Landing Page vs Full Website: What Should Your Startup Launch With?

Most founders face this decision at some point between "we have a name" and "we have customers". Build the whole website now, or put up a single page and get on with the business? Both are right in different situations, and the wrong choice wastes either weeks or money. This guide sets out what each option is good for, what each costs in time and money, and the approach we recommend to most of the startups we work with, which gets the speed of a landing page without the rebuild later.

What We Mean by Each

• A landing page is a single page with one purpose. It speaks to one audience, makes one offer and asks for one action. There is no menu to wander off into.
• A coming soon page is a stripped-down landing page that says what is on the way and collects email addresses. Our guide to what to put on a coming soon page covers it separately.
• A one-page website tells the full story of a business on one long scrolling page with sections for services, about and contact. It suits very small businesses with one service, and it has the same search limits as a landing page.
• A full website has separate pages for the home, about, each service or product, contact and the legal basics, with a menu to move between them. It can be found on Google for several different searches and it reads as an established business.

When a Landing Page Is Enough

A single page is the right choice when the job is narrow and the business is early:

• Testing an idea. You want to know whether anyone wants what you are planning before you build it. A page that explains it and collects sign-ups answers that question for very little money.
• Building a waiting list ahead of a launch, so you have people to tell when the product is ready.
• One product, one offer. An app, a single subscription, a course or an event has one thing to explain and one thing to do next.
• A paid campaign. If you are sending advertising traffic to a page, a focused page with no distractions converts better than a home page with a menu.
• Pre-revenue with no team yet. There is not much to say beyond the idea and the founders, and a confident single page says it better than five thin ones.

When You Need a Full Website

• You sell more than one thing, or to more than one kind of customer. Each service or audience needs its own page to explain it properly, and a single page trying to do all of them does none of them well.
• You want enquiries from Google. Google ranks pages, not businesses. One page can rank for your name and perhaps one service. Separate pages can rank for each thing you do and each question customers ask. Our guide to getting a startup website found on Google explains why structure matters so much.
• You need to look established. Investors, larger customers, partners and anyone running a procurement process will look for an about page, a team, case studies and proper contact details. Our guide to websites and funding goes into what investors check.
• You have content worth publishing. Case studies, reviews, frequently asked questions and guides all need somewhere to live.
• The website does something. Bookings, accounts, payments, a members' area or an admin dashboard need the structure of a proper site.
• You serve a local area. Local searches favour businesses with a proper website, a Google Business Profile and pages for the services people search for.

The Trade-Offs Side by Side

Cost and Time, Realistically

A professionally designed landing page is typically a one to two week job and costs a fraction of a full site. A full startup website of up to around ten pages is a three to six week project, and at DigitalPod starts from £2,400, with websites that include an admin dashboard from £3,900. Our guide to how long a website takes to build breaks the timescales down.

The cheap route is a landing page tool or a template, and for pure validation that can be a sensible choice. The catch is what happens next. Those pages live on someone else's platform, look like every other page built with the same tool, and cannot become the website you will eventually need. When the business takes off, the page is thrown away and the brand is rebuilt from nothing, which means paying twice. Our comparison of custom websites and website builders sets out the trade-offs in full.

The Approach We Recommend: Page One of the Real Website

For most startups the best answer is neither a throwaway page nor a full site before the business is ready for one. It is a landing page designed and built as the first page of the eventual website: on your own domain, with your real branding, a page structure that allows for more pages, forms that work, analytics and Search Console set up from day one.

That page goes live in a week or two. As the business develops, pages are added when there is something worth saying: a service page when the offer is clear, an about page when the team grows, case studies when the first customers are happy to be named. Nothing is thrown away, the domain starts building a track record with Google from the first day, and the site always looks like one business rather than a collection of tools. We build landing pages on the same foundation as our full websites for exactly this reason, so that a startup website can grow in stages, and the same approach works well for a SaaS startup launching ahead of the product.

What a Startup Landing Page Must Include

Whichever route you take, a page that is going to earn sign-ups or enquiries needs the same ingredients:

• A headline that says what you do, for whom and the outcome, in words a stranger understands in five seconds.
• A sub-heading or short paragraph that says how it works.
• Proof you can back up: early customers, quotes, logos, credentials or the founders' backgrounds.
• One call to action, repeated at the top and the bottom, and nothing competing with it.
• Who it is for, so the right people recognise themselves and the wrong people leave quietly.
• A way to contact a human, and the legal basics: a privacy notice and company details if you are a limited company.

Our guide to writing website copy for a startup gives a formula for the headline and the rest of the page, and if you are starting from nothing, our logo and brand design can be quoted alongside the page so it looks like a real business from the first day.

Deciding in Five Questions

1. Do I sell one thing to one kind of customer, or several? One thing points to a landing page, several to a website.
2. Will enquiries come from Google, or from ads, introductions and social media? Google needs pages.
3. Who needs to be convinced in the next six months: early adopters, or investors and larger customers?
4. Does the site need to do anything beyond explaining and collecting details?
5. If this works, will I be embarrassed by the page in six months, or can it grow?

If you are still unsure, tell us what the business does and what you need it to do in the next few months. We will say honestly whether a single page or a full site is the better use of your money, and quote for both if it helps.