Landing page vs website: which one does your business need?

Landing page vs website is a question about the job, not the number of pages. A landing page is a single page built around one offer and one action, for visitors you send there from an ad, an email or a post. A website, often called a brochure website in the UK, presents your whole business over several pages, with a page for each service that people can find on Google.

When my French clients describe what they want, they ask for a site vitrine (a brochure site), a landing page or simply “a page”. Before I advise one or the other, I ask what they offer and which clients they prefer to work with.

This comparison covers what each one does well, which one Google can rank, which one fits Google Ads or cold email, what each costs and how to choose. It is part of my complete guide to small business websites.

Landing page vs website: the difference at a glance

The two do different jobs, and almost every other difference follows from that.

One point of vocabulary: a long home page that lists every service is a one-page website, not a landing page. It has one address but several jobs, which is exactly what a landing page avoids.

What a landing page does well

A landing page works because it removes choices. The visitor arrives with one need, reads one offer and has one thing to do: call, fill in a short form or book a slot. Nothing on the page sends them anywhere else. The offer can also be free, such as a checklist or a short diagnostic in exchange for an email address: my list of lead magnet ideas for service businesses gives examples by trade.

That makes it the right tool when you control where visitors come from. Take a heating engineer who runs ads in September for a fixed-price boiler service. The ad promises the price; the page repeats it in its headline, lists what the service includes, shows a few reviews and asks for a phone number. Nobody who clicked has to look for anything.

A landing page is also easy to measure and easy to change. With a single goal, you can see at once whether the campaign brings enquiries, and you can rewrite a headline or test a second version without touching the rest of your site.

Its limits come from the same focus:

• it says little about who you are, and a careful buyer will look for more before calling;
• it can compete on Google for one main search at most, and often for none;
• when the ads stop, the visits stop.

What a website does that a landing page cannot

A website is where people check you out. Someone who hears your name from a colleague, sees your van or reads a cold email types your name into Google and judges you on what they find: your services, your past work, your reviews, your company details and how the whole thing looks.

I build my clients’ websites so that a prospect takes them seriously from the first page, and is even a little impressed. It also cuts down the haggling: when someone doubts that you are a serious company, they also doubt that you are worth your price. One page rarely carries that weight on its own.

A website also serves every channel at once, and it keeps working when you stop paying for ads. Each service has its own page, each page can be found for its own searches, and every visitor, wherever they came from, can find the answer to their next question.

Which one ranks on Google?

Google shows pages in its results, not whole websites, and a page ranks for the searches it answers best. A landing page, being one page, competes for one main search. A website gives each service its own page, and each page competes for its own searches: the more pages that answer real searches, the more ways in.

Being specific matters more than being big. I have worked with Pilotech, an air conditioning installer near Paris, for two years. Of the sites I built for its founder, one offered too many services and did not work at all; the one that ranks sells very specific services. On the Teknopoint site, each range of air conditioning with no outdoor unit has its own page, and the site ranks first or second on Google. I tell the whole story in my case study on multiple websites for one business.

The trap is a campaign page that copies a service page. When two pages say the same thing, Google usually picks one to show, and it may not be the one you want. If your landing page repeats a service page for an ad campaign, keep it out of the results with a noindex tag, as Google’s documentation on noindex explains. Do not block the page in robots.txt as well: Google has to crawl it to see the tag. Keep a landing page visible to Google only when it answers a search that no other page on your site covers.

On Squarespace, moving a page to the Not linked section only takes it off the menu: the page stays public, and Google can still index it. To add the noindex tag, open the page settings, go to the SEO tab and turn on Hide page from search results.

Which one works best with Google Ads?

Every Google Ads click lands on a page, and Google rates that page. Each keyword gets a Quality Score from 1 to 10, built from three parts: expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, which Google’s help page on Quality Score describes as how relevant and useful your page is to the people who click.

In my view, Google Ads is not that tricky, but it rewards research: what your audience types into Google tells you where to be seen and which page to send them to. My guide to Google Ads for small business covers that research before you spend anything.

You do not always need a new page. A specific service page can already be a good landing page if it answers the search, puts the offer in its headline and your phone number at the top, and has a short form. Build a dedicated landing page when:

• the service page covers several services and the ad is about one of them;
• the ad promotes an offer the site does not show, such as a fixed-price service or a seasonal discount;
• the ad speaks to an audience the site does not address, such as landlords rather than homeowners;
• you want to test two versions of the page without changing your site.

