There’s no escaping it – most clients scan, they never read the whole offer.
One would think this doesn’t apply to offers, since they deal with money.
One would be sorely disappointed.
I’m often reminded of Steve Krug’s excellent book on UX, “Don’t Make Me Think”. So here’s what designers already know, and what anyone building an offer should steal, listed in order of application:
- Miller’s Law: Human minds can juggle ~7 things before we start dropping them. Your offer? 4 bullet points, max.
- Fitts’s Law: The closer and bigger the button, the faster the click. Same for your call-to-action. Highlight what matters. Invest in making the next step obvious and frictionless.
- Aesthetic-Usability Effect: Beauty builds trust. Layout, language, and typography all matter. Good design is the quickest route to being taken seriously, precisely because it costs money. Don’t let your talent get drowned out by Google Docs’ gray spreadsheet.
- Jakob’s Law: People trust the familiar. Don’t reinvent the menu. Mirror some existing offer shapes they recognize—then make yours smarter.
- Hick’s Law: More options = more hesitation. Fewer alternatives = faster, yes. Curate, collapse, combine. Cut clutter and bloat like your rent depends on it.
Once you can answer the question “How have I made this offer easy to say yes to, exactly?” with a straight face, you know you are on the right track.