There is no general right and wrong. It depends on the product or service offered and the targeted audience.

US Case Studies show that a longer copy usually performs better for high priced items, $500 and more. The opposite is true for freebies where you want to get the visitor to signup with his email address to get something for free to. In those cases is shorter better.

Another interesting fact is that women tend to read more of the copy than men. So if you want to generalize it, the copy can be a bit longer if you target women. Cut it down a bit, if you target men.

If you are serious into this topic, I recommend to get the Landing Page Handbook from Marketing Sherpa. I know, it’s almost $250, but it’s worth it. I bought it myself. It’s compact, straight forward, no bs and no clutter. As I said, only if you are serious about it, does it make sense to spend that much money. p.s. and yes I get commission if you use the link on my website. I linked to it on plenty occasions without affiliate link because I honestly recommend it, but I also have to pay bills soo.. take it as that.

p.s. The Email marketing benchmark guide is also good read and I am certain that you already have an account at e-consultancy and access to the UK benchmarks and stats (which are a bargain compared to the Sherpa stuff )

Cheers!
Carsten

[ Owner's edit I removed those links - if anyone is interested in the material they can be found on Carsten's site which is linked from his name. Sorry Carsten ]

It’s very true that I am the worst test case for this experiment, but I’ll be honest and tell you that in most cases it doesn’t matter what the product is – I simply wont read a page like thisregardless of whether it’s selling me SEO software or gardening tools.

I’d love to find someone outside the States who would convert from this form of copy. I’ve also heard that long copy converts, but I’m sceptical that this would be confirmed outside the US.

Best rgds
Richard

It was actually comment spam, and those were the URLs left in the website field. Appears to be the same basic behaviour – no HTTP referrer and you get ‘Website Under Construction’. Although right now I cant get this to redirect at all. I should have taken a look at the server headers when I first saw this

I’ve heard that long copy generally outperforms short copy, but the country differences would be interesting to analyze.

Cheers,
Peter

Do you have the full urls for the spam? Those which you posted are not the redirect urls used by the spammer. To make them not linkable wrap them in the PRE HTML Tag and exclude the HTTP ://

Its a medical product that we’re selling and long copy suits it to explain the advantages of it and how it solves a problem.

@Peter – It’s nice to get a copy writers perspective on this. I just feel that a fair proportion of all the long copy I see borders on spam. I also wonder what type of customer does long copy attract? My feeling is that long copy is quite well suited to ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes?

Have you done much long copy for the Irish market by any chance? Or do you have any figures for its effectiveness? It’s something I’v wondered about for a long time.

Rgds
Richard

The credible story normally looks at:

1. What is the Problem?
2. Why hasn’t the problem been solved?
3. What is possible?
4. What is different now?
5. What should you do now?

Reaching as many people as possible usually means approaching the ‘conversion’ from as many different angles as possible.

A spontaneous type personality may just read the first paragraph and buy, whilst a methodical personality type will want to read the whole page and maybe even more before they buy.

I agree that sometimes its gets a bit OTT, but there is value in long copy if you follow a tried and trusted blue print.

As for the long copy, not into it myself as scrolling takes effort.

Interesting view. I’m presuming from your site that your State-side?

Rgds
Richard