A landing page and a business site can look almost identical in a screenshot. They behave completely differently, and choosing the wrong one is the most common avoidable mistake in a small website.
The difference is not length
People assume a landing page means "short" and a business site means "long". It does not. A landing page can scroll for a very long way. The real difference is how many things a visitor is allowed to do.
A landing page gives them one. A business site gives them several and expects them to choose.
Pick a landing page when there is one action
If you are running ads, launching one product, selling tickets to one event, or collecting signups for one thing, use a landing page. Everything on it argues for the same action. There is usually no navigation menu at all, because a menu is an invitation to leave.
The other advantage is measurement. With one action on one page, the number of people who did it is the only number you need. On a site with six pages and four possible next steps, you can tell that something is not working but not what.
Pick a business site when people arrive with different questions
A restaurant gets people who want the menu, people who want to book, people who want to know if there is parking, and people checking you are open on a Monday. Forcing all of that onto one scrolling page means everyone scrolls past four things they do not care about.
Separate pages let someone go straight to the one thing they came for, and let you send a link to exactly that page when somebody asks.
A rough test
- Can you write down the single thing you want a visitor to do, in five words? Landing page.
- Do you have three or more equally likely reasons someone might arrive? Business site.
- Are you paying for traffic to reach it? Almost always a landing page.
- Do people search for your name specifically? Almost always a business site.
You can have both
This is the answer more often than people realise. A business site handles everyone who searches your name, and a separate landing page handles a campaign for six weeks, then gets retired or replaced.
Keeping them separate keeps both honest. The campaign page stays ruthless about its one action, and the main site stays useful to somebody who just wants your phone number.