R7 — Treat every public number on a client site as an anchor; design accordingly

Rule: Treat every number a client puts on its public website — calculator output, "starting at" price, instant quote, project budget range — as a behavioural anchor that will pull all later customer expectations toward it. Design copy and follow-up conversation choreography around that fact, not around the hope that the customer will "be reasonable."

Why: Anchoring is one of the most robust findings in behavioural science (Anchoring effect (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) — the first number presented becomes a reference point that pulls all later judgments, even when arbitrary); adjustment away from an anchor is typically insufficient even when the anchor was arbitrary. The practical failure mode is the $8,000-online-estimate → $12,000-real-quote case: the seller is climbing out of a hole they dug themselves.

How to apply:

• Default to ranges instead of point estimates (R2 — Default to a directional range, ungated, with a loud "this is a ballpark" — not a precise gated quote).
• When a point number is unavoidable, make the range it sits within visible at the same prominence.
• In sales-handoff documentation, prepare the follow-up conversation for the upward adjustment — never let the customer first encounter it as a surprise.