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Marketing experiments did a great little experiment of long versus short copy. Well, it would have been great if it took place in 1996 or '97. As it is it merely reinforces some basic ideas of copywriting. Long copy, with caveats, did outperform short copy in conversions to sales.

The Less-Than-Obvious Conclusion
Does this mean long copy is best? No. The best copy is that which gets the job done, in the shortest space possible. But not one line shorter. This is like asking how long do your legs have to be? The answer is long enough to reach the floor.

That said, I have yet to see a bias towards anything but short copy. Real short. ....I mean skipping important selling points, benefits, and essentially gutting the sales process short. The exception is the DM "get rich" crowd, many who started with print/physical media.

Figure Out How Long And Short Copy Work Together
Scannable elements, like a summary or occasional bullet points can help. But I think that's missing the real strength online. Users can signal, through interaction, whether they are in "search" or "research" mode. A user may hear about a "3 megapixel camera" and search for it, only to wonder what "3 megapixels" is upon finding it. That's when searching changes to research.

Finally copy can never be short enough if it's bad copy. It seems to me where copy is simply "content," what fits into the container, there is where trouble begins. That and the unfortunate tendency to make the issue short versus long copy, which conveniently avoids the decision of when and how to use both.