MarketingSecrets.com Blog

Aloha John,

What I wouldn't pay to know the URL of the product you are testing. ;)

Jason
www.goldblogger.com

Hey Jason!

LTNS. Soon, grasshopper, soon. :-)

Aloha John,

Good, I am glad to hear that I don't have long to wait!

Aloha,

Jason "Qwai-Chang" Cain
www.goldblogger.com

This is an interesting point John.

Here's my 2c on why I think this is changing:

1) Sales copy are employing techniques whereby the user only has until an alloted time before the deal ends, or, sales copy is using techniques where there is emphasis on the "limited supply" - both technqies rush the user to "be quick".

2) Time. The internet is becoming a portal where our needs are being instantly met. If I'm in such a hurry to get something fixed and I read a sales copy that lists everything I need from the first couple of paragraphs I instantly go and purchase it without reading the rest (I'll probably check to see if they have some sort of guarantee on the way to the order page though).

3) The power of peer reviews. Sometimes when I've read something on a forum or have received an email from someone giving details about a product and the product provides something that I want (and the "peer's review" shows that it provided the "want" to them) then I immediately go straight to the order page (greater speed is seen when the "peer" has conducted a review using multimedic(!) tools such as Camtasia)!!

4) Interactivity?? I've heard it so many times that the less you get your customer to do (like click around the web site) the better... I personally don't know about this, but hey what would I know I don't even sell a product! However, as a purchaser of many products if the sales copy were interactive in some way (without making the client leave or go to other pages) it would keep me interested and therefore keep me reading the long copy!

5) Speed reading skills. I don't know about the rest of you but because I'm bombarded with so much information each and every day I've become a speed demon! Prior to my interaction on the internet it would take me several months to read a 200 page book, now it seems I can devour one in less than a day!! Maybe I'm evolving into a sophisticated web surfer??

Anyway there's some of my ideas to why this may be happening looking at it from my experiences.

Ryan

Hi John,

If what you're talking about is "the move" to multimedia Newsletters... Isn't this going back 4 years ago when everyone was trying to use Flash / Splash and other multimedia, only to understand that text works best?
Do you think now that because people now have faster Internet Connections multimedia - finally - is the way to go?

Nadav
www.websitenights.com

Interesting comments. I think Ryan's point on peer review is particularly valid. How many of us have bought a book from Amazon because it's got maximum results in the customer reviews? And vice versa!

Looking forward to hearing your results John.

cheers

P.

--
Pete Dickson
http://marriageandhappiness.blogspot.com

That is interesting. In my experience as an online customer I would try to find out about the product in the shortest amount of time possible. Those long sales letters always seem to be redundant and annoying to me. Now that I'm working on the other side I would love to see a solution to produce a shorter to the point sales letter that works. I'm going to try to keep up with this topic. This is good stuff.

The death of the mini-site? Say it ain't so, John!

Just don't keep that cat in the bag too long.

All the best,

Bill Hibbler
http://www.EcommerceConfidential.com
Tips, Tricks & Brutally Honest Product & Service Reviews

re: this part: "I am discovering some interesting things about how long visitors stay on a web page, how far down they read, etc..."

A year or so back I recall a product being touted that would allow marketers to add something to a sales page (java or dhtml?) that enabled them to activate a 'pop up' window when a specific section of a sales letter was reached/seen (scrolled down to) by the reader.

It's possible what John's using - to see how far down a sales letter visitors are going - may utlize a similar method. And if the results are time stamped to the (milli?) second, it would also reveal if the reader was actually reading the whole page from top to bottom or skipping down to the bottom almost immediately (for price/concluding bullet point/listed bonuses/p.s.'s/etc).

Does that jog anyone's memory (about that product from a year or two back)?

...and if this is too close to home, John, feel free to delete this post. My feelings won't be hurt..although I just *might* race over to rent-a-coder! ;)

-Steve Gill
"Thinking outside the cartoon box"

The trouble with testing "time on page" is that there are so many spiders out there that skew your results by requesting dozens of pages in just a few seconds.

Web log analysis tools are supposed to detect spiders, but having written one myself I can tell you that there are MANY MANY spiders that go undetected, and new ones pop up all the time.

Browscap.ini, probably the most definitive list of spiders for application developers, gets updated at least once a week with new ones. See http://www.garykeith.com/browsers/downloads.asp

John et al.,
I have had the same hunch. I remember the first long copy letter I ever saw, it was only 7 months ago. Since then I have seen dozens. After while as you land on the typical massive, bold red letter headline, blue background, alternations of normal and bold font - you just back 'cause you know what that is .... clever pushy sales mumbo jumbo. Also the use of bonuses is wearing thin, don't you think.

All of who have surfed for a while have become skimmers, how else would you deal with this overload, we are info-snacker, aren't we?

All the best from down unda,

Rafal

Hey Guys,

I'd say it's a case of the audience (our customers) suffering a small dose of overexposure and shutting down.

This doesn't mean to say that long form copy is dead in the water, It's just that as the market evolves along with the internet itself, then specific marketing tactics will have to evolve with them. (The principles of marketing will, however, remain eternal)

with the current use of flash7 to deliver streaming video I can see full length 'infomercial' style sales presentations being not to far arround the corner...

People like John just blow my mind with constant inovation and adaptation - I don't know where half of us would be without people like him being willing hand us these titbits.

LOL I got kicked off a forum at Ryze about half a year ago because I was requesting help for writing short, effective copy. People jammed down my throat that only long sales copy sells, and I disagreed, so I got booted. Thank you for speaking the truth about the attention span of web surfers. I'm looking forward to seeing your results and learning from them.

