You have to keep in mind that: many potential buyers are antsy in their chairs, they are tired, they are bouncing from site to site, they want info now(!), they are not on their nice comfy couch kicking back….

They. the readers, the potential customers give the final vote!

I go by what THEY say.

Now, there is an exception to that: entertain them, and give them free tips along the way down the page.

I have a long sales page for my copywriting services (thelist.fm/sellmore.htm), but I break it up with pictures, humor and a free tip here and there.

I think long sales pages should do that.

Other than that, since so many do not like long pages, do NOT have them!

Isn’t that the bottom line?

Chris Nodder of Nielsen/Norman Group is now working with me to try to sift through the research results that prove long copy is most effective and to see how they compare to the usability studies of NN/Group that advocate short copy.

Want to know what we find out?

Dana

Found this quote in an article which neatly sums up the debate for me:

“Long copy sells better because it provides an interested consumer with all the information they need to make a purchase decision. If they aren’t interested, then they probably won’t see the advertising so it doesn’t matter if the copy is long or short.”

The key point is to provide all the information buyers need to make a purchase decision. Most websites fail at this.

From my experience the most ardent supporters of short copy are designers and ad people who are more concerned about how the marketing piece looks rather than how much profit it can pull in.

If you’d prefer your marketing to be profitable rather than “cool” or “creative” I’d err on the side of long copy.

Andy Jenkins of StomperNet recently wrote on the subject of sales copy (http://www.stomperblog.com/2008/10/01/lazy-skeptic/). In it he outlined what it should contain and in what order. I think if you can accomplish it with less, all the better. Our blog posts, articles, etc are all getting shorter to deal with the attention deficit of readers. Why shouldn’t our sales copy?

Testing on long and short web copy performed by Marketing Experiments (
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/long-copy-short-copy.html) showed that long copy came out ahead in many instances. However, it also brought up several important facts and ideas:

** The conversion of long eventually died off.
** The shorter page also performed better at the start.
** Short copy deals with short attention spans
** Short allowed for better sales presentation

Perhaps the most interesting what that avoiding the longer stuff helped separate your copy from the sleazy, marketer, scammy type copy.

Personally, I detest the long, highlighted copy. If I’m on the page, I either hit the back button in my browser as soon as I see it, or I already want the product and page all the way to the bottom for the buy button.

I don’t want to know how it worked for Joe Blow in Timbuktu. I want to know what a product does for me and why your product differs.

The result of being desensitized and deeply associated with the marketing process??

Angie Haggstrom
Freedom Freelance

You mention long vs short for different audiences, but I think (e.g. opinion, not evidence) that task matters more. When you are jumping into a block of content with a simple, known-item task, short copy that provides the ‘answer’ is fantastic. And when you are exploring and learning and building up experience, long copy is more useful.

(I wrote about this from a design perspective here: http://boxesandarrows.com/view/four_modes_of_seeking_information_and_how_to_design_for_them)

The context, of everything, is important…