Make Your Copy Longer: An Archive of Research-based Marketing Facts (opens in new tab)

As the previous comments, trends change, if you watch a TV show from 10 or 20 years ago, scenes last way way longer than the current ones (right now: 1-3 seconds between each cut!)

Even pages with long copy (Basecamp) have gone to a single shorter page.

A better alternative: Check sites with A/B tests and learn from them: http://whichtestwon.com/ http://unbounce.com/a-b-testing/shocking-results/

tl;dr: YMMV

A nice collection of possibly handy tips, perhaps to be viewed with similar scepticism as a wikipedia page, but facts? The title article cites a book published in 1983 and makes no mention of any assumptions about geographic or cultural variances, never mind changes in attitude since the introduction of some little things like the web, social media, and always-on mobile internet. Much less ideas like customer-focused targeted marketing that didn't exist in 1983.

I'm sure there's a lot of truth in there, but really if something says it is "research based", it really ought to be able to cite some actual data, methodology and underlying assumptions.

I think in the sales funnel it also matters on timing. The latency of digesting the landing page or offer at first should be thin and minimal, but once someones in your funnel heavy copy is great as the attention is there and you can only sell them harder...

Another classic site on copy, and direct marketing: http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/

There is already a bit of negativity in this thread, but personally I found such a list to be quite interesting.

I don't think anyone in their right mind is going to take every little fact as gospel, but the writer has saved everyone time by providing a nice summary and a link to the text in which the facts were discovered. From there you can make your own decisions.

Neat, but given the site's tag line, I find it ironic that most of the source links appear to be non-functional.

Some nice finds here, but there's an issue. The conclusions are served completely isolated from the kind of people the research was done with.

We're not all the same, we don't all react the same to the same traits of your marketing efforts.

Certain kind of people will become convinced your product is good if you make them watch a 30 minute marketing video without a way to control or skip the video. While others will quickly roll their eyes and close the page.

Certain kinds of people like discounts and coupons (irrationally, as the site says). Others despise them (maybe also irrationally) and would never shop from a place whose message is "barrel bottom bargain products".

First rule of marketing - identify your target. Get to know them. Research what those people like and don't like. It can get very specific, and it's just as much cultural (if not more) as it is psychological.

If you follow a list of generic tips, you'll end up targeting an artificial construct, a Frankenstein monster whose sum of traits are supposed to represent "the average man". However, targeting the average man can only achieve average results.