Comments on: Your In-Depths Can’t Keep My Interest – The Real Problem of Long Articles Online and What To Do About It

By: Cowan

Cowan — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:07:47 +0000

Hi-ya, I was searching on msn for software that automatically could submit links to divers social bookmarking websites. When reading some reviews i saw a tool called “Bookmarkwiz”. This dude’s website is bookmarkwiz. com (this tool is not live yet) I personally think it looks really good. Manual submitting my sites to digg and reddit and alike is taking hours of my time and hire some freelancers it isnt really cheapo aswell. Some automated solution will solve my dilemmas. I’ve seen a few threads here talk about socialbookmarking.. what do you people think? perhaps a few of you have any acquaintance with scripts like bookmarkwiz? I think social bookmarking is a great way to maximize backlinks and traffic…

By: Michael J

Michael J — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:38:51 +0000

Not sure about breaking it up on line, unless it’s Dickens. That worked before, should work again.

On the other hand, how about making the long article available as an ebook to the Kindle. It’s a great reading machine. There is a saying by Frank Romano, the king of print commentators, that the real advantage of the book are the 3 B – the bathroom, the bedroom and the beach. The Kindle gets an A on the 3 Bs.

Or how about doing a print on demand paperback. And sell it from the website for $4. The paperback is still the best reading appliance on the planet.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:51:47 +0000

If Heartburn Home Remedy says it, you know it must be true.

By: links for 2009-04-06 « David Black

links for 2009-04-06 « David Black — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:53:05 +0000

[...] The real problem of long articles online and what to do about it – New Media Bytes "Ever notice how the most interesting articles online seem to command too much of your time? Have you ever stopped reading a long article online because you saw that it was paginated into 8 clicks?" (tags: internet journalism usability training) [...]

By: John Boor

John Boor — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:44:54 +0000

Ha! You beat me to it. I was going to comment that even this article was getting a bit long… but a good topic. Thank you.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:50:40 +0000

If you look at stats for sites that specialize in online paginated articles, readers tend not to click through when a long piece is broken up into 4-8 parts. They simply don’t. There’s a sharp drop-off after page 2, a sharper drop off after page 3, and then an exponential drop-off after that.

I posit that the people who don’t read long articles would *never* read long articles even if they were broken up. They simply don’t have the attention span or the sustained interest. Don’t kill the bunny chasing a hypothetical reader who simply doesn’t exist.

By: Aron Pilhofer

Aron Pilhofer — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:11:18 +0000

While we can agree to disagree about the excellence of the Vanity Fair piece, I think you are absolutely 100 percent right.

I would even go further and say we need to pull anything and everything we can from a longer piece if it works better as an online infographic, interactive or some kind of multimedia.

We who bleed ink may not like it, but I think if we simply paid attention to our own browsing habits we’d see that it’s really not a debatable point.

By: Shawn Smith

Shawn Smith — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:33:48 +0000

I still side that most people don’t have the time to read long articles online. But they do have the chance to read shorter, one-pagers. By breaking it up, you can build anticipation and greater stickiness for the overall story. Plus, breaking long articles into multiple posts over the course of several days aids SEO, which helps the site generate traffic through search engines.

The argument for posting a single long story all in one shot don’t outweigh the benefits of stretching the story out, imo. That’s just the way it’s always been done and I think people are hesitant to change. Although, now there are actual measurable results that support the change.

all that said, mixing it might be best. Not every 2-clicker article needs to be broken up into a series, but if an article goes beyond 2,000 words, I’d lobby for breaking it up into a series.

By: Suzy

Suzy — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:19:59 +0000

I think it has alot to do with the expectation. People don’t expect to read the print version of a “Star Wars” in one sitting…the do expect to read a complete article/story online in one sitting.
I do agree with mixing things up however.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:50:00 +0000

By this reasoning, we all should have watched “Star Wars” in 10-minute chunks over a series of 12 separate viewings. Which would have sucked — the biggest benefit a movie has is the power to tell an entire story at one sitting, which inherently demands enough attention from the viewer to watch the whole thing.

I do agree, however, that pagination is not the answer; I’m personally just as apt to quit reading on paginated page 4 than I would be midway down a long single-page piece. I think the main problem is that some people just don’t have the attention span for long-form, and frankly never will, and that’s fine; but that doesn’t mean long-form should go away, or get chopped up and compromised to fit the needs of advertisers.

For a site that does the occasional long-form piece, I would suggest they simply mix up the long-form stuff with shorter pieces that will appeal more to the ‘quick hit’ ADD twitter fan. This site, for example, does a good job of that. Long 5,000 word pieces mixed in with photo essays and three paragraph quick hits.