Landing Page

A landing page is the first page a visitor opens in a session, whichever page of the site that happens to be.

Analytics tools derive it from the first pageview recorded in the session, so any page can be a landing page, not only pages built for campaigns. This is where the term collides: in advertising a landing page means a purpose-built page behind an ad, while in an analytics report it is a session attribute assigned automatically. The common error is judging a landing page by its bounce rate alone, because that rate mostly reflects the mix of sources arriving on it rather than the quality of the page itself. Sessions whose first hit was never recorded, for example when the tracking code loaded late, are usually reported under an unknown or not-set landing page.