Website, Web App & Landing Page — What's The Difference?

What if I were to tell you that a website, web application and landing page are all very different from one another?

Because that is in fact the case.

The differences between each of these comes down to what their intended purpose is.

Often web developers and designers are unclear around what the purpose of each of these are…

And because of that, they end up making poor design choices for each of these.

This is why there's so many websites that aren't helping business owners bring in more revenue…

Why there's so many landing pages that aren't getting enough conversions…

And why there's so many web applications that turn into complete flops.

Let's break down each of these to really understand the differences and how to successfully build each one:

Landing Page

I'm going to start with the landing page since for a beginner web developer or web designer, this one is typically the most confusing.

That's because the purpose behind it and how to achieve this purpose successfully is often unclear for someone who views this from a web development or web design perspective…

They look at things like:

• The landing page layout

• Spacing between elements (breathability)

• The colour scheme

• Balance between whitespace, images and text

• How clean the design looks

• The animations

• And so on

The problem is that they look at this from a design lens and completely miss the purpose behind a landing page.

The landing page is built for one purpose and one purpose only…

To sell.

That's it.

This is typically done by having a primary call-to-action (CTA), which is the one action this page is designed to get a user to take.

This could be something like:

• Submitting an email for a free download

• Purchasing a product

• Signing up for a free trial

• Subscribing to a software

• Booking a phone call

• Booking an appointment

• etc.

The idea is that these pages are designed to sell an offer of some kind…

And it's important that the focus is on driving users towards the primary CTA and removing anything that distracts from achieving this goal.

This means not having things like:

• A navigation bar at the top

• Footer with links at the bottom

• Buttons that bring someone somewhere else on the site

• Links to social media accounts

• etc.

There should only be one thing the user can actually do on the page, and that is to execute the conversion action.

Another important secondary purpose is to also track that conversion, and to have further analytics on the page to know how well it's performing and what parts of the page may need further tweaking.

Then the way these tweaks are made is that a single change is tested through what's called an A/B test…

For example, you'll have half the users going to a landing page with one headline, and the other half going to a landing page with another headline…

Then the analytics and conversion tracking will tell you which headline is performing better, and then you end up using that headline.

After that you may do a test with another headline, or perhaps you'll test another element like a sub-headline, or an image, or the colour of the primary CTA button, etc.

The process of performing these A/B tests is what's known as conversion rate optimization (CRO) and is an essential part of crafting high converting landing pages.

Now the part that web developers and web designers tend to miss here is that the words on this page are by far the most important part of the page…

And they tend to not look at it through this lens.

They're usually too focused on design and overlook things like the words on the page.

They treat words on a page like something that complements the design of the page instead of being the most crucial part of the page…

The part that's most responsible for whether a user takes on the primary CTA or leaves the page.

You can literally have one landing page that has nothing but text on it with a primary CTA, and another that is beautifully designed with all the bells and whistles, and both trying to sell the same thing.

If the beautifully designed landing page doesn't have text that's written in a way to persuade a user to take the action that results in a sale…

Then it could get blown out of the water by the landing page that has nothing but text on it and a primaryCTA — if that text better persuades a user to convert to the primary CTA.

This was a mind blowing revelation to me at one point in time, since I too was that web developer that focused mostly on design and very little on the text.

I wasn't seeing things through the right lens when it came to landing pages.

I didn't know what factors were most important when it came to a landing page converting users to take an action.

As a result, when it came to the words on the landing page, this ended up being more of an afterthought than a primary focus for me.

And because of this, my landing pages never converted well.

This would often leave me confused because I thought that what mattered most was for things to look clean and professional…

I thought this was what moved the needle when it came to a user taking a desired action.

But I didn't realize that I was looking at it all completely wrong.

I didn't fully understand the purpose of the landing page and what factors mattered most when constructing it.

Here's an analogy to illustrate how most web developers and designers build landing pages (and how I did too):

Imagine there's 2 people tasked with building a car…

The first designs and builds a Toyota, and the second designs and builds a Ferrari.

The Ferrari looks a thousand times cooler than the Toyota, but there's a catch.

The second person didn't think to put an engine in the Ferrari they built.

The car looks aesthetically incredible, looks like a dream car…

But you can't even turn it on and drive it.

This makes it end up being more of a glorified art piece than a car.

The first car however, despite not looking as aesthetically pleasing is able to turn on and drive.

