Word count vs Effectiveness.

I was wondering what people thought about the correlation between word count and effectiveness of your sales copy and basic content articles.

I actually had a poll about this on a different forum and the results were like this:

Articles:

200-400 words: ****
500 words:*****
600-1000 words:***

Sales pages:

100-500 words: ***
500-1000 words: *****
Over 1000 words: *****

It seemed like articles between 200-500 words were better for average site content, reviews, and conversion articles but when they got longer they performed a lot worse. I'd assume this is because they got repetitive or boring along the way.

The sales pages seemed to be the best between 1000 and 3000 words according to the examples I showed. Granted, a quality sales page won't simply tell someone how amazing something is but go into a lot of detail.

Does anyone think this is fairly accurate?

 

I think sales pages should be fairly short and too the point, so between 100 - 500 words. That depends on the content, however. If it is a basic sales letter, then short and informative is better. If it is a sales letter that is written more like an article or commentary, then 500 - 1000 words.

As for articles, I personally prefer writing in a 500 word format, as it is usually a good number to lay the info out, without having to provide filler, or skimp on creativity or effectiveness. But it depends on the topic, and something it will need to be shorter, or much longer.

 

I think I'm going to split test a couple sales pages just to see what happens. I'll have one 400 words and one 800 words.

I'll post back here in about a week.

 

I've read that the more expensive your product, the longer the sales letter. The reason being it takes more to convince people to part with a large sum of money. I haven't tested that so I don't know if it's true.

 

That makes sense. I think that the attention span of the average netizen is fairly short, so in most cases I would say that short is sweet, but I agree that if you are selling something expensive, people will want to do more research before they part with their dollar bills.

 

As long as you cover what needs to be covered, you should be fine with a shorter piece. Though yes, if you're selling something more expensive do a longer piece.

 

Length doesn't matter in the least when the copy or the article is provocative and highly relevant to what the reader feels, wants, needs or thinks.

 

The strength of your first 100 words is far more important than the length of the piece. It's within that space that you capture readers or send them running. If you can't keep them reading, it doesn't matter how great your points are at 200 words in.

Get right to what's relevant to the reader. They should be shown immediately what they're getting and why they should care. If you pull that off and deliver on it in a logical fashion, they're yours for 200 words or 1,000.

 

I think that we could go around and around about how long an article should be. The truth of the matter is, with different niches (and thus different prospect groups) the size of the article would have to vary drastically to satisfy everyone. That is why you should always be doing some type of testing, preferably split testing, but progressive testing can also give good results.

I have found that unless you are a complete PPC campaign, or truly magnificent at viral campaigns, you are going to have to have a little SERP love, even if it is a sales letter. If you totally abandon SEO article length guidelines, you will have to back link campaign all the harder.

Yahoo tends to like articles longer than Google for some reason I have found, with Google loving it at around 7-800 words and Yahoo at a whopping 1000.

If the conversion rate of your copy is outweighed by the SERP traffic then go with the SERP love. If the longer articles are however, killing your conversions to the point that the SERP traffic is not replacing and supplanting it with further conversions, then cut them down. Remember, even an article can have a conversion rate, it doesn't have to be a sale.

The only way you will know is by testing. just make sure to use a writing style that allows you to jump between article lengths effectively. this can take practice, especially, if like some of us, you have a tendency to give simple answers in a very long format. lol.

 

Whatever be the length, the content should be informative and be able to get the message across to the readers.

 

There are countless occasions when I had to add lots of fillers. At times clients come up with strange requests. I cite an example:

The article should be of 500 words and contain a minimum of 8 paragraphs. The first and the last paragraph should contain the keyword 2 times and the other paragraphs should have the keyword once.

Now comes the clincher...

Each article should be rewritten 2 more times and the meaning of each para should remain the same using different words and sentence structures.

It sounds simple, but try it out using a 4 words keyword and just 62 words per paragraph and you'll understand what I mean. One cannot get across any decent information under such demanding constraints, at least not me.

