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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

About halfway through the campaign we figured out that of all variables that affect user behavior (design, usability, imagery, etc.), copy has the highest ROI

I thought I'd highlight this because it is true, apparently not obvious since everyone discovers it for themselves, and wildly actionable by many people on HN.

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As the other comments to your very helpful comment point out, the real art of writing copy on a website is to write it so that it fits the hurried reading style most people bring to websites. The webmaster who writes scannable, actionable text that actually answers the questions of site visitors will dominate competing websites.

For anyone confused about the meaning of the word 'copy' as used here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_%28written%29

But it takes someone with a good understanding of language to really test copy. If you put a designer in charge of A/B efforts, if all they have a design hammer, all they will see is design nails.

Interesting as well, because most people I know assume users won't read copy if their life depended on it

Maybe most people you know aren't writing copy the way tokenadult recommends above. He's absolutely correct imho. Send them a link to his comment, and try it and see.

Any idea or theory why that is? E.g., after reading sites like http://www.useit.com/ you'd think the only thing that people do is scan (not read).

Scanning and reading are not mutually exclusive. In my opinion (and as someone who leads testing at Adobe), scanning is a style of reading that has become more commonplace with the Web -- a medium that is extremely copy heavy (a good thing!). People who understand how to write copy know how to get their copy read. Generalizations like "nobody reads" serve to keep everyone down EXCEPT for the people who know -- based on data -- that statements like it are erroneous.

In my experience: This is true, but it's true for everything. They're still predominantly scanning your copy because they're trying to figure out if they're in the right place and what they should do. Would they be able to pass a test on your copy afterward? Maybe, maybe not. But they wouldn't be able to pass a test on any other aspect of your site either.

I imagine users going directly to a site like barackobama.com or xcandidate.com would be more inclined to read, not skim. It might be as simple as "this guy is running for President, maybe I should read this stuff."

People do scan, but certain words will pop out to them, or if they're styled in bold or italics.

bloggergirl: You are hell banned. Your comments are are marked dead on submission, and can only be seen by people who are logged in, and have "show dead" on in their profile. Open an incognito window or logout, and you won't be able to see your comments.

PS: I don't know what is the etiquette about letting hell banned users know, but from bloggergirl's previous comments, I don't see any reason for her to be hell banned.

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