The first person understood that the purpose behind the car was for it to be able to drive you from point A to point B, and if the car looks really aesthetically cool then that's a plus…

The second person didn't understand the purpose, for them the main purpose was to make the car look cool…

That they definitely achieved, but they didn't realize that this isn't the main purpose behind a car.

Who cares that it looks cool if it can't drive…

First and foremost I want the car to drive, and if it looks cool that's a bonus.

And this is exactly where most web developers and designers go wrong when building landing pages.

They have the purpose of the landing page all foggy and unclear.

They build the equivalent of a Ferrari without an engine.

Sure the landing pages they build might look aesthetically beautiful and have these amazing layouts, colours and animations…

But it doesn't mean that they are fulfilling their purpose.

The purpose and how to achieve that purpose often gets lost.

This purpose is to sell an offer.

That is the purpose behind a landing page.

And the most important part of the landing page that achieves this is the words on the page.

The words are like the engine in the car.

If the words are crafted effectively, then it's like having a powerful engine in your car.

But if the words are crafted poorly, then it's like having a weak engine…or even worse, no engine at all.

The art of crafting words that persuade someone to take an action is known as copywriting…

This is a completely separate skill from things like web development and web design.

Copywriters are those that specialize in writing these words that persuade, and the words they write they refer to as sales copy — and this sales copy on a landing page is referred to as a sales letter.

This isn't something I'll dive into — just want to broaden your perspective around what goes into building great landing pages.

This is the missing link that web developers and designers tend to have and why they end up designing the equivalent of a Ferrari without an engine.

They are often missing that the purpose behind a landing page is to convert a user to take an action, and that the way to achieve this is through a well crafted sales letter…

Not the design, not the layout, not the animations…but the sales letter.

All this other stuff is just a bonus…

It's not what moves the needle.

That's why you can have one landing page with nothing but text and another that is beautifully designed…

And the beautifully designed landing page might perform far worse when it comes to fulfilling its purpose.

Therefore the best way to understand a landing page is that it is a page designed to convert a user to take an action that results in some form of a transaction.

This transaction might be a monetary sale, or it might be things like downloading a free resource in exchange for an email, registering for a webinar, booking an appointment, etc.

And the way that this is achieved is by designing the landing page with the purpose in mind and designing the page around well written sales copy.

When sales copy is an afterthought, this again is when you end up with a landing page that's the equivalent of a Ferrari without an engine.

This is why web developers and designers struggle so much with making effective landing pages…

Because they aren't looking at the purpose behind the landing page and what's required to achieve this purpose correctly.

By having the purpose in mind and the tools required to achieve that purpose, you can better understand how to build these correctly.

Web Application

Next let's look at web applications.

Here the purpose is much different than that of a landing page.

With the landing page the purpose was to convert a user to take an action that results in some form of a transaction…

And this was achieved through effective sales copy.

But web applications are different, the purpose here instead is to effectively solve a problem.

However there is a hidden layer to web applications that web developers and designers often miss.

With landing pages this hidden layer was copywriting which is used to drive conversions to a sale.

With web applications there too is a hidden layer.

This hidden layer is around a secondary purpose behind a web application.

Most web developers and designers only see the first purpose which is to effectively solve a problem…

Then after that they mainly focus on things like the user interface and user experience.

But the secondary purpose that they don't see is that the web application needs to be designed in such a way where users continue to come back and use it again and again.

This is where you dive into the topic of behavioural design.

Behavioural design is all about how to create habit forming products.

In other words, how to design a web application in such a way where it becomes part of one's internal habits…

And once this is achieved, they end up using your app again and again.

If this is not achieved, then it becomes incredibly difficult for a web application to be successful.

It costs money to host infrastructure and to operate a web application, and it needs to be profitable in order to continue to operate it.

Designing the application through the lens of behavioural design is the best way to achieve this.

If you can successfully design your app in a way where users will continue to use your app again and again, then it's much easier to be profitable.

Because instead of going through tons of effort to get people to use your app, you simply have people use your app out of habit.

This however isn't easy to achieve, because it takes a while for habits to form.

This means that you need to have systems in place that get users to continue to use your app until a habit loop is formed where eventually external means are no longer needed to get someone to use the app.

There are many books written on behavioural design that show how to achieve this — a great one being "Hooked: How to build habit-forming products" by Nir Eyal.

