Visual Website Optimizer’s interview (here) with direct response copywriter Jeremy Reeves is a dollars-and-cents example of how experimentation (in this case A/B testing) can yield better results than intuition.
I’d have thought short-form digital content and pithy calls-to-action would outperform longer variations, prior to reading Jeremy’s interview.
- That’s been my own experience with usability testing, as well as my own browsing/reading behavior online.
- And it also seems to be the overall trend in digital: Twitter and Youtube being two standout examples.
Yet real life is more complex. One long-form sales letter (all 50 pages of it here!) Jeremy developed for a client outperforms by 50% its short predecessor (a video, a few bullets, summary of the offer, etc) .
Personally, I’m skeptical. This sales letter evokes too many childhood memories of ads for Veg-O-Matics and Ginsu knives on late-night TV.
But I admire and respect the data-driven savvy of direct marketers like Lester Wunderman who built the market for performance-based advertising and paved the way for Google.
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