In the past two years, I've seen some horrifically bad squeeze pages. I made more than a few of them myself. And the great thing about TERRIBLE squeeze pages is what you can learn from them. In this quick article I'm going to share with you some of the worst decisions you can make when you pen a squeeze page so you can hopefully learn from those failures and start off with a better understanding of what makes a squeeze page NOT suck...

Now that we agree on how valuable failure is in learning about squeeze pages, I'm sure you're champing at the bit to create some lame duck squeeze pages that lounge around on the Internet listlessly, collecting dust and scaring off potential subscribers like a bloody clown... so without further ado:

The First Secret To Writing Horrendous Squeeze Pages: Be longwinded and overly technical! Unless you're trying to build a list of engineers or neuro-surgeons, then stay away from Jargon, technical language and long copy in your squeeze pages.

Keep them short, to the point, and crystal clear about what you expect your traffic to do.

Squeeze pages with lots of testimonials, bullets, proof, stories, images, and graphs may look great and seem convincing to you - but chances are your traffic is going to be overwhelmed. Overwhelmed traffic leaves to go watch videos of cute cats on YouTube. It's a scientifically proven fact.

So keep your squeeze pages simple, easy to understand and direct.

The Second Secret To Writing Horrendous Squeeze Pages: Talk about the features, ignore the benefits!

That's right, if your widget uses 256 bits instead of 128 then you better be sure to tell people. Forget the fact that it loads faster and looks better - and forget that what that means is saved time, less stress, and more peace of mind. Just focus on the features. Oh, what programming language was your widget written in? I'm sure people will care.

Not.

Sorry for the sixth grade level sarcasm, but this one is endemic.

Way too many people focus on the technical aspects of their product or service on their squeeze pages and forget that all you need to do with your squeeze pages is get people to opt in.

What gets people to opt in to squeeze pages anyway?

Self Interest.

So, present a simple appeal of your product or service that plays off of their interests (what great things will happen to your subscribers when they optin to your squeeze pages and start getting emails from you?)...

If you can't answer the simple question "Why should I" then your squeeze pages are guaranteed to perform at uncomfortably high levels of horrendous suckage.

The Third Secret To Writing Horrendous Squeeze Pages: Use lots of pictures and video. In fact, do everything you can to make your squeeze page look like YouTube resurrected Geocities and then vomited all over it.

Seriously though, the reason to avoid images and video as much as possible on your squeeze pages is two-fold:

1) Your page will load quicker without them. Quicker loading means less frustrated dial up users clicking away to look at cute cats on the Cheezburger network.

2) Your prospects will think quicker without them cluttering up your squeeze pages. A picture is worth a thousand words. That must mean a video is worth a book or two. Are you sure that all the subtle things your video communicates are beneficial to your list building efforts?

If not, then reconsider that sappy photo of you in front of the company sign smiling. It could be doing more harm than good.

Squeeze pages are like toll booths. Too many people treat them like store fronts.

If you're going to convert the highest number of your visitors into subscribers with your squeeze pages then keep it simple, keep it relevant, and keep it plain. The more you embellish, the more traffic you'll drive away.

And if you really WANT to sabotage your squeeze pages, then you should definitely use more jargon, focus on more irrelevant features, and include at least a gigabite worth of images and video that load slowly and don't do any heavy lifting for you in terms of optins.

On the other hand, if you want to build a list faster than ever, simply sign in on the next page and watch the video I've got ready for you:

http://www.ListBuilding.com/horrendous

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