Turning Search into Medical Beauty Knowledge: Baidu’s Lemon Aesthetic Case Study

Understanding Business, Setting Goals

Lemon Aesthetic, Baidu’s medical‑beauty sub‑brand, relies on Baidu App’s massive natural traffic. Designers act as the bridge between business and users, exploring product direction, identifying key profit drivers—advertising and commissions—and establishing active users and conversion rate as north‑star metrics.

Insights, Opportunities

User decision‑making in medical aesthetics involves a cognition stage and a decision stage, with longer awareness periods and more influencing factors than typical purchases. Research showed that knowledge and trust are critical for conversion, requiring time and content to build.

Global View, Initial Hypothesis

Since users discover medical‑beauty content via Baidu search, the hypothesis is that the first impression must instantly signal relevance, delivering easy‑to‑understand, trustworthy information that fosters a lasting impression and drives repeated usage.

MVP, Validating Hypothesis

Designers identified knowledge content and time as key factors and used an MVP approach to test the hypothesis. By extracting 60,000 top‑query terms and performing semantic analysis, they created a five‑tab encyclopedia card (overview, effects, suitable audience, comparison, treatment) that auto‑displays based on user queries.

A/B testing with 20% traffic showed the card increased average dwell time by 11 seconds and significantly improved click behavior. Further analysis revealed that users who visited the encyclopedia page were twice as likely to search medical‑beauty content the next day, had a 12% higher 8‑day retention, and a 48% higher likelihood of revisiting the page.

Connecting Business, Defining Goals

Designers mapped the user conversion path from cognition to decision, aligning platform, business, and user dimensions to define objectives and key factors.

Design Goals and Strategies

Goal 1: Build an authoritative medical‑beauty knowledge brand – reinforce brand perception with a blue‑green palette integrated with lemon leaf colors.

Goal 2: Increase medical‑beauty DAU – split search cards into click‑through actions, expand content dimensions (products, instruments, materials), and enable easy sharing for user‑driven propagation.

Goal 3: Improve professional content acceptance – create video explanations and animated graphics, enlarge text size for comfortable reading.

Goal 4: Enhance page presentation – prioritize authoritative content on the dictionary homepage and adopt a three‑section structure for dual‑feed content.

Goal 5: Boost e‑commerce conversion – embed product mentions and consultation links beneath content.

Goal 6: Strengthen non‑search service reach – provide reminders when users bookmark or exit the dictionary to reinforce brand mindshare.

Summary

By dissecting the profit model, uncovering user needs, and aligning with Baidu App’s strategic upgrades, designers created a cohesive design pattern that links users, services, and the platform, driving measurable improvements in engagement, conversion, and brand perception.