But you're not being honest and up-front about the fact that it's a focus group.

If it was like "Click here to take a survey about what features you most want in an email service" that would be one thing, but that's not the messaging in your case.

Effective focus groups aren't up-front or honest either. Effective experiments don't tell the person what the experiment is.

But they at least tell you that it is an experiment. Maybe we need human-subject ethics boards for marketers.

Just knowing that it's an experiment defeats the purpose. By getting honest responses and behaviors, it is easier to build a solution that people actually need or would actually use.

And at the end of the entire process you've wasted their time with a nonfunctioning product.

Focus groups et al. are consensual. This is deceptive.

Note we call it a "Demo" right on the landing page - we made no promises up-front, and had no intention of deceit.

Demo means "demonstrator". Usually you use it to demonstrate (show) what your product can do. If it doesn't, you show them something that doesn't exist, and it's more of an illusionist show than a real demonstration.

Focus groups can be wrong.

"Yellow Walkman" story is appropriate http://www.alexandercowan.com/yellow-walkman-data-art-of-cus...

"The moral of the story is that you need natural behavior for quality observational learning."