Jan 29 2010

(Series) Building Out Our Site – The Squeeze Page

Posted by Kris in Affiliate Marketing, Case Study, Email Marketing
29 Comment

Before I begin this post I want you all to know that I am now taking two individuals through this case study/series. I will no longer be touching a thing but I will be training these two guys hands on. I flew out to their location in order to give them a basic lesson in HTML. Believe me when I say these guys have absolutely NO experience online!

If you go to http://www.bestgolfswingsecret.com the main page you first hit will be full of links that you can use to navigate your way around the site as it’s being built. We will be rotating between two different squeeze pages to find out which converts the best. After they hit the squeeze they will be taken to a page with the answer (something short yet powerful) and then off to the actual sales letter.

The key to the first page is to entice an individual to sign up to your mailing list. I’m not going to claim to you that I am some squeeze page guru… Trust me I’m not. I like to stick with what works and fortunately for us Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss have tested plenty of squeeze pages for us. During this case study I will be using one of their squeeze page as my base for a split test. You can check it out by clicking here.

There are several basic elements that have been tried and tested to help boost your squeeze page conversion rates. Here are a list that I know for a fact work… These have been proven time and time again by marketers and have proven to help your conversion rates.

Make sure your content is readable. This includes font styles, size, and color. This data has already been gathered for you by many different sources and marketers. Don’t try and re-invent the wheel here by creating fancy fonts at different sizes. Stick with black size 12 Arial as your default font. Arial is an easy to read especially when you set the color to contrast the background.
Make your headline stick out. A few years back John Reese told the world that they should use red Tahoma font in their headers. Michel Fortin of MichelFortin.com reiterated the use of red Tahoma back in 2006. Read that article to get some more insight on headlines and their ability to help convert readers. Keep the header font size between 22-28 (That’s my opinion). It works and it converts.
Choose a color that is going to relax the reader. Light colors tend to work best. When I create my pages I choose a light blue or light grey color for the background. Check out what what thinkquest.org says about colors. When you have a sales letter or really anything you want people to read your best bet it so give them colors that will keep them relaxed. If people are relaxed while they are reading your content they will take action. After you read that thinkquest.org article take a look at what main colors trusted companies use. You’ll see lots of blue. Figure out how you can get trusted colors onto your pages.
Use arrows. Lots of arrows. Okay… Don’t go overboard or anything but place arrows in places where you want people to look. The eye follows the arrow. Even arrows that are integrated into the design. 99% of the time your eye will follow the direction that an arrow is taking you. When you load up the squeeze page on bestgolfswingsecrets.com where does your eye look? Chances are your eyes will hit the headline and then jump right over to the arrows. Don’t be afraid to guide people where you want them with arrows.
Speaking of guiding people. Make sure you strip your site of useless links. Don’t include navigation or links to other websites. If people leave they might never come back. If you must include navigation on your sales letter place it at the bottom. This of course is very different for actual online stores where you want people to look around. With this method of advertising we want people to only go where we tell them to go. Keep your useless unproductive links out of sight.
Use images to help convey the message of what they will be receiving. Images are powerful. They say an image is worth 1000 word. You can absolutely use images on your squeeze page to help fill the gaps. Remember, this is a squeeze page we are creating. We don’t want to overwhelm them with words. We want to get our point across as quickly as possible so that they join our list. Images should convey a message.
Use bullet points to address what is going to be taught or given to the individual. What are they getting by joining your list? 5 bullets are plenty to get your point across. You don’t want to overwhelm them right now with reading… Once again, the point of the squeeze page is to grab their email.

Okay that’s the basics on a decent squeeze page. Again, take a look at what I have put together at http://www.bestgolfswingsecret.com. We are going to continue knocking out these designs in the next few days. I’m hoping we can have this done in a few days.

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29 Comments on this post

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tygoldberg said:

i had to redo my niche, i was going the money making niche. found a skin domain. so im going with that one. just my luck i found a ‘membership site’ inside plrnicheclub.

right now my domain is propagating, should be up after the weekend. im following along.

January 29th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Greg said:

This is so Cool! But how are your creating this website? What tools? Do you have any training or links to websites that show you how to put these pages together?

Can you teach us what you’re teaching your 2 students? (as far as the basic html is concerned

January 29th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
tygoldberg said:

@greg

from the looks of it. it’s just taking plr’s/mrr, etc from http://plrnicheclub.com/cashtacticspecial.html and redoing the text. adding images, adding arrows.

if you haven’t signed up to http://plrnicheclub.com/cashtacticspecial.html you should. you can find articles, sale copies, this can give you a ‘template’ to work from

added the links for you…

January 29th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Sherelle said:

FYI typo on /answer – “straighter”

=) Thanks for this awesome walkthrough!

