Does Your Website Follow This Wrong Advice?

Redesigning your website can be a lot like becoming a parent; everyone is eager to share their advice with you—whether it's good or bad. And unless you're extremely experienced in the online marketing industry, it can be hard to tell which is which.

One piece of advice frequently tossed around is that people won't read a lot of copy on websites. Keep it short, they'll say. Put everything into bullet points because the less copy the better.

To this advice I say, "Hogwash." People absolutely will read copy on websites, and lots of it, as long as you're smart about what you say and how you say it.

What Are Your Visitors Looking For?

Visitors to your website are there for a reason; they're not there just to browse around. They're looking for specific information. Maybe they're trying to determine if you offer the particular service they need. Maybe they want to know if you have the credentials to back up your claim. Maybe they want to know where you're located or your hours of operation. These are specific goals.

Your job is to help visitors easily accomplish those goals—with as much copy as it takes to get the job done: no more, no less.

The Best Websites Are Like Newspapers

Consider the low-tech newspaper. Most people don't read every single article. Instead, we pull out the sections that interest us (Sports? Business? World News?), and from there we skim through the headlines until we find an article that interests us. And then we stop and read that article.