Marketing Experiments offers advice for the most successful length of copy.

Many writers and designers find themselves under pressure to keep sales pages short. This pressure is based on the assumption that readers won't give you the time to read longer copy.

However, with short text the reader may be left with unanswered questions in his or her mind and feel uncomfortable about moving forward.

In a recent test, we analyzed a sales page for an online subscription service, and found that the addition of more information might help readers feel they had sufficient information to complete a sale.

For our test we created two new pages. One was a short version, providing only the essential points and benefits of buying. In the longer version, we added to the length by about 30 percent. We felt that the additional information we added would be helpful and reassuring.

Here are the results:

What you need to understand
The longer copy version resulted in an increase in orders of 80 percent.

The increase in orders was very significant. Our conclusions with tests like this are always somewhat guarded. One cannot take the results from one test and declare that one has established an immutable fact.

However, in this case the figures were certainly strong enough to support our belief that web site visitors need enough information to feel confident about making a purchase before making the commitment to do so.

You'll find a full archive of our test results and analysis within the MarketingExperiments.com Research Archives.

The Marketing Experiments Journal publishes primary test results from work with our research partners once every two weeks. Subscription to the Journal is free and gives you full access to both our archives and teleconference calls. Subscribe here.