Posted by Ray White on April 23, 2010 Comments Off

The other day I was scanning my Twitter stream and saw an interesting tweet about a blog post. I clicked the url link in the tweet to go read the blog post. A new browser tab opened for the blog. I caught a glimpse of the blog post title just as everything went black. No, I didn’t pass out. The tab window darkened. Then a big white box popped up to fill the screen. It was an opt-in form to get blog updates and other information. Now I had a choice to make in order to read the blog post: enter my best email address and hit the submit button, or click the close button at the top right corner of the opt-in form.

Nifty little lead capture system, eh? Drive traffic to the blog with a titillating tweet, then show an impossible-to-miss opt-in form that must be dealt with in order to read the blog post. That’s how a squeeze page works. Grab the viewer’s attention with the page and give the viewer two options, opt-in or move on. Squeeze pages convert well in traffic exchanges. But this wasn’t a squeeze page, and I wasn’t in a traffic exchange.

I clicked a link with an expectation. I expected to get some information on a specific topic. That expectation was foiled when an opt-in form was shoved in my face before I could read anything else. Made me a little cranky.

I was given two choices to read the blog post. I decided that I didn’t really need to read that post after all. And in case you are wondering, I didn’t opt-in either.