With so many different terms in marketing and web design, we often get asked to clarify certain words or abbreviations. It’s normal that you are aware of all the terms within your own industry, but when it comes to another field of work, different words can make the brain boggle!
Here is a jargon buster for some of the most common terms that come up within marketing and web design…
Browser – The program you use to view the web, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome.
Cache – This is different to cookies. A cache is a copy of the web page stored by your browser. Sometimes you have to clear your cache to see recent website updates if you have visited the website previously.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) – CR is the process of getting people who visit your website to perform a specific action. This could be anything from filling out a contact form to directly making a purchase.
Content Management System (CMS) – A CMS is a system such as WordPress or Magento, in which a website has been built. A CMS allows people to update websites easily and quickly, without having any knowledge of code or anything else technical like that 😉
Content marketing – Content is king and content marketing covers a variety of areas including blogging, social media and PR. Making use of all these things combined results in great SEO results and much more.
Cookies – Cookies are small data files from websites that are saved onto computers that are used to browse to this site. This includes passwords being saved by the browser and websites being customised to an individual user.
Copy – This is a term used by us web designers and marketers to explain the actual physical text on the website or marketing collateral.
Ecommerce – Ecommerce is the term for websites that sell products or services. For example, Amazon is an ecommerce site.
Firewall – Firewalls are used for security purposes. They may be set up by your email or websites to not allow certain files etc in to your computer. This protects from viruses or other security issues.
Mockups – Mockups are realistic representations of the website. These will be created by web designers before building a website.
Organic listing – An organic listing is when SEO has been performed effectively, without using paid-for adverts, to get a good page ranking on search engines.
PageRank – This is an algorithm used by Google to rank websites in search results
Paid search listing – Search engines give website owners the option to pay for adverts to be shown for relevant search terms.
Sitemap – A sitemap is an easy to read list of pages of a website. Web designers usually create a sitemap before starting a project, as a planning tool. Sitemaps are also placed on a website so search engines can use it for SEOpurposes.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – SEO is the process of making tweaks to your website so it appears in search engine results. So if you’re offering business training, SEO is trying to get your website appear under the search term ‘business training’
Stock photo – Stock images can be purchased from stock photo websites. These are royalty free images that you can use on websites, marketing collateral and social media copyright free!
Web hosting – Hosting is where all the files of a website are placed online.
Wire frames – These are usually just sketches, for web designers to explain what can be or will be done within the design. A wireframe will show the navigation, main buttons and placement of elements.
ZIP – This is when you compress a file, or selection of files, into one archive. AZIP file takes up less storage so is easier to send via email and is perfect for downloads.
So they are some of the words you might hear us throw around. Are there any others that you’d expect to see here? Let us know!
