Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that people recall the first items (primacy effect) and last items (recency effect) in a list far better than items in the middle. This has been replicated hundreds of times across contexts. For landing pages, it means your hero section and your closing section carry disproportionate weight in how visitors remember and evaluate your page.
In practical terms: your strongest headline goes first. Your strongest CTA and closing argument go last. Everything in the middle supports the story, but the visitor's final impression will be shaped primarily by what bookends the experience.
Structuring pages around serial position
When listing features, put the most impressive one first and the second-most impressive last. When displaying testimonials, lead with the strongest and close with the second-strongest. When writing benefit bullet points, front-load the most compelling one. The items in positions 2-through-second-to-last are the most likely to be scanned over or forgotten.
This has direct implications for pricing pages too. The plan you want visitors to choose should be positioned first or last in the row — not buried in the middle. Heatmap data consistently shows the edges of a pricing table get more visual attention than the center, which is exactly what serial position predicts. If you combine this with a "recommended" badge on the target plan, you're stacking two psychological advantages.