I was at the SIPA Washington conference this week, chatting with colleagues in the publishing industry about this and that, but mostly landing pages.

A lot of people seem to think of the web as a fast-moving, short-attention-span place where quirky people with ADD are blazing from page to page as fast as they can click.

In order to grab these people, the story goes, you need short sales pages that get right to the point without a lot of text. And God forbid you make them scroll.

I’ve not found that to be the case, and almost every person I spoke with who had tested long vs. short copy found that long worked better. (One person said his test was inconclusive.)

This applied to landing pages and to email copy.

Obviously you need to follow basic copy writing rules. Headlines should offer a compelling benefit. There should be a clear call to action. Etc. Etc. (More on that later.)

But when people are interested in a product, sometimes they want to read about it for a while and get comfortable before they buy.

In direct mail, some companies use very long copy. Like 18 pages. (I’m not kidding.)

So don’t be afraid of a long sales page. Use Google’s Website Optimizer to test long vs. short and see what you can get. (If you don’t know how to use it, there’s plenty of good help on Google’s site, and there are some youtube videos about it. Or you can ask me.)

And oh yeah. The other thing is this idea that a page has to look “professional.”

It seems there ought to be something to that, right? Who wants to buy a product from people who can’t even make a decent web page?

OTOH, have you looked at Craigslist recently?

I’ve tested pretty vs. ugly, and often ugly wins.

It may be that I’m trading short-term sales against long-term trust in my brand.

Maybe, but I’m not convinced. I think the “you need a professional design” thing is promoted by the graphic designers.

Except …. You do need to make your site “professional” when it comes to usability. I don’t think you need lovely colors and a crisp layout. But you do need to put things where people expect to find them, and you do need to make it easy for your visitors to use your site.