I tested 20+ landing pages this year. Here’s what actually converts (and what tanks your money)

Everyone's obsessing over quiz funnels and VSLs right now. But most of you are bleeding ad spend because you're picking the wrong landing page for the wrong situation.

I've been working with ecommerce brands doing anywhere from 50K to 250K monthly, and the pattern is brutally clear. The landing page format matters way less than people think. What actually matters is matching your page structure to where your customer is mentally.

Here's the framework that's been working. If you're launching cold traffic to a new market, start with a listicle style page. Something like "5 Reasons Why" or "10 Things You Need to Know." These perform better early because they let you test multiple angles without committing to one story. You're essentially giving yourself permission to be broad while the data comes in. Plus they're easier to build and easier to get right from the start.

Once you have winning ads and you know exactly what angle is resonating, that's when advertorials start to print. An advertorial lets you go deep on one specific pain point in first or third person narrative. Take your best performing ad concept and expand it into a 800 word story. This is where you get those stupid high conversion rates everyone brags about.

Quiz funnels are their own beast. They work incredibly well for two reasons. First, they force customers to self diagnose their problems by clicking through functional questions. By question seven, they've admitted things to themselves they wouldn't say out loud. Second, you're collecting data on what 80% of people are actually struggling with. I've seen brands realize their top performing ad was only speaking to 20% of their quiz responses. Easy win to scale.

The biggest mistake I see is people launching a 40 minute VSL as their first test. Skill issue. If you're still learning to write copy, a long form sales video will murder your conversion rate. Start with simple formats that let you test concepts quickly, then graduate to longer form once you know what works.

Format follows function. A listicle is basically an extended product page, so it's forgiving. A quiz funnel is a diagnostic tool that creates solution aware customers. An advertorial is a hyper focused story for warm traffic. None of them work in the wrong context.

The other thing nobody talks about is how these stack. We run a branded listicle and a quiz funnel simultaneously for one brand. Both are top performers. Then we created two niche unbranded pages for specific concepts that came out of testing. All four pages serve different traffic temperatures and different awareness levels.

Stop asking "what landing page should I use?" and start asking "what does my customer need to hear right now?" The format will reveal itself once you answer that honestly. Test concepts, gather data, then build the page that lets you tell that story best.

Anyone else seeing the same patterns or am I completely off base here?