Do Long Form Web Pages Work?

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

I hate them, but, you do see a lot of these long web pages, selling the next best internet tool, app or get rich quick scheme.

Do they really work?

More importantly, would they work for a traditional product or service?

 

[PipeTen-Carl]

Long page formats seem to work well when you've got little to say or you're selling few products or services. I think there's still benefit to multiple pages where you have enough content for each page to ensure reasonable content density vs. design.

 

[vhjay]

I don't particularly 'mind' long form sites, and am actually about to launch a new site using a single-page design for the first time so will happily report back on my experience.

The only thing I'm really not a fan of is those with auto-generating content - i.e. pages that create more content as you scroll, so that you'll never actually reach the bottom. I find these types of sites a massive memory hog in my browser, and when deciding whether to trust a new merchant I instinctively scroll to the bottom to check out their 'about us' and 'terms' pages..which of course never show up due to the never-ending stream of content!

Jay

 

[123Simples]

My short answer would be no - 55% of visitors to any web page spend less than 15 seconds looking at it. If they haven't seen their answer within 15 seconds, then they surf elsewhere.

 

[Nuno]

My short answer would be no - 55% of visitors to any web page spend less than 15 seconds looking at it. If they haven't seen their answer within 15 seconds, then they surf elsewhere.

So converting the remaining 45% is of no interest? Of course you will lose part of an audience, it is the % audience you keep and convert that matters, and if long-copy sites didn't work people wouldn't use them.

 

[vhjay]

So converting the remaining 45% is of no interest? Of course you will lose part of an audience, it is the % audience you keep and convert that matters, and if long-copy sites didn't work people wouldn't use them.

Agreed. A good chunk of that 55% doesn't hang around because it's not 'real' traffic, I'm talking bots, crawlers, and people who clicked the wrong damn link on Google. Also, since most 'single page' sites still have a menu at the top to send you to various nav points in the page, navigation is actually much quicker for those trying to find info in a hurry.

Jay

 

[123Simples]

There are no experienced marketers—only experienced testers. Not my words ...
http://www.exacttarget.com/blog/optimal-website-length-long-copy-vs-short-copy/

Now what that quite means I'm not sure - my point I was trying to make is a website or webpage is not about how long or short it is, but whether or not that web page converts to money in your hands. But I take your point Nuno

 

[Carl Barlow]

There is no one size fits all for sales pages, I would split test a long sales page and short to the point offer. In my experience it's also a factor, based on the sale price of the item, the higher the price, the more copy will play a part in the sales page. I wouldn't expect a huge page selling me a £1 trial for something, but when I book a ticket for an event thats say £997 I want more detail.

Finally writing the copy in a way that allows for a user to skim to get the gist of what it says will really help too.

Hope that helps - oh and personal taste for me is I hate them, I skim to get the detail I want to make a decision. But I market to my target market not what I like

 

[amac]

Long page formats seem to work well when you've got little to say or you're selling few products or services. I think there's still benefit to multiple pages where you have enough content for each page to ensure reasonable content density vs. design.

I think long-form is relevant but it depends on the situation. I would encourage you to look at the usability perspective. Folks like Jakob Nielsen have written extensively about this.

 

[alexjamesbrown]

SEO is also a consideration with long form sites - if all the information is clumped together on one page, crawlers have a hard time assessing what it's actually about

 

[Nuno]

Yes. And I remember someone saying the crawlers had trouble scanning long lines of code because they weren't good at scrolling.

 

[alexjamesbrown]

I think that has a lot to do with the code-text ratio of the page... a long form page, I guess would have a high code-text ratio (a good thing) unless the markup was messy, or tag heavy?

 

[Nuno]

I'll agree with "I guess.."