Unfortunately, you, Bret, clearly do not understand the real significance of those 50 years research.
First of all, as Treking has already pointed out, you ignore the vital distinction between commodity products and Others. When buying a box of cereal, you have very little time to grab his attention; when buying a car, you need to work harder, and take more of his time. Not ALL advertising copy is short. But the kernel of truth behind the myth you spread is that in all advertising copy, for all products, whether the copy is long or short, you have very little time to capture he reader's attention. Then, if you do successfully capture it, he might not even need to read the rest of the copy. But if he does, you better make sure the rest of the copy is good, too. You cannot afford to lose his attention. So does this tell us whether or not the limit of the Description really should be 320 characters. Not quite. It really depends on what other fields are offered, how much space is there, what the reader's expectations are... I will not pretend to have the final answers to all these questions. I can see how there are solid grounds for claiming that SOME 'Description' field should be kept short, especially if it is the first the reader sees. But then there must be a good way to get further information, and the former should NOT pretend to be a complete description. And the "good way" has to be easily discoverable, and searchable. You would think the last would be obvious for a company whose flagship product is a search engine, yet Google Android Market fails to meet all these criteria. I suggest more developers use the alternative markets at slideme.org and getjar.com to increase the competitive pressure on Google to get them to wise up. On Aug 20, 3:31 pm, Bret Foreman <[email protected]> wrote: > There's a reason why advertising copy is short. Research going back > more than 50 years has shown that shoppers spend only a few moments > evaluating a product. An application that costs no more than a box of > cereal should not have any more descriptive text than a box of cereal. > An app that costs as much as a DVD should not have more text than you > see on a typical DVD box. > > My vote for best marketing of an Android app goes to Locale. Here's > the entire pitch, about 150 characters: > > "In March 2005, Judge Robert Restaino jailed 46 people when a mobile > phone rang in his New York courtroom and no one would admit > responsibility. > > So we invented Locale. Problem solved." -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
