// description
Jakob's Law states that users spend most of their time on other sites, so they prefer your site to work the same way as those other sites. Familiar conventions — shopping cart icons, form field layouts, navigation placement — should be used unless there is a compelling reason to deviate. Innovation in interface design carries a cognitive cost to the user, and that cost must be justified by a proportional benefit.
// history
Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, articulated this principle based on decades of user testing data. It reflects the broader psychological concept of transfer of learning, where skills and expectations developed in one context are automatically applied to new contexts.
// example
An Etsy seller who also runs a Shopify store experiments with an unconventional checkout layout — putting the cart summary at the bottom instead of the right side. Customers who have shopped on hundreds of other Shopify stores all expect the cart on the right. The unconventional layout causes confusion and slightly higher cart abandonment, not because customers dislike it, but because their years of experience on other sites has trained them to expect a specific layout. Reverting to convention immediately improves conversion because it reduces cognitive load at a high-stakes moment.
// katharyne's take
Jakob's Law is the reason I tell creators to be very conservative with their shop and sales page layouts. Save your creative energy for your product and your brand voice — the navigation, the checkout flow, and the product listing structure should follow established conventions because that's what reduces friction for buyers. The places where you should absolutely be original: your cover designs, your copywriting, your product concept, your Midjourney aesthetic. The places where convention is your friend: anything the customer has to navigate to make a purchase.
// creative uses
- Apply Jakob's Law when choosing a Shopify theme: buyers who land on your store from Pinterest or an email link already know how Shopify stores work. The highest-converting themes are the ones that feel most familiar — header with search and cart, product images on the left, buy button on the right — not the most visually distinctive. Save distinctiveness for your brand colours and product photography.
- Use it to audit your Kajabi or Teachable sales page: is your price visible in the location buyers expect (near the top, near the CTA button)? Is your buy button the standard CTA colour (high contrast, obviously a button)? Is the course curriculum visible before asking for a purchase? Unconventional sales page structures cost conversions even when the copy is excellent.
- Apply Jakob's Law to your KDP listing structure: buyers who browse Amazon have strong conventions about what information appears where in a book listing. Page count near the top, format options clear, editorial description before reviews. When you structure your listing the way Amazon's best-converting listings are structured, you benefit from the pattern recognition buyers bring from every previous Amazon purchase.
// quick actions
- Open your Shopify store, Etsy shop, or sales page and ask: is there any element that a buyer would need to think about for more than one second to understand? If yes, that element violates Jakob's Law. Navigation labels, button names, and checkout flows should require zero thought. Move every ounce of creative energy to your product and copy, not your UX.
- Before building any new sales page, spend 20 minutes reviewing the structure of three highly-rated courses in your niche on Kajabi or Teachable. Note where the price sits, where the curriculum appears, where testimonials are placed, what the CTA button says. These conventions exist because they convert. Follow them first; differentiate second.
- Check your Etsy listing photos for convention compliance: photo 1 should be your primary product image on a clean background (this is what every buyer expects first). Photos 2-3 should show detail or lifestyle. Photo 4-6 should include key information. If you've put an infographic first because it looks interesting, Jakob's Law suggests testing a clean product image first instead.
// prompt ideas
Apply Jakob's Law to my [Etsy shop / Shopify store / course sales page / Gumroad product page]. Describe the conventions buyers bring from the most popular sites in this category — where do they expect to find the price, the buy button, the product details, the returns policy? Then compare those conventions against my current layout and tell me where I'm violating them.
I want to design a custom [landing page / sales page / course enrolment page] that feels distinctive but converts well. Using Jakob's Law, help me identify the 5-6 structural conventions I should absolutely follow (because buyers expect them) vs. the design elements where I have genuine creative freedom without hurting conversion. Give me a "safe to customise" and "follow convention" checklist.
Buyers on [Etsy / Amazon KDP / Gumroad / Teachable] arrive with strong mental models from hundreds of previous purchases. Walk me through the exact mental model a typical buyer brings to [describe your platform] and tell me: which conventions in my current [listings / page] might be violating their expectations without me realising it, and what the standard convention is for each.