This book goes into the "Hooked Model" which involves 4 stages that are required to build a habit-forming app:

• Trigger

• Action

• Variable Reward

• Investment

Put simply, there needs to be some kind of trigger that leads into an action.

The trigger might be things like:

• Boredom

• Loneliness

• Uncertainty

• Feeling unproductive

• Fear of forgetting something

• Fear of not capturing a moment

• And so on

Then the action entails opening and using the app in response to the trigger.

If the trigger is boredom, then the action might be opening something like Netflix and looking for a show to watch, or opening Twitch to watch some live streams, etc.

Next you have the variable reward which has to do with there needing to be some form of variability when receiving the reward.

An example to easily understand this is if we take an app like Instagram…

When you open the app, you'll have a news feed where there are posts that likely interest you, and these will always be something different.

The key here is that it's always different.

If there was no variability in the reward you receive, then the app wouldn't be effective in becoming part of a habit.

This is because as humans we always seek something "new".

Then back to Instagram, if you scroll down then there will always be something new popping up.

If you like what you see, then scrolling down feels rewarding and so you continue to scroll down.

Then maybe the next thing isn't as rewarding, so you scroll down again because what comes next might be more rewarding…

And this creates a sort of slot machine effect where you keep scrolling hoping for a better and better reward…

Sometimes you get it…sometimes you don't.

This is often how you end up succumbing to the ever so dreaded "doom scroll".

Then an app like Netflix, same thing…

Every time there's some different shows and movies popping up that may interest you…

Or you open up Twitch and there's different streamers currently live to watch…

And on top of this there's variability further when you watch anything on either of these apps.

However, a trigger, action, and variable reward isn't necessarily enough to create a habit-forming app.

You also need the investment which basically means having some form of investment in the app…

Which might be a monetary investment, or it might be an investment of things like time spent in the app, followers or subscribers gained in the app, people that you follow or subscribe to, number of posts created, and so on.

The more invested you are in an app, the less likely you are to transition to using another similar app even if that other app is technically better.

Because you've already invested so much that it doesn't feel worth it.

This is why when apps enter the scene to try and compete with a well established habit-forming app, then it can be a massive uphill battle to try and get users to move from the other app to yours, even if yours is technically "better".

A perfect example of something like this is Twitch.

With this app you have creators who've invested lots of time into the app, posting VODs, gaining followers, gaining paid subscribers, and generally having a user base that strictly finds them through that app.

Then the users that watch live streams too have investment into the app through having different creators that they follow and subscribe to.

So when an app like Mixer entered the scene, it simply couldn't create traction.

Twitch is a well designed habit-forming app where users had too much investment already and so it was too difficult to get them to want to move to another app.

The creators had lots of investment as did the users that watched live streams, and this ended up being too massive of an uphill battle to overcome…

Even when they paid top creators to stream exclusively on Mixer.

This ultimately led Mixer to be a total flop.

That's the power of a habit-forming app.

Web developers and designers often don't look at creating an app with this secondary purpose in mind.

They're too focused on what problem the app will solve, and then focus mainly on things like the look and feel of the app.

Then they also think in terms of "this feature and that feature would be cool to have in the app"…

But what they're missing is being able to see this secondary purpose which is essential for the success of the app.

It's essential to look at incorporating this into apps you build — but also equally important when analyzing the competitive landscape.

You can design an absolutely beautiful looking app with a great user experience that solves a problem really well…

But if it's missing the habit-forming piece, then it will be very difficult to have a consistent user base.

And if you don't have a consistent user base, then it will be very difficult for the app to be successful.

Again, when it comes to web applications, these you want to think of with 2 objectives in mind:

• Solving a problem effectively

• Being a habit-forming product

Then things like a good user interface and user experience are a big bonus.

The thing is, if an app solves a problem really well and is a habit-forming product, then it doesn't even have to look aesthetically nice to be highly successful…

Just look at something like Craigslist as a great example of a relatively ugly app that's very successful because it solves a problem exceptionally well and is a habit-forming app.

Website

Finally, we have the website.

And when I say "website", what I mean is a traditional website with a navigation bar at the top, and a bunch of pages throughout.

Also I want to make it clear that there are some "websites" that fall in line with this pattern that I'd consider to be more of a web application than a website.

An example would be something like the website of a weather company…

Technically you could still call something like this a "website", but I think of this as more of a web application since it's directly solving a problem (providing you with weather information).

