The thing about Landing Page conversions that most people don’t understand is that it doesn’t matter what you like to look at, it doesn’t matter what you think works, and it doesn’t matter whether you tell me you won’t opt into a page that looks like this or that.
What matters is whether the page actually works.
So earlier today when I was on a popular internet marketing forum and a member wrote for some “suggestions to improve my conversion rate”, I wasn’t quite prepared to see what I saw.
Now I’ve seen some bad squeeze pages before, but this one was different in an eerily familiar way. In fact, it was downright weird. And bad. Or, I should say it was bad based on the fundamentals of good squeeze page design that I’ve studied and used for the last half dozen years.
The strangest part, though, was that the owner of the site claimed that he was getting a 30% opt-in rate.
Now look…
On average, an average squeeze page with average “cold” traffic will average about a 20% conversion rate. Okay, that’s not a hard and fast rule by any means — I’ve had pages that converted at 80% with warm traffic, and substantially less with crappy traffic. But when I looked at this guy’s page — especially considering that his page was promising to teach internet marketing — I just couldn’t believe that he could POSSIBLY be getting a 30% conversion rate, or anything far above zero.
Like I said, though…what I think (or what YOU think, for that matter) doesn’t matter one bit. What matters is the conversion rate, and how it leads to sales.
And you learn that by measuring your results using good tools like Google Analytics, the tools built into Aweber, or split testing tools like Google Website Optimizer or Split Test Accelerator.
So…do ya wanna see the site?
Here’s a screen shot. Click to see it full size.
I happen to think this is one of the worst squeeze pages ever.
Please, click the image to see it full sized. It’s SMALL. It’s actually just an aweber form — with nothing else around it. And the guy has used it as the entire page.
Weird, right?
So do you think it converts at 30%? I guess anything is possible, but I’d bet that there’s more to the story.
So maybe it’s not the absolute worst squeeze page ever, but it looks pretty miserable. Have you ever seen one as bad or worse than this one?
If you have, then I challenge you to show me a worse one…even if it’s your own (It’s okay to post your URLs in your comment. Yes, you’ll get some clicks and some link love, too. That’s okay, so long as you’re showing a really bad squeeze page!)
To the winner, I’ll offer a free critique, worth about $125, whether the page you submit is yours or someone else’s.
Just type the URL as a comment below, with a few words of explanation, or your own comments.
–Mark