Another recent article on the internet was about long articles. Sorry that I'm not linking to it, but I read it last week and I didn't save it. Of course, I can't remember which site it was or even narrow it down.
The gist of the article was that people don't read long posts. He gave the stats, like so many will click away almost instantly. I'm guessing those are people who ended up there by mistake. I accidentally click on stuff all the time because of my impatience.
Of the people who stay on the site long enough to read something, most last one screen length. They don't scroll, they leave. The author ran through how many people he lost at each point. They can actually measure how many pixels deep people read. Which is maybe taking analytics just a step too far for comfort.
The thing is that this has been common knowledge for a long time. It was one of the first things I learned in journalism school and it's why when you read the newspaper, the most important information comes first and it's been this way for decades at least. For all I know, maybe centuries.
This article also made me wince. I know my blog posts tend to be long, not quick and snappy. I suppose I have a ton of people who take a look and think TL; DR. (Too Long; Didn't Read) Sorry, y'all.
