Landing page or website? What your company needs, and when
A landing page and a website do not compete: they do different jobs. This guide explains what each one is, when a landing page is enough, and why almost every company that sells to other companies ends up needing both.
What a landing page is
A landing page is a page built for a single action. Someone arrives from an ad, an email or a post, and the page has one job: get that person to leave their details, ask for a quote or send a WhatsApp message.
That is why it has almost no menu and no links elsewhere: anything that distracts from the action is removed. It talks about one offer, to one audience, and it measures how many of the people who arrive do what was expected.
What a company website is
A company website is the company's full site: who it is, what it sells, who it has sold to, where it is and how to reach it. It has several pages, each with its own subject, and it is made so that someone who has already heard of you can look you over calmly before they call.
It is also what Google indexes. Each service page, each project and each guide can show up for a different search, and over time that brings visits without paying for each click.
Landing page and website, side by side
| Topic | Landing page | Company website |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | One action | Inform, persuade and be found |
| Pages | One | Several, one per subject |
| Menu | Almost none | Full |
| Where visitors come from | Ads, email, social | Google, referrals, ads |
| Lifespan | As long as the campaign | Years, growing with the company |
| Google search ranking | Little: one page, one topic | A lot: every page can rank |
| How it is measured | That page's conversion | Visits, enquiries and searches |
When a landing page is enough
- You are launching a product or a promotion and want to measure interest before investing further.
- You have an ad campaign with a single offer and need a page that talks about exactly that.
- You are testing a new market and do not yet know how you will describe your company in it.
In all three cases, the landing page is temporary or complementary. If the company is going to keep selling, sooner or later someone will search its name on Google, and what they find matters.
Why a B2B company usually needs both
Someone buying for a company almost never decides on the first visit. They arrive from an ad, leave, compare, talk it over with someone and come back days later searching for your name. The landing page serves the first visit; the website is what they find when they return.
The combination that tends to work is a website with one page per service, each written as if it were that service's landing page: one subject, one clear action and contact details at hand, but inside a site Google can read in full and the buyer can look around.
A well-made service page does both jobs: it converts the visitor from an ad and it ranks for the person searching. It is what to build first.
An example: every button ends in a conversation
The Geely Guadalajara site, built for an advisor at an authorized dealership, has the full lineup, a 360° colour studio, a comparison tool and a financing simulator. It is a full site, not a landing page.
But every page behaves like one: every button ends in WhatsApp or a test-drive request, with the model the visitor was looking at already in the message. The advisor gets requests that say which car they are about, instead of a bare “info” in a chat.
Zebretaro does something similar with its catalog: the Google Merchant Center feeds come from the database, so a Shopping ad leads to the product's real page, with current stock, instead of a generic page.
Frequently asked questions
Can I advertise on Google with my website, without a landing page?
Yes, as long as the page the ad leads to talks about exactly what the ad offers. Sending every ad to the home page tends to work worse than sending each one to the matching service page.
Does a landing page rank on Google?
It can, for a very specific search. But as one page with one subject, it ranks for far less than a site with a page per service, per project and per question.
What is a one-page website?
A site where all the content lives on one long page. It works for something very simple, but it has a landing page's limits in search: Google sees a single subject.
Has your operation outgrown spreadsheets?
Tell us how you sell, quote and serve today. We'll tell you what we would build, and in what order.