Entrance Page
Beginner PronunciationEN/ˈɛntrəns peɪdʒ/
The entrance page is the first page opened in a session, the point where a visit actually begins whatever source it came from.
The entrance page is a property of the session, not of the page: one page is an entrance in one session and a middle step in another, so a page's entrance count never equals its pageview count. A neighbouring term causes most of the confusion. In marketing language a landing page is a page built deliberately for a campaign, while in analytics reporting any page that opens a session counts as an entrance. The common error is judging these pages by bounce rate, since for reference and answer pages reading and leaving is normal behaviour, not failure.
FAQ
An entrance page is a measured fact: any page that started a session. A landing page is a design decision: a page built on purpose for a campaign. Every landing page is also an entrance page, but most of a site's entrance pages were never designed to be landed on.