Is a great squeeze page (ironically) killing your sales?

We all know that first impressions count, but as internet marketers, all too many of us forget that basic fact of life and foolishly dwell on numbers instead.

I’ve recently been doing massive amounts of testing to increase opt-in rate on my top site’s home page. I made it a short-term goal to really test every possible idea and variant I could come up with – no matter how crazy – and find the best possible combination to generate a huge opt-in rate.

I succeeded!

The final version increased opt-ins by nearly fifty percent! Incredible! This was a big deal for me because I’ve always been surrounded by internet marketers who achieve seemingly impossible opt-in rates, while I continued to bang my head against the wall trying to improve upon the much more modest opt-in rate I was stuck with.

So, here I was over the past week, watching my list explode in size, and laughing out loud in joy at the amount of leads I was capturing daily.

Except for one big problem: While my opt-in rate exploded, my sales conversion rate tapered off dramatically.

Why?

Because in the process of creating my new mega-successful squeeze page, I forgot about the fact that the instant a site visitor lands on the page, the sales process begins.

Most internet marketers separate the opt-in and the sales letter. They see them as two separate steps: First, capture a lead. Then and only then, the sales process begins.

Wrong!

The sales process begins the instant someone finds your site. (In the case of a JV, it begins even before then, in the form of the copy that your affiliates mail out.)

My new squeeze page, while capturing leads at an unheard-of rate, failed to build the interest and credibility necessary to make site visitors actually want to read the sales page. Instead, all it did was entice them with a great download, and instead of reading my sales letter and buying my product, they were happy with the freebie.

So, I’m going back to an old rule of mine that I somehow forgot about: Whenever I split-test an opt-in page, I’ll always include a second outcome in the test in the form of sales conversion rate. After all, what good is a big pile of opt-ins if they’re not buying your product at the end of the day?

Remember that quality always trumps quantity. For years, internet marketers have always been in a contest with each other to build the biggest list. Now many are in a big pissing match to get the most social media followers. Both pursuits are a fruitless waste of time, for the simple fact that neither focuses on the only thing that puts money in our pockets: Sales.

Don’t make the mistake I make and forsake sales volume in exchange for worthless list building. Always, always, always measure the impact on ultimate sales conversion no matter what kind changes you’re making!