Last week, I wrote you about the “worst squeeze page ever,” a post that got a LOT of interest on my blog. I even asked for you to send me your own squeeze page, if you thought it was worse than the one I wrote about.
I thought I’d see some that are bad…and wow are they BAD, each for their own special reason!
As a prize for the loser…err, I mean winner… I offered a web-page evaluation worth about $125. But there were some classic examples of “squeeze pages gone bad,” that I also decided to do a few additional quick reviews for three runners-up because the lessons you can learn from seeing how other people put a page together can be very valuable.
You might be making the same mistakes on your own pages.
One note before you look: I wrote my reviews of the pages very impersonally. I didn’t pull any punches or try to be nice or polite. In fact, in a few cases, I wasn’t polite at all. I just wrote about what I saw, and what I thought about it. My apologies if you’re offended.
So here are the runners-up. Learn from them. The winner will be revealed in my next post.
One last thing before we get started…There are a couple dozen MORE things wrong with each of these pages than I’m talking about here. These are just the “low-lights”. Enjoy.
Third Runner Up: http://marketingego.com/would_you_like_a_chance_to_make.htm
This page features a photo at the top of a woman holding some cash, with a dialog bubble saying “I thought so”. As headlines go, this is a bad one. It’s the very first thing that the viewer sees. To its credit, the photo does cause the reader to hold that caption in mind as they try to figure out what the heck she might be talking about, and so the eye goes to the green box below the photo.
That’s where we see the headline “Would you like a chance to make some real online money?”
I’m a little tired of the promises for free and automatic wealth, but okay. It works for some people. The text below that, however, is all about the owner of the web page. It starts with how THEY are busy.
You should know that most of your readers aren’t going to care about you. They care about themselves, first and foremost.
The remainder of the text doesn’t do a very good job of convincing me that I ought to fork over my name and email address.
Second Runner Up: http://solo-ad-marketing.com/proof/team.html
This page has a disjointed series of headlines with too much white space between each line. As headlines go, this is pretty poor. Below that is a series of screen shots of 23 sales over a four month period — not very compelling.
What is the user supposed to do on this page?
It’s only until you get to the bottom of the page that you see the instructions to click on one of the images to see a video and “join our team”.
I can’t imagine that this works very well.
Especially because the second page is an entirely different color, style and organization. Frankly, this second page is much better than the first one, but the two together just don’t give a reader the trust that they would want in order to opt in and participate.The owner of this site should simply start out with this page, and do away with the first one.
The headline on this second page describes an income many times larger than the evidence on the prior page. But maybe the worst problem is that the video on the second page is hosted at MetaCafe, and after the video ends, it shows a list of similar videos that you can instantly watch.
And THAT is a conversion-killer.
First Runner Up: http://www.peanutmall.com/New_Custom_3.html
Well this one’s a doozy!
Big huge all-caps headline that tells you how to make $1k to $5k on weekends, having fun and doing what you love. Below that is a picture that I just don’t understand. A relatively attractive woman with black spots in her hair, money flying all around, some odd green graphic on the left, and what looks like a red sun on the right.
This image is not a credibility builder.
It turns out that the page does have a few good elements, though: a headline, an intro paragraph, some bullets, and an opt-in form. However, the text is way too large, poorly organized and hard to read. The opt-in form is below the fold (ie you have to scroll to see it) and has a house graphic above it. Why? I’ve got no idea.
But none of that compares to the REAL problem on this page.
This page is promoting an optin for a business opportunity on a website that is presumably sells chocolates and nuts!
Why?
And the menu on the left has links for everything from gospel arts to lotto tips to improving your credit score and laptop computer deals. Just about every topic can be found on this menu.
And that’s bad for a number of reasons.
- It causes the search engines to have no idea what this site is really about
- It is confusing to the reader
- It is distracting to the reader
- It causes a lack of trust for the reader
A squeeze page is called “squeeze” because it makes an offer and tries to extract the contact info of the person who wants that info. It “squeezes” the contact for the info.
Giving someone a hundred other links to click — or even 1 other link to click — is a conversion killer.
That’s it for today. Take a few minutes and look at each of the pages. See if you’re making any of the same mistakes on your own websites as the ones here. I bet you are. And if you’ve got any questions or comments about these pages, leave a comment below.
In my next blog post, I’ll show you the winner of the worst squeeze page contest.
When you first see it, you may not realize why it’s the worst. But after you read what I have to say, you’ll certainly agree.
To Your Success,
–Mark Widawer
P.S. If you also struggle with creating squeeze pages that work, or if you’ve never created a squeeze page before, take a look at my How to make a Squeeze Page course. I’ll show you step-by-step how to make your own high-converting squeeze pages. It’s easy!