Last night, one of our customers had the idea of changing all the headings in a 2-page brochure that we had created, thinking very hard how we could capture the immediate interest of readers and get them to read the rest of the copy text as well. What he did was shorten our benefits-loaded headings into a simple product name plus the word "Overview". He was sure that this would be a better approach since it would be very short. Needless to say, I had to take a deep breath and - diplomatically - explain to him why a longer heading is not bad at all and why his headings are - well - worthless. So what should be in a good heading? As the master himself, John Caples, wrote in his legendary book "Tested Advertising Methods" a good heading should possess four important qualities. They are:

• Self-interest
• News
• Curiosity
• Quick, easy way

Self-interest is the by far most important one and is basically the key Benefit that a customer should expect. As it further turned out doing extensive tests, the length of a heading has an influence on the reader. Longer ones are read more often than short ones - assuming of course that they contain a key benefit or one/many of the above qualities.