In their post ‘The Web’s Old Wives Tale: People Don’t Read Online‘, Bryan Eisenberg (backed by a Poynter report study say: Crapola! People do read online. Well I disagree. And agree.

And heck no, I ain’t fence-sitting. Because this study has to be looked at in perspective.

There are online readers and offline readers. And the twain don’t meet.

Now first, let me agree with you; then disagree.
I’ve tested that people do read online. When I wrote for a portal where which had over 200,000 weekly readers, I inserted a ‘teaser’ at the 800 word mark. This was in an article that was a chunky 1500 words long. Now this portal wouldn’t (in most cases accept more than 500 words per article because they believed it was too much to read online). Well, as you say, and as the study proves: That’s crapola.

Hundreds of readers found the teaser in the article, and then went across and picked up the ‘hidden pdf’ inserted at the 800-word point. Hundreds more went onwards past that point to subscribe to our newsletter (which was way down at the bottom of the newsletter).

So yeah, I agree.

But I also disagree.
Because when we say, ‘Customers Read Online’ we’re only testing what we’re testing. So we’re only testing the ability for customers to read an article for instance. But what if they’re reading a salesletter? What then? I was of the firm opinion that customers read online. And still believe that most of them are attracted to the online version. And then, almost inexplicably, they need to print the document to read offline.

Which takes us to both sides of the story…
In the research we did, we were selling a higher-priced training course. And yes, most of the customers did read online and buy the course online. But at least 15% of the customers did print out the lengthy 15-20 pages of the sales letter and read it offline. They circled; they underlined; and they bought. That 15% put a nice bit of change in our bank account–and is not something that you’d want to ignore.

So yes, statistics may indeed prove that clients do read online.
Stats may indeed prove that customers do read the story all the way down to the 77% mark.
But what may be lost in the story is that often you’re selling a concept; product or service online. And that if you get lulled by the statistics, you may not provide an ‘offline’ option. You may not provide a ‘Print this Page’ button. Or you may not provide a ‘printable PDF.’

As I said. I agree. But I disagree too.

What do you think?