Capture Pages?
One of the things I've noticed is many marketers are now using forced "Capture pages" to collect information on their prospects. I understand that this is an easy way to keep track of visitors to your site but have you thought about the drawbacks? Don't let anyone fool you there are drawbacks.
The first draw back is this. If you have set up a capture page and your prospect is blocked from information on your product or service unless they put information into the capture page first, how many just navigate away from your page and go somewhere else? People are becoming more aware of the dangers of giving information over the internet and view collecting of their e-mail address etc as a danger. They consider the implications of spam generation and viruses attached to e-mail from unknown parties and you are an unknown party.
The second drawback is what do you have to hide? If you will not let a prospect see your information, why not? If your information is good and your opportunity is solid why are you blowing smoke in their face with a lot of hype and not allowing them to see what you are offering up front? A headline screaming "Make $5000 a week from home" with some tanned guy lounging on the beach telling you how great his life is is not information, it's hype. So now you not only want to collect their information you want them to spend more time clicking through to another page to find out whether they are interested or not. Why are you wasting their time? It doesn't matter that you don't think it's a waste of time, what matters is that they see it as you wasting their time.
Don't get me wrong, capture pages in themselves are not bad, its how you set it up that can be negative. By all means have a capture page to collect information IF they want to give it to you. Those who are interested in what you have to offer will give you the information. If they are not interested why are you forcing them to provide you with information? Are you planning to annoy them to death with unwanted and wasteful spam autoresponder messages? That's a waste of your resources and a source of resentment for them.By not requesting information up front people don't look at you as a source of spam. Being labeled a spam generator is the worst thing in the world for a business.
Last but not least by having a voluntary capture page, they see what you are offering and make a choice. You weed out the no's and get get the maybe's and yesses.
Of course like anything else you'll get the tire kickers but you won't be wasting your time on people who are not interested and don't want to be bothered. We all know it takes multiple exposures in many cases to get a sale but just because you expose someone multiple times does not mean that they are going to buy. So gathering information and constantly annoying someone who is not interested is not going to get you a sale either.
The first draw back is this. If you have set up a capture page and your prospect is blocked from information on your product or service unless they put information into the capture page first, how many just navigate away from your page and go somewhere else? People are becoming more aware of the dangers of giving information over the internet and view collecting of their e-mail address etc as a danger. They consider the implications of spam generation and viruses attached to e-mail from unknown parties and you are an unknown party.
The second drawback is what do you have to hide? If you will not let a prospect see your information, why not? If your information is good and your opportunity is solid why are you blowing smoke in their face with a lot of hype and not allowing them to see what you are offering up front? A headline screaming "Make $5000 a week from home" with some tanned guy lounging on the beach telling you how great his life is is not information, it's hype. So now you not only want to collect their information you want them to spend more time clicking through to another page to find out whether they are interested or not. Why are you wasting their time? It doesn't matter that you don't think it's a waste of time, what matters is that they see it as you wasting their time.
Don't get me wrong, capture pages in themselves are not bad, its how you set it up that can be negative. By all means have a capture page to collect information IF they want to give it to you. Those who are interested in what you have to offer will give you the information. If they are not interested why are you forcing them to provide you with information? Are you planning to annoy them to death with unwanted and wasteful spam autoresponder messages? That's a waste of your resources and a source of resentment for them.By not requesting information up front people don't look at you as a source of spam. Being labeled a spam generator is the worst thing in the world for a business.
Last but not least by having a voluntary capture page, they see what you are offering and make a choice. You weed out the no's and get get the maybe's and yesses.
Of course like anything else you'll get the tire kickers but you won't be wasting your time on people who are not interested and don't want to be bothered. We all know it takes multiple exposures in many cases to get a sale but just because you expose someone multiple times does not mean that they are going to buy. So gathering information and constantly annoying someone who is not interested is not going to get you a sale either.
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Comments (31)
Jeff Greene8
Online Marketing Specialist/Consultant
A splash page is simply a very fast loading web page that's made to introduce your product or service... It differs from a capture page in that it usually doesn't require additional personal information from the viewer to recieve more info about the product...
Wendy7
Hmmm......... Not fair making me ponder things before I finished my first coffee LOL
I do use Capture pages (at OBA we call them Splash pages) Is there a difference??
I do NOT request any email addies or collect any information. When they click on it they will be taken to the page that explains what OBA is about. Even on that page there is no pay option. They are reqired to take that one extra step if they decide to purchase.
Now with that being said you have still given me food for tho
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
Really if people would think and get those dollar signs out of their eyes for a minute and read the fine print, they would think twice. Besides why does some marketer need your e-mail address and name? Are they going to invite you to their next candlelight supper?
Nooooooo they want to put you on their autoresponder list and fill your inbox with spam. It's called the Jehovah Witness Marketing system, ring the doorbell enough times with you newest issue of "The Watchtower" and people will giv
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
Honestly If I go to a site and it has a capture page to get my information I hit the delete button or in some other way move on. I don't care how many young good looking hunks are laying on the beach showing off their six pack abs proving they don't need to work. If you can't let me know what you have I will move on to someone who will.
Jeff Greene8
Online Marketing Specialist/Consultant
Most of the time, for me anyway, capture pages from anyone or any product that i don't know something about are zapped...
There are too many things that can happen behind that image... Also, they've already gotten a bad rap from the days of web 1.0 scammers and spammers... Why start up trusting them now?
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
Aha! Juenelle thank you for that. Now we all know where those double opt in verified "leads" come from don't we? Somebody trying to get to the original offer and navigating through all these capture pages.
Cheryl Baumgartner12
Medical Billing/Coding/Insurance
You will always get the tire kickers but why would anyone want to waste their time on that when they can be working on prospects with possibility. Why try to get information on everyone who visits your page. Now think 90% are giving Fake e-mail addys. How many clicked and said to themselves "Somebody else triyng to get my information so they can send me a bunch of garbage" That simply went on to another site while totally writing you off for no other reason than they didn't want to give yo
Karl Rose6
You are correct about capture pages. MOST are junk. I use 2 and both are what I consider good. One is using the DNE3 system and the other is with fiendcatreferrals.com I have found out one thing if people DO reply 90% of the time they send bogus email addys just to get info w/o getting noticed. It's just part of the deal.