How Long Should Your Sales Page Be?

(When, “however long it needs to be,” is NOT a helpful answer!)

When I asked this question once, they came back with: “A sales page should be like a woman’s skirt. Long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep people interested.”

Okayyyy but that doesn’t actually help me.

… It’s also a little scuzzy.

I vowed that I’d never give this vague advice to anyone. So to stay good on my word, let’s break down how long sales pages really need to be, in terms of helpful resources and numbers.

Advice #1: The price of what your selling on the sales page has a massive impact on the length of the page. If you’re selling a $50,000 ‘round the world anniversary trip with a live-in butler, it’s gonna take a helluva lot longer time to get your point across in comparison to selling a $15 journal.

This stuff is a no-brainer.  

$50K is a much bigger investment – you’ll need to go into specific details about the locations they’ll be visiting, their accommodation, luxury tours they’ll be experiencing… You’ll be explaining WHY they need to treat themselves to this escape, how it will better their relationship, how they’ll feel getting pampered and all that jazz.

Those are two extreme prices, so the length in sales page is understandable.

But what about prices that are not so black and white?

Prices that range from a few hundred to a few thousand?

Ry Swartz has an excellent analogy for this topic – he calls it the 100 words/minute rule. The theory suggests that if you were selling something in person, for every one minute it would take you to close the sale, 100 words are written on the sales page. Let’s take a look at this bedroom upgrade case:

• If something would take you 1 minute to sell in person, then your sales page would need roughly 100 words. Example: new bed sheets.
• A 15-minute sell would equate to 1500 words. Example: New bedding (down duvet and pillows)
• A 60-minute chat to coach a conversion would equal a 6,000-word sales page. Example: A new bed and bedroom makeover.

Advice #2: Another factor for the length of your sales page is knowing what stage of awareness your reader is currently in. Brian Clark explains these five stages very well:

Most Aware: Your prospect knows your product, and only needs to know “the deal.”

Product-Aware: Your prospect knows what you sell, but isn’t sure it’s right for him.

Solution-Aware: Your prospect knows the result he wants, but not that your product provides it.

Problem-Aware: Your prospect senses he has a problem, but doesn’t know there’s a solution.

Completely Unaware: No knowledge of anything except, perhaps, his own identity or opinion.

What this means: the less your prospect knows about your product, the more you will have to argue your case and convince them, thus, the longer your sales page will be.

Ultimately, it comes down to understanding your prospects starting point and assessing how much hand-holding and coaching they need to feel empowered enough to make a decision. The bigger the decision, the more at stake whether they buy or don’t buy. This means the more coaching they’ll need to become the person capable and empowered enough to purchase. Without being there to guide them in a 1:1 way, your sales page needs to counter every argument they may have.

Word Count: If you’re still completely in the dark and are looking for that cold hard number for the length of a sales page – 3,000-5,000 words is a wonderful point of reference.

But remember, a sales page is all about research, understanding your reader’s awareness level, and writing a convincing argument. It’s about collecting data, using a proven structure, and the science behind getting your reader to say ‘yes.’ The importance lies less on the length and more on the content. So get researching and get writing! Enjoy!

And do me a favor. When someone asks you how long their sales page should be… give them more accurate advice than ‘however long it needs to be!’