Previously, I've written about creating effective landing pages and their role in turning browsers into buyers. 

When a visitor arrives on your landing page, if you're lucky they'll hang around for a while and read what you have to say. If they leave immediately (known as bouncing), you may have lost them forever without ever knowing who they are or having an opportunity to market your products to them again.

This "bouncing" can often occur on what I call "toilet roll" landing pages that are so long and have so much information without any calls to action until the very end.

A squeeze page is a cut down version of a landing page and a squeeze page's role isn't so much to sell, but to encourage a prospective customer to providing their email address. The real marketing comes later.

A squeeze page's brevity is just the thing in this day and age of short visits, multiple browser tabs being opened and all sorts of other potential distractions. Tell them what you're going to tell them.. but don't tell them all about it ... just yet. Creating curiosity is an important part of squeeze page effectiveness.

Squeeze page format

Squeeze pages usually consist of the following elements in the following order.

Catchy headline

The headline will often ask a question or address a problem e.g.:

"Do You Need More Subscribers?"

or

"How To Boost Your Subscriptions By 400%!"

Dot point features

The dot points briefly outline what your product will do or what problem it addresses.

Testimonial

A brief, positive but believable review from someone who has used your product.

Teasers

This may be a free offer such as a report or a discount on the product.

Subscribe box

A subscription box asking for nothing more than a first name and email address

.. and that's about it.

Video is also often used on squeeze pages these days; but again, time is of the essence. Depending on your target audience, a video may be a hindrance more than a help so text should always be used too.

The squeeze page is all about focus and grabbing interest as fast as you possibly can, to the point the person is more than willing to provide their email address before they think too much about it .

Once the visitor has provided their email address, they are usually placed on a automated follow up list using autoresponder software that immediately delivers information about the product or services you are selling via email. These messages continue over a period of time. On the "subscription confirmed" page, there are usually links to further information as well so that the visitor doesn't have to wait on the email.

Squeeze pages are often used in conjunction with paid advertising such as PPC (Pay Per Click). Using a squeeze page can allow for easier ROI (Return On Investment) calculations.

While a squeeze page is meant to be short and to have no hyperlinks to other pages, in order to maximize your chances of the squeeze page also getting a decent ranking in the search engines, I recommend using at least 250 words of content, plus a link at the bottom of the squeeze page back to your home page. There should also be inbound links to the squeeze page from other areas of your site using relevant anchor text.

By linking back to the main page about the product, you may also see more activity from people who are ultra-sensitive to providing their email address, or just plain squeeze page resistant


Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources