The suspect: The confusing WSJ subscription page. Click to view larger.
Wall Street Journal meant well when its staff created the email center page. I like that it has all the e-mail subscriptions on for managing. When a resource has multiple e-mail newsletters, listing all of the newsletters in one page serves readers well.
Here comes the “but.” If you’re already subscribed, the WSJ page doesn’t show it. At the bottom of a WSJ newsletter, it shows:
TO VIEW OR CHANGE any of your e-mail settings, go to the E-Mail Setup Center: http://online.wsj.com/email
Everyone sees the same page and options regardless if they have a subscription. Subscribed users should see their subscriptions reflected on the landing page. Sure, they have a link so you can log in to subscriber Email Center to check your settings — but we read fast and I didn’t notice this on the first reading. Only “here” has a link and it’s not obvious when you scan.
So I click “here” and it’s a dead end:
No Information Available
Your subscription does not include access to this service.
If you want to unsubscribe to ALL WSJ newsletters, you have to go through the entire list and click every “Remove Me.” If you want to change subscriptions (unsubscribe to some, leave some alone, etc.), you feel the pressure to select all the “Add Me” and “Remove Me” because you fear leaving it along will automatically subscribe you.
In reality, it won’t do that unless you click either the TEXT or HTML boxes. But that’s not so clear, is it? What do you think? Know of another Web content suspect?
Go to jail and do not pass Go.
Nielsen addresses whether a site’s content strategy should use longer or shorter content. The best answer: As long as it needs to be. Even Nielsen’s own article is long and I jumped around to get its main points.
Many experience success with both long and short articles. I wrote two versions of a landing page for one of my clients and the shorter version is outselling the longer. Both contain bulleted points and bold headers. The longer page contains more details.
Yet, longer copy will outperform for other products and services. The best thing to do is test two copies and see which has greater success. Past article, Follow the Long Yellow Copy explores long copy.
Search and archives
Get Updates
-
Categories
Archives
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
-
Other Stops
-
Connect with Meryl
-
Recommended
Sponsors
Blogroll
All Content © Copyright 1995 - 2012 Meryl.net. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Privacy Policy | Thanks to Blue Flavor and Fireside Media | Valid XHTML and CSS