One Page or a Full Site
Three questions I ask before I quote either, and what each answer usually means.
A landing page is enough when you sell one thing, most visitors arrive from one place and they don't need much proof before they get in touch. If any of those isn't true, you probably need a few pages. I settle it with three questions before we talk about design.
How Many Things Are You Selling?
One product for one kind of visitor fits on one page. The Luma concept is a single landing page for one product.
Several services or several audiences need room. In one long scroll, each visitor has to dig past the parts that aren't for them. The Lattice concept, a site for infrastructure software, has seven pages (home, product, customers, security, pricing, docs and changelog), because the people who choose a product like that read far more than one page can hold.
Where Do Visitors Come From?
People who arrive from an ad, an email or a launch post already know why they clicked. A page that repeats that one message and asks for one action does the job. Google Ads even scores how relevant and useful your landing page is to the people who click the ad.
If you want to be found through search, one page is a narrow target. A page answers one kind of question well, so a site with a page for each service has more ways to be found.
How Much Do They Need to Trust You?
A small, quick purchase can be decided on one page; a contract for months of work usually can't. Before someone signs up for months of work, they want to see past projects, know who's behind the company and understand how you work. That's what work, about and services pages are for.
Before I design a home page, I ask what would make a visitor doubt you. On a bigger project, the answers usually turn into pages. It's also why every site I design starts as a list of pages: if a page has no question to answer, it doesn't go in.
Starting Small Is Fine
If you're still testing the offer, I'd often start with one page. It's quicker to launch, easier to change, and it shows which questions visitors actually ask. Those questions become the next pages. The landing page doesn't have to go when the site grows: it can stay as the page your ads point to.
Keep Either One Fast
Size aside, speed matters on every page. In a 2020 Deloitte study for Google of 37 European brands, a mobile site 0.1 seconds faster was linked to 8.4% more conversions in retail.
What It Costs
Design for a website or a landing page starts at $490, and a complete site, designed and built, from $990. The final price depends on how many pages there are and how much each one has to do, and I fix the scope before I give it. Timelines for each option are on the services page.
Not sure which one you need? Tell me about the project, and I'll say which I'd build and why.