A perfect example of A/B testing and its effects and limitations. The article reports that it is less comfortable for users to use but increases sales. It also reports that this may or may not decrease sales in the long term but in the short-term it works great.
Less comfortable but maybe less fatiguing? I know when our Costco cart gets hard to move it's time to go. Next we'll get hybrid carts with electric assist.
This blog is a good example of it. I had to scroll two screen heights worth of sales pitches to get to the content, and finally dropped out at the newsletter modal.
This is harder to measure, but it's certainly felt.
Yes, human is easy to be manipulated with enough tricks. The brain is such a mysteria.