I personally retain modal boxes for dialogues (logins, for example) rather than as a means of providing further information as I think they can cause usability problems. And, as Ben says, if you’re losing readers because your copy’s flabby then it doesn’t matter anyway.

Cheers,

Leon

Think about effective direct mail. Ogilvy’s long copy advertisements. Great product guides. They all use long copy – but barely a word is wasted.

So you get good sales copy, of a length that makes for good SEO. And if you’ve done your keyword research before putting pen to paper, then even better.

Agree slide-downs are handy for many page designs. I’m certainly not above using them myself. But if it’s a slide-down no-one wants to open, then it’s not selling.

The key is about limiting the visible content on a page to the really important stuff, but go ahead and offer the specifics in “lightboxes” or “slide-downs” (see our website for examples) so readers can dig into the stuff they want to know more about, and can skim over the basic info.

Don’t dismiss the word ‘new’, though. Couple it with benefits and it can be quite a handy weapon in the copywriter’s armoury – just look at how washing powder has been marketing for the past 60 years or so.