked content is a powerful incentive itself. If something isn’t available, people tend to want it more. Curiosity drives people’s behavior. Another psychological effect takes in place — variable rewards. You don’t know what’s hidden and that also nudges you to subscribe and discover it.
Subscribe
When you click ‘Subscribe’ you can see a popup with a list of benefits why you should subscribe. That’s a good approach to keep users motivated and help them to make a decision.
And when you want to unsubscribe, they ask you the reason. Nice way to analyze users retention and get some analytics.
Messages
Looks like Twitter, but don’t mind. What’s interesting, that for a certain accounts I followed to write a direct message I had to add a tip first. That’s an extra way for authors to monetize their activity.
Add Card
You can’t do much on this website without paying. OnlyFans kindly reminds you about it and offers to add a card to be able to subscribe to a paid account, send tips and so on. The add card screen looks… well, you understand what you have to do here. The platform autocompletes your location and email, making it easier to fill out the form. There is a nice notice in the bottom that in a card statement these transactions will appear as ‘OnlyFans’.
Preferences
Quite simple but take a look at the ‘Your Cards (to subscribe)’ and ‘Add Bank (to earn)’ menu items. That’s a good way to explain your users why they have to do something from the perspective of users’ benefits. It’s bizarre but to add bank details you have to upload your avatar image, cover image and provide some bio first 🤷
Why it’s successful
Actually, there is nothing special about OnlyFans design, so why it’s so popular? The audience has grown from 20M users in 2019 to 120M in 2020, that’s quite impressive. And there are several reasons for it.
First, it’s a content subscription platform that allows porn. Patreon, Substack and others are the modern way of content monetizing. It’s like an Uber that removes the middleman and allows anyone to get a ride or be a driver. OnlyFans’ author decides what to post, when and what price to put on it. And, unlike Patreon, OnlyFans allows you to post adult content and get paid for it without a studio fees.
Second, OnlyFans authors usually post content you can’t find on other platforms. That provides the feel of uniqueness and privacy. It’s called the scarcity effect, another heuristics where people place a higher value on an object that is scarce. Limited offers, invite only (Clubhouse, ahem), unique photos — that’re well-known methods used to increase users motivation. Plus, OnlyFans creators often post homemade photos or videos creating the feel you’re viewing the author’s real life. It’s not a stylish studio photoshoot, it can be a photo captured right after waking up on an iPhone. It’s something rare, something personal, true and people are ready to pay for it. You can easily find free porn on the Internet, but OnlyFans takes it to the next level making it feel intimate and special.
Third, the pandemia helped OnlyFans. A lot of sex workers left without a job as the studios were closed, and OnlyFans was a good opportunity for them to keep earning money. Also, because of the quarantine, people spend most of their time at home and saved some money. OnlyFans connects these two audiences and earns good money on it.
Fourth, a lot of media has written about the phenomena of OnlyFans, increasing the interest in the platform. Especially, when people read success stories of Bhad Bhabie who earned a million dollar in 6 hours and others. Also, celebrities like Cardi B and Bella Thorne joined OnlyFans promoting this service to their huge fan base.
Fifth, despite the not-top-notch visual design and lack of interesting approaches used (compare with Tinder or TikTok), OnlyFans is successful providing good monetizing solutions (£281 revenue in 2020). That actually solves users problems — how to get paid for their content.
Overview
OnlyFans is a content subscription platform that allows you to post adult content and earn money. They don’t seem to put design in front nor use much of psychological techniques to hook users up. Anyway, they do have millions of active users who bring huge money to OnlyFans.
Does it mean that you don’t need a modern design to create a popular product? Well, no. OnlyFans succeeded a lot because of adult content, access to unique materials and pandemia. If they got more competitors, a good design (both visual and interaction) would be a thing to consider.
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