Long Copy or Short Copy?

Over the next few posts I’d like to talk about sales copy

I thought the first thing I should cover is the great debate about whether you should use long sales copy or short sales copy.

Pardon the pun but the long and short of it is that they both have their places! The trick is knowing how and when to use them.

Let’s first cover exactly what happens when a visitor is searching for something online and finds your website.

Example:-

Joe is looking for the latest album by Cold Play. He goes to Google and searches either “Cold Play Latest Album” or “The name of the album”.

Great! He finds your site and you’ve done the right thing by directing him to the page that is selling the latest cold play album on your website.

Here you do not need to write a 10 page sales letter explaining the benefits of listening to their new album, you do not need to establish cold plays credibility as a good band or anything like that.

The visitor has already made a decision to purchase the album the only decision he has not made yet is who he is going to buy it from!

Here you would use short copy detailing what’s on the album, anything you particularly like about it etc. Not forgetting to mention your great delivery terms eg guaranteed next day delivery or your Iron clad returns policy. Etc…

On the other hand let’s say Joe was searching for “Music CD’s” here you would direct Joe (the visitor) to your home page where you would use some slightly longer copy detailing the benefits of purchasing music from you and why your site is “unique” clearly stating a compelling headline etc…

Now again you would not need to craft page after page of long copy to do this. But that doesn’t mean that long copy has no place on a catalogue or shopping cart style website. There are many places you would use long copy such as selling a loyalty or membership club to previous customers for example.

I’ll cover some of those areas later but for now let’s take a look at another scenario.

Mandy has a new puppy and she’s looking for information on how she can house train her new puppy.
Mandy goes to Google and searches for “How to House Train a Puppy”.

This time Mandy has not yet made any kind buying decision. In fact she is most probably looking for free information.  90% of all web surfers using search phrases indicative of searching for a solution to a problem are looking for free information. Mandy does not yet have her credit card in hand looking to buy your e-book or DVD etc.

In this case the copy required to take Mandy from a free information mind set in to an “Ok I want to buy the book”, DVD etc, needs to be a whole lot different and here in this scenario the long sales letter copy is the best way to go.

However, it needs to be done correctly and in the correct order. Good short copy will always out-perform bad long copy.

However, get your long sales letter right and you’ll be shocked at the difference.

In my next article I’ll cover the layout and format of a sales letter.

Many Thanks
Jon Stringer

Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments below.