“How to’s” rule!

I have seen some testing done on the use of an ellipsis (…) in short character situations (ala AdWords) and it produced a substantial improvement in CTR. It’s from the guys over at MindValley Labs
http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/marketing/google-adwords-tips-an-awesome-new-formula-with-impressive-results/

Yeah, with a catch sentence to lead the readers to the full text version, I am pretty sure the “conversion” is at least 50 to 60 percent than just using plain “more-on’s”!

Totally agree!

Anyway good stuff. Hadn’t really given it much thought, so I have been using the More-on approach quite often. But definitely will change that now. Even though It will be a challenge sometimes to keep the sentences short and not too repetitive with words…

For instance now, the project I’m working on pushes a ebook and the client wants to link to their archive of other tools and ebooks with a single link. I only have a fixed amount of characters to use because of web guru and graphic genius limited me to 10 characters I can use. The best response I have got so far is from the words

“See others”

I’m hitting my head against the wall with this one. I’ve begged and pleaded with the client to give me just 5 more characters, but no dice. This isn’t the first time, it happens often.

There are millions of resources I use for my copy writing, but I have never seen a resource that provides ideas based on numbers of characters. That would be a god-send.

I’d add that saying ‘Read More’ reminds them that they’re reading, which sounds like work.

Even an avid reader like me would prefer to “See how Steve doubled his income in one year.”

Thanks!
Brian

Good question, but keep in mind that Jeff’s post is all about which calls to action (in this case, links) one highlights. You’ve hit on the irony, but here’s the intent:

Had the entire sentence been linked, it would have seemed more rhetorical. Instead, Jeff is making the point that linking “learn more” would have been less valuable than linking the relevant part of the sentence — which, by the way, doesn’t include the sentence that surrounds it (i.e., the question mark isn’t linked).

More to your point, though, context is everything. Besides, I’ve yet to meet a copywriter who doesn’t appreciate rhetoric.

So, calls to action should correspond the goals of one’s audience at a given stage. For example, see how the calls to action change once you click through? Now do you see why I linked what I did in the previous sentence?

Great question… Hope this clarifies a bit.

SE marketers should see the search engine results implications.

Copywriters should see the need for clarifying benefits.

This should be taught as “Online Writing: Obvious 101.” It’s so often neglected that when “online gurus” want to have any graduate level discussions I’m tempted to send them back for remedial 101 courses. If you get the fundamentals right the rest will follow.

What we’re really saying is, “and more stuff not important enough to mention!”