Hi John,

This is one of my favourite topics.

I don't think it's about long copy or short copy. I too am an avid tester and my results have shown that the optimum copy length is "just enough" and not too much. The sooer we get away from the Either-Or argument the better.

I can concur with you that it is important to see how far down the copy people are reading and how much time they are spending on the page.

As in all things, trends and patterns change over time and we must constantly monitor our test results.

Take care

John

Interesting teaser John, seems to me the number of
variables in testing such conclusions would be
massive --

For instance, niche market might matter - internet
marketing/money making versus hobbiests would
have different patterns I would think...

Also - wouldn't it matter the type of product or
service you were selling?

Direct marketers have been teaching us for years
the more expensive the product, the longer the
copy should be?

I won't even go into all the variables in designing
the sales page itself - a recent report from SWEPA talks about 60% percent improvement in
response from design aspects alone - leave any
changes to copy.

Certainly would be interesting to know how you
are taking into account all of these variables...

Cheers...

Jeff

Some of you are 'close'... kinda.

Patience... patience... :-)

-John

I know! I know! First, put nothing on your home page but a meaningless Flash presentation with a link to enter the site. Then, once they enter, they should see a "Welcome to My Website" message at the top of the page. Finally, put a cute picture of a dancing dog, a few animated banners and an order button. That should do it, right?

Just kidding. I'm not even going to guess. :)

Alice,

The secret lies within the proper use of dancing hamsters.

~John

Oh, I just love those dancing hamsters... the tune annoys the heck out my daughter and she stays away from my PC ;)

Geez John, Hamsters? I thought the secret would lie in the pop star kid from Romania!

For me, sales letters all come down to the product.

Crappy ebooks and courses with little value require a LOT of selling and persuading (did I say that out loud? JUST KIDDING... I know we all have a FEW of these), thus a long hyped up sales letter hitting many psychological buttons. These are the bread and butter of copywriters.

Membership sites like bmyers.com can sell well on content alone... just the article headlines.

With an effective presell, a headline and bullets are all that's required, IMO.

Hmm... infomercials that are engagng do well too.

Wait... no-one has seen an effectively delivered infomercial online?

Just wait :-)

Keith

Either way it really does not matter guys!

It will always always always come down to a simple test.

If Johns shorter copy outsells the longer copy - then yes, ofcourse, the short copy (or multimedia or whatever) will replace the longer copy. I WILL ALWAYS use the salesletter (or webpage) that gets the most sales. Period. Nothing else matters to me.

How short do you mean? I honestly do not ever see my salesletter being reduced to 1 or 2 pages... and outselling my longer ones which are 4 - 10 pages or more.

Hmmm, pretty entertaining..

I know it all boils down to the market that you're
selling to. I've been selling products online for
several years now, and I have one market that will
NOT touch a typical salesletter page, while yet in
another market, I can't survive without one.

Testing and knowing who your customers are, how
they think, act, play, run, jump or sit is the
ultimate marketing knowledge.

Combine that with innovative thinking, and even
more testing will always keep us ahead of the
game.

Patrick

Hi John and others,

Glad I stumbled on this, I was starting to feel like I was the only one who couldn't stand those long, long sales pages. Put it this way, I haven't been able finish (much less buy) anything from Mr. C.R.* in an awfully long time...

Aside from the time management aspect, that is business people need their info quick and accurate, the ultra long sales letter sounds a bit like the seller doesn't believe in the product and just HAS to convince you with one more paragraph how good his/her stuff is...

Frankly, it's about time, it's getting so that we can't tell one product from the other nowadays; is everyone using the same "Sales Page Generator" or what?

My 2cents, nice blog/site btw, I'll be sure to bookmark it. Thanks.

* Name withheld out of courtesy, if you don't know who, too bad...

A friend told me of your site.
That´s definitely what i was looking for.
I will surely recommend you.

Since I changed my web copy from a one page sales letter to a 40 page "diatribe" I have noticed my conversion rate increased dramatically..

With my product, people need a longer explanation about what they are getting (at least in my opinion) because there are so many wholesale guides, lists, and data bases of questionable content.

However, I look forward to seeing some methods and perspectives about how I could use a "short & punchy" method of selling my product.

There is an interesting article in MarketingExperiments.com about "Long vs Short Copy" You have to register to see it, but signing up is free..

http://marketingexperiments.com/searchresults.asp?keywordstofind=long+vs+short+copy

Regards.
Robert..

Hi John,
Great topic by the way.
This question does seem to create a lot of controversy. As I've seen on other (not as professional) blogs people just plain tearing into peoples intelligence because they disagree with someone.

Anyways, to get to the topic, I have to agree 100% with a comment by Patrick. It all depends on the product, the market and your consumer.

A short list of features can sell a PC headset. However, we all know it's just not going to sell a Internet marketing ebook.

I consider myself seasoned, not an "expert/guru", but seasoned. And honestly I never read a 30 page sales letter, no matter how good it is. Who has the time? I don't. But, like Jeff Paul says "you got to tell the story". But, if you can tell it in 15 pages, why bore your prospect with 30.

Personally, I have had greater response with 15 pages then 22. This brings me to a recent interview I heard with Michel Fortin, who always hits the nail on the head. As far as I'm concerned he couldn't have said it better, it went something to the effect of: "the Internet surfer/consumer is "click happy"". So, I agree, the more interaction a sales letter provides the greater pull it will probably have.

But again, if a seasoned Internet marketer wants a product their probably just going to buy it. And I highly doubt they will read the entire letter. On the other hand someone new to the industry just might need the entire 30+ pages to make an educated decision.

Thanks for a great topic of discussion.

All the best,
KB