A homepage is a hub: it serves every visitor — customers, recruits, investors, the curious — and its job is to route them. A landing page is a funnel: it serves one audience arriving from one campaign, and its job is to convert them. Sending paid or campaign traffic to your homepage is one of the most common — and most expensive — mistakes in marketing.
Different goals, different rules
- Homepage: many links, broad navigation, multiple audiences. Success = the visitor finds their path.
- Landing page: one message, minimal navigation, one CTA. Success = the visitor takes the action.
Why the homepage hurts campaign conversion
Every extra link on a page is an invitation to leave. A homepage is full of them by design. When someone clicks an ad for a specific offer and lands on a generic homepage, they have to re-find the thing they were promised — and most won’t bother. A dedicated landing page keeps the promise from the ad front-and-center and removes the escape routes.
When to use each
Use your homepage for organic brand traffic and people researching who you are. Use a landing page for every campaign with a specific offer: a product launch, a webinar, a lead magnet, a waitlist. If you can name the audience and the action in one sentence, you want a landing page.
The good news: a focused landing page is fast to build when you start from a template designed for the job, rather than bending your homepage to fit.