With that caveat, let's get into traditional websites…

So far we looked at the landing page and understand that the purpose behind the landing page is to convert a user to take an action — which involves accepting some sort of offer…

And we looked at web applications where the purpose behind these is to solve some sort of problem (where that problem might even be things like boredom and the solution some form of entertainment)…

And where the secondary purpose is for the app to be habit-forming through principles of behavioural design.

This now leads to the website.

What's the purpose behind a website?

When it comes to business success, a website I believe is actually the least important compared to the web application and the landing page.

I'd even argue that a business doesn't really need a website to be successful.

The purpose behind a website in my eyes is for it to be a hub that gets users to enter different sales funnels.

What's a sales funnel?

It is simply a sequence of landing pages that are logically designed to help bring a user down a sales path that is likely to generate far more profit.

And on top of this it often involves external factors to help bring users further and further down the sales funnel.

You can think of the first landing page as being the first step in the sales funnel, the second page being the second step and so on.

Then you might have things like emails and ads that are part of this sales funnel process to help bring someone further and further down the funnel.

An example of this might be where the first step of the sales funnel is a simple landing page designed to get someone to register for a Webinar.

Then the next step is to get someone to attend the Webinar which involves reminders through emails and possibly ads.

Then finally the last step might be a sales page to get someone to buy an offer or might be a page that gets someone to book a call.

And if they didn't attend the Webinar, then there would be another component to the funnel that gets the user to watch a replay of the Webinar and then from there get to the final step of a sale or booked call.

Another example might be a sales page where someone is perhaps selling a golf set, then after they buy it there might be an upsell to maybe buy a golf bag, and after that another upsell to maybe buy private golf lessons, and so on.

Then back to the website and where it comes in…

The website is really a central hub that brings users into these sales funnels.

There's also different tiers of sales funnels.

There's those at the top meant to gather contact information (lead generation)…

Then there's those that sell a cheaper offer, something like a free book where you cover shipping, or might be something like a challenge funnel.

Then there's sales funnels for more expensive offers, this will be things like a Webinar funnel.

And finally there's sales funnels for very expensive offers (high ticket offers) where the idea is you get someone on the phone to sell that kind of offer.

The overall idea then is for these sales funnels to further funnel people up to higher tier sales funnels that sell more expensive offers.

People will usually start off by going through the lead generation funnels, then a percentage of those people will go through a funnel at a higher tier, then a percentage of those will go through a funnel at a higher tier, and so on.

And the website again is there as the central hub to get someone intrigued by an offer and go down one of these sales funnels.

So really the website itself isn't really doing any selling, the sales funnels and the landing pages within them are.

And they are simply selling offers, where one of these offers might even be something like a subscription to a web application…

Which means a web application is really a product that is part of an offer at the end of the day.

This is why I don't see a website as being essential for a business.

As long as you can get people into a sales funnel and sell an offer where that offer might even entail something like a free 14 day subscription to your web application for example, then you don't exactly need a website.

The problem I see is that web developers and designers are often most obsessed with website's even though they're the least useful thing you can build compared to web applications and landing pages.

It doesn't mean that they don't have their place, it is still useful to have a central hub to get people to enter different sales funnels, but it isn't necessarily required.

And it also isn't useful without good sales funnels and landing pages within them doing the heavy lifting of selling.

A website in my eyes is more of a nice to have but not something you necessarily need.

The main reason why there is a belief around needing a website is because people have been conditioned into thinking they need one when they start a business.

It's similar to something like a business card where when someone starts a business, they think they need a business card.

A business card however doesn't dictate in the slightest whether a business will be successful or not…

A business can be very successful without ever having business cards.

The business cards themselves play almost no role in the success of a business.

It's one of these things that was conditioned into people where when they start a business, they think they need things like business cards and a website.

But this is simply not true.

Another use for a website could be if you write blog articles and you're posting them directly on your website…

And ideally you'd want these blog articles to drive traffic and bring that traffic into a sales funnel that's designed for generating leads.

In other words, a website could also be useful with a content strategy behind it…

However a website also isn't strictly required for this since there's technically apps where you can create and post blog articles.

Therefore, the purpose behind a website is really to be a central hub for different sales funnels, and to possibly be a hub that contains blog article content as well used to drive traffic to your website.

In my opinion it's the least important purpose when comparing a website, web application and landing page…

But it can still have its place and be useful.

