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Well, the transition from "proper text and descriptions" to one-liners was thoroughly A/B tested too, over the course of a decade, by millions of web sites. Ul

Well, the transition from "proper text and descriptions" to one-liners was thoroughly A/B tested too, over the course of a decade, by millions of web sites. Ultimately, on majority of sites large majority of visitors didn't read "proper text and descriptions". Monkeys like shiny things.

setr 9y ago
> the transition from "proper text and descriptions" to one-liners was thoroughly A/B tested too I have my doubts on that.. I'm pretty sure the transition occurred before A/B web testing actually became popular. One liners are instantaneously more appealing than a block of text, even if their long-term usage is worse for the user. (which would also throw off A/B testing, if it did occur) Blocks also tend to be done with significantly less stylization, aka less work, so you'll also see projects starting with a block of text (just shitting out information, because its easy), and later working towards the more modern and appealing one-liner. And it takes a good deal of work. So you've got the affects of cargo-culting and investment involved as well. And finally, more likely than not, most of those websites didn't have the resources, time or interest to A/B test this, and if they did, not thoroughly. It's easy to imagine someone with no design background looking to ape something (because they're not interested in this, just need to shit it out), so they'll hit the standard design-notable sites, and see the one-liner + image. Looks good enough, Apple probably did their homework, why the hell not. Of course, I'm in the business of software, and no one knows my name or has any inkling of what I do, but what the hell. And then of course because its become popular now you have frameworks popping up to help build in that particular fashion, and it becomes simpler/easier to do that than anything else. So it eventually becomes unreasonable for most sites to do anything other than this. And then it falls out of fashion and we'll move on to two-liners
- HenriNext 9y ago
  Well A/B testing has been around for ages. We did traffic splitting to two variations in the 1990's. No fancy tools, but fundamentally same. In regards to one-liners, there probably were multiple changes occurring over long time, interleaved: - Increasing information overload etc changed visitor behavior to prefer less text. - Large companies who did A/B testing eventually noticed that change in visitor's preferences and evolved towards one-liners. - Some small companies who didn't do A/B testing copied the one-liner style from large companies, when seeking "inspiration". - Remaining small companies followed, as one-liners were the dominant trend.
tfjaeckel 9y ago
Sad that that's probably true. But then, there are some products that really need a bit more than just a one-liner. At least when talking about B2B. For sure I don't sign up and try a new product without at least getting some idea what it's about from the landing page.

setr 9y ago

> the transition from "proper text and descriptions" to one-liners was thoroughly A/B tested too I have my doubts on that.. I'm pretty sure the transition occurred before A/B web testing actually became popular. One liners are instantaneously more appealing than a block of text, even if their long-term usage is worse for the user. (which would also throw off A/B testing, if it did occur) Blocks also tend to be done with significantly less stylization, aka less work, so you'll also see projects starting with a block of text (just shitting out information, because its easy), and later working towards the more modern and appealing one-liner. And it takes a good deal of work. So you've got the affects of cargo-culting and investment involved as well. And finally, more likely than not, most of those websites didn't have the resources, time or interest to A/B test this, and if they did, not thoroughly. It's easy to imagine someone with no design background looking to ape something (because they're not interested in this, just need to shit it out), so they'll hit the standard design-notable sites, and see the one-liner + image. Looks good enough, Apple probably did their homework, why the hell not. Of course, I'm in the business of software, and no one knows my name or has any inkling of what I do, but what the hell. And then of course because its become popular now you have frameworks popping up to help build in that particular fashion, and it becomes simpler/easier to do that than anything else. So it eventually becomes unreasonable for most sites to do anything other than this. And then it falls out of fashion and we'll move on to two-liners

HenriNext 9y ago
Well A/B testing has been around for ages. We did traffic splitting to two variations in the 1990's. No fancy tools, but fundamentally same. In regards to one-liners, there probably were multiple changes occurring over long time, interleaved: - Increasing information overload etc changed visitor behavior to prefer less text. - Large companies who did A/B testing eventually noticed that change in visitor's preferences and evolved towards one-liners. - Some small companies who didn't do A/B testing copied the one-liner style from large companies, when seeking "inspiration". - Remaining small companies followed, as one-liners were the dominant trend.

tfjaeckel 9y ago

Sad that that's probably true. But then, there are some products that really need a bit more than just a one-liner. At least when talking about B2B. For sure I don't sign up and try a new product without at least getting some idea what it's about from the landing page.