Squeeze or Landing Pages?

I was speaking with a client yesterday and I was going over two types of page, the squeeze page and the landing page.  Basically, these are two types of pages which are designed about the same, but have different goals… sort of.  It is all very fuzzy.  This might clear it up:

Squeeze Page: This page type  is designed to get the viewer to respond immediately.   Basically, it takes the view down through a bunch of verbiage designed to convince them that they should contact the website owner.

Landing Page: This page type is designed to convince the viewer that they are in the right place and urge them not to surf away.

Why are these two types important?

Both serve a purpose, both do it different, yet both only have subtle differences.

Lets look at the goals for each page:

Squeeze Page

• Create leads
• Convince a visitor that the product or service being offered is something they want.
• Create conversions for inexpensive or impulse buy products

Landing Page

• Prevent visitor from surfing away
• Get the visitor to view the rest of the site.
• Create a conversion (Sale)

So, given these goals, it is clear that a squeeze page is aimed at visitors who know little about the product or service being offered and the site plans to inform them and then get them to make a snap decision to provide contact information.    The landing page makes the assumption that the visitor is looking for the product or service and has landed on the page from a search engine or other well defined source.   Given that it is  known what the visitor wants, the goal is to convince them that they are in the right place to get it.   There is no need to pressure them to make a snap decision to provide their contact information because if they think they are in the right place, they will start evaluating the product or service offered.    Then if the product offered is what they want, they will either buy it or they will contact the seller, depending on how the product or service is offered.

Knowing the goal and type of the page will help design the content.  Landing pages work well with product pictures, a small amount of language and links to purchase or continue.  Squeeze pages need less distracting pictures and some big text to convince the surfer that they need this product and should contact us for more information.

Squeeze pages also can be used for conversion if the product is something that someone might buy without thinking, such as a book or an informational CD.  The product, how it is purchased and the price are really the deciding factors that determine if a squeeze page should attempt conversion or just lead generation.

Daily Scanning and PCI compliance logo are great indicators of a sites security once they get your credit card information.  The prior post discusses secure communication,  this post will cover what happens after you make the purchase and the SSL certificate is no longer a factor.

PCI Compliance is basically compliance with the rules that govern how credit card information is handled.   In a perfect world, a PCI compliant vendor would never lose your credit card data to a hacker or thief.

Users and tell if a site is PCI compliant by looking for a PCI compliance logo.  Compliance means that they have been trained and their system tested to insure that they are not likely to lose a users confidential data.

Several scanLogo vendors are available:

Hacker Proof Verisign Trust Seal Trustwave

These are expensive, costing as much as $1000 a year, so some small businesses may be secure, but unable to afford to purchase a scan vendor to prove it.

Something that a lot of e-commerce users don’t understand are SSL certificates and secure websites and how all of that fits together.

Here are some basic facts about secure websites:

Communication

• All sites with SSL certificates are using secure communication. Your information is not likely to be intercepted by a third party while you are on a site using an SSL certificate.
• There are different types of certificates, but all do exactly the same thing when it comes to communication (There are two different levels of security, 1024 bit and 2048 bit, some companies are suggesting that 1024 bit be phased out starting this year).

Validation of the Business

Another function of SSL certificates is validation of the business.  The higher the level of SSL certificate, the more information the issuer asked of the business.

• Low Assurance:  To get this level of certificate, you need to have access to email on the domain.
• High Assurance: At this level of assurance, the issue will verify the business exists using one or more methods.   This is the lowest level where you know that the site you are dealing with actually is a business and they are the business you suspect they are.
• Extended Validation (EV): At this level, the merchant has been asked to submit paperwork showing who they are and the issuer has verified information about the business.  When using a site with EV level security you can be assured that the business on the other end is legit.

Credit Card Security

SSL Certificates do not indicate that the site is PCI complaint (Payment Card Industry standards for security) and do not guarantee that your credit card information will not be stolen!  In fact, even an EV certificate says nothing about the company you are dealing with and their PCI compliance.

Here are some EV certificates links:

Comodo Verisign

A basic definition of leads and referrals:

Leads – consumers who arrive at a website looking for a company to do business with.

Referrals – consumers who arrive at a website looking for more information and trying to determine if they want to use that specific business.

Most websites are designed to handle referrals.  This is the basic website design, telling more about what a business can do for their customers.  The reason this is the default is because it is highly effective and easy to produce, thus less expensive.

Lead generation websites are different.  Their goal is less information based and more “contact us” based.  To be effective, they need a constant stream of new visitors, a small number of those will generate leads.  That stream of visitors requires spending of ad revenue on ways to generate them.  For some businesses that can be search engine ranking for others it is lead generation services.

Two mistakes that can be made are these:

1. Sending leads to a conversion site.  This is a huge waste of money as the site is not good at generating leads, it has a large amount of information and is designed with the assumption that the potential customer is aware of the business.
2. Sending referrals to a lead generation site.  Lead generation sites are designed to get contact information and to do it quickly.  A referral isn’t looking to contact the website owner, they have already done that or committed to do it.  They want more information.  Lead sites are short on information, so they are ineffective at conversion.

The far worse crime would be to send referrals to a lead generation site, as often 2/3 of referrals will convert if given enough information.  We know that it is business dependent, but a go lead to contact rate would be 2-3%.

A website can do both functions on different pages.  Make sure leads are going to a landing page designed to get contact information and that referral are going to the front of the website.

When my customers come up with a website concept, the often pick a domain name for their URL and hinge the whole project on that one idea.  For example, a customer might come to me and say, “I have this great idea for a new site about soda.  I want to call it coke.com.  I think that URL will generate me a ton of traffic.”.  Naturally, their bubble bursts when I point out that the domain coke.com is likely taken already.  “What?  The whole thing needs that URL to work!”, they explain.

If your web project is based on a URL alone, I mean the whole idea is that you have to get a specific URL, then your project isn’t a very good idea, no matter what the idea is because your project is a gimmick.   Yes, gimmicks can make money, but most gimmicks don’t.  You are far better off building a sound idea and then getting a URL that works and not getting a URL and building a sound idea (a gimmick) around it.

The reason I was thinking about this is that I met with a client last night and the client did one of those things that everyone like me hates.  The client came up with an amazing idea based on the tiniest bit of information based on something that was so obvious that I should have seen it myself.  Then the client was kind enough to tell me I should do it, instead of taking my great (almost) idea and running off and doing it themselves.

So, I was thinking about that idea last night and I came up with an amazing URL for the idea to live at.  The URL is so amazing that it might make or break the project, I was thinking.  When I got in front of the computer, I thought to myself, “What if the URL isn’t available?”  It was a great sounding, short URL, maybe it wouldn’t be available.

Then I remembered, don’t worry about it.  The project isn’t a gimmick, it is a valid business idea.  If I can’t get the URL, I’ll use something else, it really doesn’t matter.  Of course, the URL was available… all that worry for nothing.  It was however a good lesson.  Don’t pin your project on a URL, make a project and find an acceptable URL for it.

Every had a bad URL experience?  Tell me about it.