What this is, and who it is for
Somebody has told you that you need a landing page. You already have a website. You are not sure whether these are the same thing, and asking feels like admitting to a gap you should not have.
Four words get used as though they were synonyms: shopfront, landing page, storefront, listing. They describe four different situations, and the differences matter for two practical reasons. What a visitor can actually do there is different in each case, and so is what happens to you if it stops existing.
We define each by those two things: what the visitor can do, and who controls the page. Not by what software made it. Definitions built around tools go out of date and push you towards buying something, and the same tool can produce any of the four.
Shopfront
What a visitor can do there: understand what you sell, work out roughly what it costs, see whether you are open or taking work, and find a way to reach a person. They may or may not be able to buy on the spot.
Who controls it: you, if it is on your own site. Someone else, if it is inside a platform.
A shopfront is the front of your business as a stranger encounters it. The name is borrowed from the physical thing for a reason: a shopfront is the window and the door, the surface that tells passers-by what is inside and how to come in.
Note that "shopfront" describes a function rather than a location. A single page on your own domain can be your shopfront. So can a profile on a platform, if it does those jobs. The seven things a shopfront needs to be doing its job are set out at the seven-item floor for any of them, and they apply wherever it lives.
Landing page
What a visitor can do there: one thing. Take one specific action, decided in advance by whoever built the page.
Who controls it: whoever built it, usually you.
A landing page is a page built for one purpose, usually connected to one campaign, one audience or one offer. Its defining feature is narrowness. Other routes are often removed on purpose so that the single action is the obvious one.
The confusion arises because people say "landing page" when they mean "the page people land on", which is usually a homepage and a different thing entirely. If someone tells you that you need a landing page, the useful question is: for what one action, and for which specific group of arriving visitors? If there is no answer, what they probably meant was that your existing page does not say what it sells, and that is a different job.
A landing page is a poor substitute for a shopfront, because a visitor who wants to know something outside the single narrow purpose has nowhere to go.
Storefront
What a visitor can do there: buy. See stock, prices and delivery terms, put things in a basket, pay.
Who controls it: varies, and this is the important part. A storefront on your own site is yours. A storefront inside a marketplace belongs to the marketplace, and you occupy it under their rules.
A storefront is a transactional surface. The word implies the ability to complete a purchase without leaving. If a visitor cannot pay there, it is not a storefront, whatever it is called.
Many small businesses have a shopfront and no storefront, which is entirely normal: people enquire, then pay by another route. That is a legitimate arrangement and worth stating plainly on the page, because a visitor who expects to be able to buy and cannot will assume something is broken.
Listing
What a visitor can do there: read a description of your business written or held by someone else, and follow a link to you. Sometimes contact you through the intermediary rather than directly.
Who controls it: not you. This is the whole point of the term.
A listing is an entry about your business on somebody else's site. A directory, an index, a marketplace's index of sellers, a mapping service, a professional register. You may have created it, you may have claimed it, or it may exist because somebody collected data and put you in it without asking.
The key property is that a listing is a copy of information about you, held somewhere you do not control, ageing at its own rate. It can be edited by others, reordered, monetised or deleted, and you may not be told. The words used for the various kinds of listing site, and who is paying whom in each, are covered at the words for the sites that list you.
A comparison table: who controls it, what a visitor can do, what happens if it disappears
| Shopfront | Landing page | Storefront | Listing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Explain and admit | Get one action | Take payment | Point people at you |
| What a visitor can do | Understand, judge, contact | One specific thing | Browse and buy | Read about you, click through |
| Who wrote it | You | You | You, within a template | Them, or you, or nobody |
| Who controls it | You, or the platform hosting it | You | You, or the marketplace | Not you |
| Who can change it | You | You | You and the platform | Them, and sometimes strangers |
| Can it be sold or reordered | No, if it is yours | No | Position may be sold | Frequently |
| Ages when neglected | Slowly and visibly | Quickly, once the campaign ends | Slowly | Quickly, and invisibly to you |
| If it disappears | Your front door is gone; visitors get nothing | One campaign stops working | You cannot take money there | You lose a route in, and a copy of your details may persist elsewhere |
| Can you get it back | Yes, you rebuild it | Yes | Depends who controls it | Often not, and removal can be slow |
The disappearance row is the one worth reading twice. It is where the four terms genuinely separate, and it is the axis most people never consider until it happens.
Which one you probably need
Most small operators have one thing performing all four jobs, and doing several of them badly.
The typical shape: a homepage that half explains the business, half tries to get an enquiry, links out to somewhere purchases actually happen, and is duplicated across a handful of listings nobody has looked at in years.
That is not a disaster, and it does not need four separate things built. It needs the jobs separated in your head so you can see which one is failing.
Nearly everyone needs a shopfront. It is the only one of the four that is close to universal, because every business has strangers arriving who need to understand it.
A storefront is needed if people should be able to pay without talking to you. Plenty of businesses should not have one.
A landing page is needed if you are running something specific with one action attached. Without that, it is a solution looking for a campaign.
Listings mostly happen to you rather than being chosen. What is worth choosing is which ones you maintain and which you ask to have removed. Where each of these lives, and what you give up in each case, is compared at choosing between a site, a stall and a profile.
Which one we link to when we list you
An entry here points at your shopfront: the destination you control, where a visitor can understand the business and reach a person. Not a landing page, because a narrow page serves a campaign rather than a stranger. Not a listing on another site, because linking one listing to another sends a visitor further from you rather than closer.
If your storefront is also the clearest explanation of the business, that is where we point. Where you sell is not a factor in whether we would list you. Being findable and the rest of shopfront basics are about the explaining, not the selling.
We prefer the destination you control because control is what makes the link durable. A link to something you own survives a platform changing its mind, and a link to something you do not own is a link we may have to remove later without either of us choosing it.
In Plain English
A shopfront explains your business to a stranger and lets them reach you. A landing page does one narrow job for one campaign. A storefront takes money. A listing is somebody else's copy of your details on somebody else's site.
The useful test is not what something is called. It is what a visitor can do there, and what happens to you if it disappears tomorrow.
Most small businesses need a shopfront. Some also need a storefront. Few need a landing page. And most have listings they never asked for and have not read in years.
If someone tells you that you need a landing page, ask what single action it is for. If there is no answer, the real problem is probably that your existing pages do not say what you sell.
Browse the glossary at the glossary.