Your attention span isn’t my responsibility, but your experience is

We were building a page for our B2B services these past few days, and we were of course confronted with the eternal issue:

To expand or not to expand?

We wanted to describe our services and provide necessary info, but most people don't read texts (so they end up bouncing).

Users often don't want to read more than a sentence. They just want the gist before they engage more with the content, if at all. And that's not just an opinion, that's data.

But still, there are some people who prefer to read more. They get a lot from your style of writing and they want to see if they match with you based on what you have to say and how you say it. They want to connect. They feel they can trust you more. They might even infer you have more expertise when you can expand further.

And I want these people as my clients too, I don't want to lose them just because I decided to "entertain" my audience with minimal content.

For some users, seeing more content might feel overwhelming or like homework. For others, it feels like an invitation to connect more deeply. Our target audience could fall in either pool.

So, we ended up doing both.

We didn't want to do the typical solution of:

A Big Title.

Then one short sentence.
A read more button

Because it's annoying for deep readers to have to click on every Read more button, and either be redirected to another page or have the text broken up with titles and images everywhere, when they would prefer a nice, flowy text.

Instead, we added a simple toggle button that switches between short and long texts. Same sections, same titles, different text length.

Our default is the short version, since that'll probably apply to most users, but the ones who want the whole content can get it with a simple click.

And it was actually fun to make! Trying to express 5 paragraphs in 4 bullets is a cool brain challenge.

I am now seriously considering whether we should be doing this with more of our content. It's not ideal for all types of content, but I think it's a pretty nice approach, especially for sales pages.

As creators, or designers, or communicators of any kind, I think we have several responsibilities.
I know some of us tend to think that we should respect our users' lack of time and attention, and make sure to provide them with the necessary info in the shortest possible way.
And I know that others think that we shouldn't treat people like toddlers, and we shouldn't feed the short-attention-span monster.

I don't know where I stand, personally. And I'm not sure I want this responsibility. It seems a little patronizing, to take on such a role.
At the end of the day, I just want to connect with whoever might be interested in what I have to offer.

PS1: Long content works when it's good. There's a UX argument that it's not always about "making it short". It's "make it meaningful for the right audience". There's a Reddit thread on /copywriting with a great title (and some great arguments):

"Long pages are not a problem — Bad content is."

PS2: There already are browser plugins that do that for you (of course). I am wondering how long until it becomes a built-in browser feature. Something similar to auto-translate. Right click and "Give me the gist".