January 29th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
film streaming said:

Great article
thanks for sharing

January 30th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
mystery manx said:

Squeeze pages like any website need targeted traffic to build up subscribers and make money to boot, so keep that in mind, thanks.

January 31st, 2010 at 6:07 am
Nimit Kashyap said:

Great post and looking forward to next update.

January 31st, 2010 at 8:08 am
Julien said:

Awesome serie thank you so much for sharing!
how can you technically track the kw that converts with aweber?

January 31st, 2010 at 3:36 pm
used tires said:

Thanks for sharing this with us. Looking forward to signing up.

Till then,

Jean

February 1st, 2010 at 10:15 am
Keith said:

@Julien

Maybe try using something like tracking202 and create your own thank you page (which you can configure aweber to go to after they sign up). Just add a tracking pixel from tracking202 on the thank you page and that should tell you what converts.

February 1st, 2010 at 10:54 am
Julien said:

Keith, please excuse me for the total noob question, but, if I do what you’re telling me, I could track the Keywords that bring an opt-in (from PPC to an opt-in on the squeeze page).

But how can I have my subid in the URL in order to track from an e-mail to a lead after that ?

Is it possible ?

Thanks for your help,
Julien

February 1st, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Mid Mo Mortgage said:

Julien – You can have the Adwords target URL or email have a query in it. And then you can use PHP to track what the query is on the landing page.

I wasn’t completely sure what you were asking but hope that helps.

February 1st, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Ruben@AutoShipping said:

The original squeeze page looks very catchy

February 2nd, 2010 at 2:43 am
deny said:

Tips are good and thanks for sharing this thing as i come to know some good points by reading them.

February 3rd, 2010 at 6:11 am
tygoldberg said:

my squeeze is done, index (1) is done, zipping up the e-book and the bonuses, i’m going to start sending traffic tommorrow.

i should wait to see where this is headed.

February 3rd, 2010 at 6:40 pm
deny said:

It’s awesome what you’re doing here, this is the first site I’ve ever seen that gives this information on for free. All the other sites (ahem: john chow) just tell you to do this and do that, but not HOW!

February 4th, 2010 at 1:11 am
Metal Briefcases said:

Many good points about squeeze pages. Most of these tips can be applied to any page to help conversion rates. I especially like the one about color choice. It is amazing how specific colors can incite different emotions within visitors. Smart designers definitely play off those natural emotions by using specific colors.

February 4th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Net Age | Web Design said:

Lots of arrows works for me! The calm colours are a great idea, as traditionally one tries to deliver a bold visual statement with an immeadiate call to action, eg SIGNS followed by a tel # on a roadside advertising board. This process is a lot more insidious, so the bold colour theory is thrown right out of the window. Thanks for the lesson!

February 9th, 2010 at 3:13 am
Andrew Scherer said:

Awesome this is something along the lines of what I’m doing now – can’t wait to see how it turns out for you

February 23rd, 2010 at 4:16 am
used textbooks said:

that’s actually a very nice looking squeeze page for someone who has zero HTML experience!

February 24th, 2010 at 7:13 am
car games said:

many useful info, thanks for insiders.

March 14th, 2010 at 12:43 am
Dress Sandals said:

If there’s one part of my affiliate marketing skillset that I need to improve is my squeeze pages. I have yet to master the art of building a page that is designed specifically to convert as high as possible. Mastering something like this would increase my potential massively.

March 21st, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Vinson said:

Hi, thanks for sharing your sample squeeze page and the tips you’ve tell us but what I don’t understand is after getting the user email by subscribing what’s next? i didn’t get the importance of getting user emails through this tactic. sorry for the noob question.

March 27th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
John Bullard, Jr. said:

Hi Kris!

I wish I had seen this post before I created my first sqeeze page!

Although my squeez page is working out well for me I feel it could be much better. I’m going to be following this post next time – really great info and advice.

Thanks,

John

March 29th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
sözlük said:

Julien – You can have the Adwords target URL or email have a query in it. And then you can use PHP to track what the query is on the landing page.

April 1st, 2010 at 7:18 am
Horoz said:

So usefull info. We can try it when building website. Thank u man!

April 19th, 2010 at 5:52 am
Email Marketing Blog said:

I think all of these tips go hand in hand to make an awesome squeeze page. I think lists are very important (with short and concise information) to highlight what a visitor will get when they subscribe. No one really likes reading a large block of text, and I think a list counteracts this mentality.

Great post!

June 25th, 2010 at 8:30 am
web tasar?mc? said:

It’s awesome what you’re doing here, this is the first site I’ve ever seen that gives this information on for free ;))

August 22nd, 2010 at 3:42 pm
ken from freeTGR said:

I saw the effort put into this gold squeeze page by 2 top guros.
I recently set up a gold squeeze page using by Andrew Fox
which works for him. I am testing this out my self.

August 29th, 2010 at 6:40 pm