On Facebook and Instagram, people were not searching for you when they saw the ad, so the page has more explaining to do. These ads can work for awareness and for sales, but you need a budget for A/B tests before you know what works, and a page of its own lets you test the page as well as the ad.

Which one works with cold email?

Cold email turns the question around. My cold emails carry no links at all, only plain text, to give them the best chance of reaching the inbox. So there is no landing page to send anyone to: the email gives a phone number and an invitation to look at the catalogue on the website, and the prospect either calls or types your name into Google.

That is how Pilotech’s campaigns worked. They went to three audiences: Paris restaurants, Paris offices and shops, and above all architects, the main focus and the ones who called most. Three plain-text emails at most, with a phone number to call and no links. Many prospects called rather than replied: a call is quicker than writing back, and people like talking to a real person. Over a year, the campaigns brought Pilotech 15 new clients, and together the websites, SEO and cold email now bring it about ten prospects a day.

So for cold email, you do not need a landing page: you need a website that holds up when a prospect looks you up, and it has to be ready before the first email goes out. My cold email examples show the three-line first email that sends prospects to the phone and to your website.

What each one costs

A landing page costs less to build, because it is one page, but where it lives decides the bill:

• A page added to your website costs the time to write and design it. Squarespace, for example, charges per site and plan, not per page, so one more page adds nothing to the subscription.
• A page on a separate tool or domain means a second subscription for as long as it runs, sometimes a second domain, and one more place to update when your phone number or prices change.
• A website is a project, then yearly running costs: the domain, the subscription or hosting, email and maintenance. My guide on how much a website costs in the UK sets out each route and the figures I could check.

The cost people underestimate, in both cases, is the copy. A landing page has to persuade on its own, with no other page to back it up, so every line has to earn its place. In my projects, keyword research and copywriting are a full stage of the work, not a last-minute job.

Landing page or website: how to choose

For most small businesses, the answer is both, in this order: a website first, then a landing page for each paid campaign, on the same domain. If you are launching a mobile app, my guide to SEO for your app’s website covers its landing page and how to connect it to the app.

A landing page on its own is enough when:

• you want to test demand for a new offer before paying for a full site;
• you run an event, a launch or a seasonal offer with an end date;
• you sell one service to one audience, and every visitor comes from ads you pay for;
• you need something to show quickly, to a journalist for example. PR is not my speciality, but I once got a friend, a personal trainer, into a French magazine, and my advice from it is simple: be concise, and have a website or a page that shows your work. You do not need followers, just something interesting to say.

You need a brochure website when:

• you offer more than one service, or serve more than one type of client;
• you want to be found on Google for what you do, not only for your name;
• you prospect by cold email or by phone, because prospects will look you up;
• your clients compare several providers before they call;
• you want people who hear about you by word of mouth to find something solid when they search for your name.

How to add a landing page to your website: a checklist

When a campaign does need its own page, these are the steps I would follow:

1. Write the offer, the audience and the action in one sentence each. If the offer needs two sentences, you probably need two pages.
2. Reuse the words of the ad or the search in the headline, so that visitors know at once they are in the right place.
3. Put your phone number at the top, clickable on a phone: as Pilotech’s prospects showed, many people would rather call than write.
4. Keep the form short: only what you need to call back.
5. Show proof next to the action: Google reviews, photos of real jobs, the brands or accreditations you work with.
6. Remove the main menu, but keep your logo, your company details and the link to your privacy policy: a page that collects contact details still needs them.
7. Decide whether Google should see it: noindex if it copies a service page, visible if it answers a search of its own.
8. Test it on your own phone, on mobile data, before the first ad runs.
9. Measure it: track calls and form submissions as conversions, and install Microsoft Clarity, which is free, to see where visitors stop reading. For visitors in the UK and the EU, Clarity needs a consent signal from your cookie banner; my Microsoft Clarity tutorial shows how to set it up.

If the page gets visits but no enquiries, look at the page before you raise the budget: my guide to a website not getting enquiries shows where visitors drop off and how to fix it. To see the page as one step on the path from first visit to booked call, read my simple sales funnel example.