Page names get bandied around a lot in internet marketing.

But what’s the difference between squeeze pages, opt-in pages and landing pages?

Or are they just terms used to keep new marketers and sometimes even older marketers on their toes?

Landing Pages

My definition of a landing page – and I’m disageeing a bit with Wikipedia here – is any web page that a visitor can land on when they first visit your website.

Maybe that’s because I’m old school and that’s what I’ve always heard the first page a visitor meets as the landing page. Because they’ve just “landed” on your site.

I’ve had the occasional heated argument with web designers who insist that the only page that’s important on a website is the home or index page.

Often that’s the only page that a web designer pays any real attention to.

And often it’s one of the least visited pages on a site.

For this site, maybe one visitor in every five even glances at my home page. So 80% of my visitors don’t look at the home page, which is why it’s nothing special.

On one of the sites I look after, that figure drops to about one in every twenty visitors. So for that site 95% of visitors don’t go there.

The proportion might be higher for Google but it might not be – I rarely go to their home page, I just use the search box in my browser.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that goes for a lot of users.

Which means that every single page of your website is a potential landing page and should be treated as such.

Make sure your most wanted action is do-able. Whether that’s having your phone number splattered across the top of each page, an opt-in form to capture emails or anything else that you regard as essential.

Because unless you specifically block traffic to a page and password protect it, there’s a chance Google or someone else will show a link to it.

Squeeze Pages

This is where confusion can come in.

Because different marketers will also call these opt-in pages.

And some will call them a landing page.

The sole purpose of these pages is to encourage a visitor to trust you enough to give you their email address or (sometimes) trust you enough to click a link to another page on your site or to an offer elsewhere.

If they give you an email address then Ideally it should be one that they check rather than one that they use for the specific purpose of signing up for offers, clicking a confirmation link if they really have to and then never reading any further emails they get sent.

If they have to click through to another page on your website then there should be enough incentive for them to do that.

Which is where the difference between squeeze pages and opt-in pages comes into play.

An opt-in page is designed to get you to opt-in to an email list whereas a squeeze page could just aim to get you to click through to another page on your site or watch a video or download a PDF report or almost any other possible outcome.

So in that respect, an opt-in page is different from a squeeze page because conceivably a squeeze page may not want you to surrender your email address.

Clear as mud really.

But most of the time the terms squeeze page and opt-in page are used interchangeably. Sometimes with landing page being added in for good measure.

Page length

Any of these pages can be almost any length.

Some squeeze pages are short.

I’ve seen some that are no more than a headline and a sign up now box.

Personally, I click the back button with those more often than not.

Others have a series of bullet points that reinforce the headline (and maybe the sub-headline) and entice you to sign up.

Others have a video – which probably plays as soon as you arrive (land) on the page, often deafening anyone within earshot and leading to a frantic attempt to close the window you’ve just landed on.

Which in turn often brings up a message pleading with you not to leave – that’s an exit pop-up and is a different type of thing because it’s not usually a page, it’s just an annoying box that may or may not lead to a different or cheaper offer.

But at least it didn’t pop-up in a new browser window or underneath the current page (thanks, Trip Advisor, I really didn’t want that rubbish appearing).

Or worse still something like the Forbes site where you have to actively tell the page that the unasked for advert really isn’t what you clicked the link on Google to find (although in Forbes defense at least they don’t make you opt in or pay to see that page).

Grr!

And if you’re asking your site visitors to jump through any kind of hoop like that before they get to your site then your site had really better be something way better than special.

Because if it isn’t, the back button and the ‘x’ option are very close at hand and we’re all trained by now to use them first, think about it later.

After that digression and rant…

An opt-in page has different elements but is designed purely to get you to give the site owner your email address so that you can get the freebie they’re offering and so that you can get sent email messages that they send to their list.

And if you’d like to know what to do with people once they’ve joined your list, check this out.

Like everything else in internet marketing. you need to test your opt-in pages.

Test whether a simple headline works best or if you need a few bullet points as well or if a video gets best response with your target market.

If you need help designing an opt-in page, this WordPress plugin makes it super simple.

Squeeze pages sometimes take people down what Joe Sugarman calls a slippery slope.

They’re not particularly easy to create unless you’ve had a lot of practice but the idea is to take people down a slope where they’re so intrigued they’ll happily click the “next” button and read or watch that page as well. And the next page. And so on.

You can do quite a good job of this – even without being an expert copywriter – just by creating a tutorial and making each section a new page.

I’ve seen people do this and after a few pages (anything from 3 to a dozen or so) they ask people for their email address in order to get the rest of the tutorial.

Done properly that could be the lead-in for a product sale.

Have a think about it.

But don’t spend so long thinking that you don’t put it into practice!