 

Is this an online sales letter or offline sales letter? As a few others mentioned, the recommended thing to do is test. All the hypothesizing and polling means nothing if the sales letter doesn't convert in the real world.

Online the question can be answered pretty easily. Simply create two versions of your sales letter and send equal number of viewers to each in real-time. And track which has highest conversions.

The off-the-market free utilities, split test buddy and copyclicks both would split your traffic 50/50 so you can direct visitors to separate offers in real-time. Split test buddy even tracked conversions of each page for you.

I just learned a couple days ago that Google's web optimizer does this for free too. Downside is Google will know if your page is converting or not and know if it is worth sending surfers over to the page or not. After all, Google wants their visitors to have the best experience possible. Sending visitors to a page that doesn't convert might not match Google's interpretation of a good online experience

Oh. Just because a rule of thumb says a sales letter 'should be' a certain length or certain structure, doesn't make it so in the real world.

I've had squeeze pages I was convinced would work best at converting visitors compared to long form sales letter, but was proven wrong through split testing.

And I've thought at times a long form sales letter would work best, only to be proven wrong there too.

The only way to know which will convert best for your offer is to test both. Long form and short form. Then there's no need for setting polls or asking others what they 'think' will work best online in sales copy.

Offline is a little different. Tracking direct mail isn't as easily automated.

You'll need to key each piece and track responses methodically to get accurate figures. Tracking by hand is not as easy as automating the testing online.

But still though, if you are meticulous in measuring offline results, it's better than guessing which approach will best work for what you are promoting.

And you'll know with certainty which of your sales letters converts best offline. Until you test and know for sure, you could be missing out on opportunities.

There are software apps designed for tracking direct mail conversions, none I know are cheap though. Hundreds and thousands of dollars.

I think Yanik Silver has a direct mail conversion tracking spreadsheet in one of his products though. I don't recall offhand which one. Good luck in tracking your offer -- assuming of course you're asking because you plan to do so and not collecting poll responses for an article or something -- lol

Andre

 

I agree. Hit your audience and hit them hard

Everything else is just candy to help them decide they're making the right choice to click yes... some products take only a few words (especially if they're free), others might take thousands if there's a lot of potential doubts involved

 

If you have a really great writing skill, less word counts also work

 

Oh, yes. I will agree with your poll. I am personally a content writer myself and can relate to this topic very well. While a very short article may not provide a reader with all the information he/she needs, longer articles can be quite boring and repetitive as you rightly put it. I personally prefer writing articles containing 500 words. They are ideal. These articles are neither too long or too short.

 

Best message in this thread, IMO .. and EMohrman did it with fewer than 100 words.

As an aside: I recently read Sugarrae's "original content" article on her very nice blog. While I feel that I am a good writer, that article made me write better. Now, before I begin an article, I ask myself, "Is what I am planning truly unique?"

If my answer to myself is, "No," then I either look for a unique approach or abandon the topic.

 

Assuming your pages tell the same story, I predict that your 400 word article will be better. Whether or not it "tests" better depends on the test.

My logic is, you will be weeding ineffective words. Besides driving your message, active verbs often require fewer words than do passive verbs.

 

Different bloggers different styles, Different readers - Differnet choices

Write as you like it. If you like to read it that way, its fine! You will find the readers who like your style ...

 

Hi guys -

You all have some really good points. I am not a pro but I am finding that I enjoy writing if I like the topic. But I have noticed that in my niche's if I go on a good writing spree, most of my articles end up being around the 500 word mark anyway, once I get my points across.

I do have one niche website in which I have had to put a lot of index page content on because there was no content at all for the search engines to find and my site was hundreds of places back if there at all. Once I added my content then things changed. However, I don't like having all that content on the home page. I feel it might bore my readers and it seems that my bounce rate has gone up a little bit though my page rank and serp has improved.

Are there any trustworthy VA's out there that can write solid content that any of you all know?

Thanks DP Community,
Paul Siragusa

 

I Would very much agree with Timothywcrane's point on testing.

I think as a general rule, and if you do not have any constraints imposed by the client, you should write a quantity that is no more or less than what is needed to pass the core message intended to the target audience.