Landing page or website?
A landing page has one job: turn a specific visitor into a specific action (buy, sign up, book a call).
A website is your full presence: product pages, about, FAQ, blog, email capture.
Most first-time founders build a website when they need a landing page. They spend weeks on branding and navigation before testing whether anyone wants the thing.
Rule: Build a landing page first. Validate demand. Then build the website.
What a landing page needs
Above the fold
- What it is, in one sentence with no adjectives
- Who it's for, named explicitly
- One button, one action
Below the fold
- The mechanism: how it works, briefly
- Proof: one real testimonial or result
- The offer: price, what's included, guarantee
- The call to action again
That's it. No navigation, no three-column feature grid. Anything that doesn't move the visitor toward the action is a distraction.
Rough benchmark: for cold traffic, 2–4% conversion is working and above 5% is strong. Below 1% usually means the offer, the headline, or the traffic source is wrong.
Picking a platform
| Platform | Best for |
|---|---|
| Shopify | Physical products and ecommerce |
| Squarespace | Service businesses and portfolios |
| Webflow | Custom design and content-heavy sites |
| Framer | Design-forward, modern sites |
| Carrd | A single landing page for a fast test |
For a first test, use Carrd or a single Shopify page and get it live in a day. For a real storefront, use Shopify for products and Squarespace or Webflow for services. Check current pricing before you commit.
Web design: clear, fast, trustworthy
A founder's website doesn't need to be beautiful. It needs to be clear, fast, and trustworthy, in that order.
- Clear: in five seconds, the visitor knows what you sell, who it's for, and how to buy it.
- Fast: under three seconds to load on a phone. Compress images and skip heavy scripts.
- Trustworthy: real photos, real reviews, a real contact method, a real guarantee.
The pages you need
- Home: hook, product, proof, offer, call to action. Not a brand manifesto.
- Product or service: what it is, who it's for, what's included, price, guarantee, buy button.
- About: your story and why this exists. One photo, no corporate "we."
- FAQ: answer the five objections that stop people from buying, taken from real customer conversations.
- Contact: one email address.
Design rules that convert
- One primary action per page. Two buttons asking for different things split attention.
- Negative space isn't wasted space. Dense pages feel less trustworthy.
- Design for mobile first. Most traffic on most product businesses comes from a phone.
- Real photography beats everything. A real flat-lay of your product on a clean surface beats a stock image.
- Clarity is the brand. A plain page with a great offer converts. A beautiful page with a vague offer doesn't.
Setup checklist
- Domain purchased and connected
- HTTPS active
- Tested on a real phone
- Google PageSpeed Insights score above 70 on mobile
- Favicon set
- Contact email visible
- Payments connected and tested with a real small transaction
- Privacy policy and terms in the footer (required for ads)
- GA4 connected and firing
- Meta pixel or Conversions API connected
- Social share image set (what shows when someone shares your link)