There is a specific kind of internet object you have probably met already. It is a web page that calls itself a "landing page" and is, in truth, a 42-minute unpaid video in disguise — a sequence of stacked bargains, each louder than the last, all of them arranged to delay the moment you find out what the thing you are being sold actually is.
We refused to make one of those.
Not because we think they don't work. They do work; that is the uncomfortable part. There is a documented audience of people for whom a red countdown timer and a "normally $997, today only $49" arithmetic is a form of reassurance. There is a market for the feeling of a closing door. Our complaint is not a complaint about conversion. It is a complaint about tone.
A product page, at its best, is a preface. The book is still the book. The preface is not trying to trick you into buying the book.
What the long page is really asking for.
Spend an afternoon reading funnels and you start to notice the same verbs on repeat. Unlock. Access. Transform. Join. They are not sentences written for a reader; they are sentences written for a buyer in a state of mild panic. Every line is a small frictionless nudge past the last moment of hesitation. The page is not describing a thing. It is walking you down a hallway.
We want to stand with the reader at the beginning of the hallway, and just — not walk them down it. Here is the book. Here is how long it is. Here is a page from it. Here is the price. Here is the button. If you don't want it, we still think you are fine.
The discipline of the short page.
Writing a page like this takes longer than writing a long one. You have to choose. You cannot, for example, mistake "listing every feature" for an argument. You cannot use a testimonial as a load-bearing beam. You cannot cover a gap in the product with a paragraph about the transformation you will undergo.
A short page makes the product responsible for the sale.
What we kept.
We kept: the name of the thing, a one-line honest pitch, two excerpted paragraphs from the book, a table of contents, the price, the checkout. We kept a short note from the author. We kept a line about refunds.
We removed: the countdown, the bonus stacks, the "normally $997," the guru quote, the faux-scientific badge, the scroll to see what Sarah said, and the paragraph about what your life will look like in six months. We removed the confetti. There was a lot of confetti.
The result is short. It might be the only place on the commercial internet where that is still treated as a problem.