User decision-making is an uphill process. The value of a landing page is to precisely block each step and give the user a push, turning a difficult decision-making process into something as effortless as a "slide", as shown in the figure below.

If you think that after reading this article, you will know what the "scientific landing page structure" looks like, or that next time you make a landing page, you can directly apply it without thinking - then this may be the first cognitive misunderstanding you need to break.

1. How to obtain a scientific landing page structure?

A professional consulting team that provides "landing page planning guidance" summarized "how to make the best landing page in the industry" and shared: We usually complete the design of a landing page in 7 steps

1) Conduct sufficient online research

2) On-site customer research

3) Team-wide brainstorming and intensive planning sessions

4) Specific design of the renderings

5) Customer confirmation and modification of renderings

6) Development and implementation of landing pages

7) Acceptance results and evaluation improvements

On average, the process of promoting a landing page lasts 3-4 weeks, depending on the internal conditions of the brand. Although professional consulting and guidance methods are rigorous and effective, they are rarely adopted by brand owners because they face many practical embarrassments:

Sufficient user research in the early stage is time-consuming and costly; the development cost in the middle is an asset that is difficult to reuse, which increases the overall cost of the landing page; the acceptance and evaluation in the later stage are slow and cannot be synchronized with the front-line business directly...

2. Inspiration from old brands’ exploration methods for new marketing

This high-cost, heavy optimization method also gave us great inspiration - the reason why such a complex landing page optimization process is so effective is summarized in three points:

1. Pay enough attention to the landing page

When we visited a brand user, the head of the marketing department said frankly: "There is a popular saying in the industry that the landing page is the primary productive force. But the reality is that everyone just talks about it. There are not many brands that really pay attention to the landing page."

A marketing department that relies too much on online media and advertising techniques is like a martial artist who is unwilling to practice inner skills. He knows a lot of tricks, but when he meets a real master, he finds it difficult to cope with him. Compared with those teams that are willing to hire professionals to optimize landing pages, the emphasis they place on internal skills is incomparable.

2. Learn from competitors

Before brainstorming a plan, a professional landing page planning team will review the landing pages of all competing products, learn good methods from them, and draw on them for reference. This learning process is a repetitive one. Although colleagues are enemies, healthy competition is also the biggest driving force for progress.

Constantly learn from competitors’ strengths, fresh ideas, effective components, and conversion-boosting baits, while incorporating the highlights of your own brand. In short, it is to constantly stimulate the planners’ brains, generate more insights and inspirations for landing pages, and be able to act quickly.

3. Scientific and reliable effect acceptance

The most frustrating thing about landing pages is that users’ reactions to them are dynamic, but marketers’ requirement for landing pages is to generate stable conversions. In order to resolve this pair of enemies, landing page experts will choose to constantly verify various assumptions and make decisions based on the results.

If you want to ensure the timeliness and adequacy of the "hypothesis-verification-improvement" model, the cost required is something that most brand owners are unwilling to bear. Or from a utilitarian point of view, although this approach is scientific, it is not necessarily cost-effective.

Through the above analysis, what I see is: if we adopt the traditional method, it is really difficult to summarize the scientific structure of the landing page - not only is it time-consuming and laborious, but the so-called "scientific structure" is always changing, and it requires constant assumptions and verifications to obtain better marketing benefits.

3. Does the ultimate logic of landing page structure exist?

Don’t hit anyone after you hear this—I think it both exists and doesn’t exist. There are some broad rules in the landing page structure that can help us quickly build a framework, as shown below.

Generally speaking, landing page blocks can be summarized into these six types, each of which assumes different responsibilities for information delivery - placement of the essence of the header image, display of product advantages, product testimonials, demonstration of brand strength, clear identification of applicable audiences, and stimulation by calls to action.

At the same time, as a qualified persuasive carrier, the landing page also needs to have the following five core conversion elements, namely, sense of value, scarcity, importance, adaptability, and credibility.

Of course, when we plan a landing page, the above 6 blocks and 5 elements do not have to be included, but it is a model of flexible selection and free combination. Every industry and every brand needs to test and summarize the optimal combination plan within a period of time, which requires constant keen insight into the market and consumers.

For example, if I am making a landing page for the education industry, I might first build a structure like this based on business needs and competitive product analysis.

As shown in the figure above, the overall structure can be divided into logically related block structures. Each block carries corresponding expression/interaction functions and implies a most important conversion factor. However, this is only the first step in planning a landing page. This prototype must be tested in practice, and then we will find that:

1) There may be a lot of room for optimization in the order of block display. Will adjusting the priority change the result?

2) Do blocks need to be increased or decreased? Is some information not fully expressed? But some information is too long-winded?

3) Even if the functional positioning of the block remains unchanged, the conversion attributes of the block can also change if the visual and textual expressions are changed. For example, the same CTA that stimulates conversion can make users feel urgent and scarce, or it can make users feel important and must be done.

4) Of course, the length and layout of each block will also affect the overall communication effect, thereby affecting the conversion effect for better or worse.

In short, a coarse-grained landing page structure can form some scientific laws. However, in actual business, a structure that can be implemented must not only be combined with business experience, but also require a variety of combinations of block selection, location, and expression forms as market conditions, popularity, and consumer mentality change.

The most critical step is to continuously conduct low-cost and high-efficiency tests on so many landing page structures that look good, so as to obtain conclusions like this:

1) This structural version converts better in this business scenario;

2) This structural version converts better for people with such characteristics.

Author: Aiqi SEM

Source: Aichi SEM (CMOcollege)