I mainly don't think it's as useful since the website isn't solving a pressing problem, and it's not the engine behind sales — both of which I consider to be a more impactful purpose.

The website is mostly navigating people into a sales funnel which itself has a purpose of acquiring a certain sales objective which is done through a sequence of landing pages each of which has sales copy designed to produce a certain conversion action.

The important thing here is that it's the sales funnel and landing pages that are doing the selling…not the website.

This is a trap that a lot of web developers and designers fall into.

They put their focus into traditional websites thinking that they're the thing that move the needle and get results for a business…

They put in tons of effort into building out all these different pages, making all of these sleek and aesthetic designs…

Making everything look "professional"…

When in reality it would have actually been more effective to simply make a well crafted landing page.

This one page is infinitely more effective at getting results than a traditional website with 50+ pages on it.

This is sometimes a tough pill to swallow, and I get it…

I too was at one point a beginner web developer and was obsessed with making these beautifully designed websites.

But I had to come to terms with the fact that I had an emotional attachment to building beautifully designed traditional websites instead of what is actually effective.

This came with understanding the purpose behind each of these things and being able to objectively see the difference between these things and properly weigh the importance of each.

Often as web developers and designers we can be very hyper fixated on viewing things through a certain lens…

Viewing things from a lens of how to engineer things in a clean and re-usable way…

Building things with the latest and greatest technologies…

Implementing complex features…

How to create a great layout, user interface and user experience…

How to create an aesthetically beautiful design…

And we often overlook the purpose behind what we're trying to build and the weight behind the things required to fulfill that purpose.

But when we can see things clearly, we can also build with clarity.

It's the lack of clarity that leads to there being so many websites online that aren't helping a business drive more revenue…

Why there's so many landing pages not converting users to take an action…

And why there's so many unsuccessful web applications.

By seeing these things through the correct lens and having the correct purpose in mind before building something…

Then you can actually build each of these things successfully.

When you build a landing page without understanding the main objective being to sell an offer and copywriting being the primary skill to do so, then the landing page simply won't convert.

When you build a web application without understanding the main objective being to solve a problem effectively and the secondary objective being to use behavioural design to build a habit-forming app, then the app most likely won't succeed.

And when you build a website without understanding the main objective being to simply be a central hub that leads users into different sales funnels, then the website won't be all that helpful…

Especially if you have the purpose all wrong by thinking that a traditional website is there to sell…it's not, that's what the sales funnels and landing pages are for.

Hopefully now you have full clarity on the difference between a website, web application and a landing page…

And now with this clarity you should be able to build each of these successfully.

You will have the correct purpose in mind when building each of these, and now won't be doing the equivalent of building a Ferrari without an engine.

To recap, remember:

• The purpose behind a landing page is to convert a user to take an action that comes from them accepting an offer that the landing page is trying to sell through some form of transaction (which could even be exchanging an email for something free — this is still considered a transaction)

  • This is done by crafting an effective sales letter using the skill of copywriting — the skill of writing words that persuade

  • Further, the landing page needs to have proper analytics and conversion tracking to properly perform conversion rate optimization (CRO) so that tweaks can be tested and implemented if they convert better

• The main purpose behind a web application is to solve some sort of problem (which might even be boredom solved through entertainment the app provides), and the secondary purpose is building the web application through the lens of behavioural design in order for it to be a habit-forming app

• The purpose behind a website is for it to serve as a central hub to navigate users to various sales funnels that then do the selling for various offers, and part of this central hub may also include hosting things like blog article content which is used to drive website traffic through search engine optimization (SEO)

  • Note: A sales funnel is also technically a "website", but it is built in a way that's more effective at driving conversions and is designed to bring in far more profit than a website built the "traditional" way ever could — it's simply a website built in a specific way just like a web application too is technically a website built in a specific way

By understanding the differences between a website, web application and landing page and having a deep understanding behind the purpose of each…

You should now be able to plan and build each of these far better.

Granted if you want to build some of these successfully, it may require diving more deep into certain topics.

For example, building successful landing pages may require diving deep into things like marketing, copywriting and sales funnels…

And building successful web applications may require diving deep into business opportunities and behavioural design.

However, this should at the very least give you a good understanding and higher perspective of what's required to properly build each of these successfully.

Anyway, that is everything for this one. Hope you enjoyed the letter and have a fantastic rest of your day.

- Bryan