Account

On the internet, a user account (also called “account”) is primarily needed for the utilisation of e-mail addresses, web-based applications or online shops. After setting up a user account (registration process), users can log in with their user name or alternatively their e-mail address and their password. This enables them to use a particular service.

 
 

Administration area

In the administration area of your online shop, administrators can manage the content, add products, edit the design and much more.

 
Administrator
 
The person who has the right to carry out modifications in the system of web applications and online shops is considered the administrator.

Being an administrator means that you can for instance modify the design of your online shop, remove products or process orders.

Banner

A banner is an image or animation on a website where a business can advertise an offer or service.

Website operators can provide advertising spaces on their site to advertisers and then they normally obtain a certain amount of money per fade-in or per click of a user on the banner.

B2C

B2C signifies “Business to Consumer”, therefore the company is in business with the ultimate consumer.

An online shop that is exclusively oriented towards B2C business, does not sell to other companies but to the ultimate consumer. The counterpart to B2C is the B2B model (“Business to Business”), which is directed towards other companies.

Back link

A back link is a link from one website to another.

If for example, one link refers from www.yourshop.com to www.facebook.com, this means that there is a back link to the website www.facebook.com.

If there are multiple back links that lead to one certain website, search engines, such as Google, analyse those and classify this fact as a ranking signal. The amount of back links is an important part of the search engine optimisation.

In addition to back links there are also internal links, which lead to other subsites of the same main website.

BCC

BCC means “blind carbon copy“, and signifies a blind copy of an e-mail.

If you want to send an e-mail, you can also type in recipients who are supposed to receive a copy (CC) or a blind copy (BCC) next to the original addressee. While in a common CC-copy, all recipients are displayed to the other ones, e-mail addresses of BCC recipients are hidden.

In your online shop, you can indicate CC recipients as well as BCC recipients for e-mail events (for instance when sending a confirmation of receipt of an order). The BCC field is especially useful when sending blind copies to yourself or to co-workers of your shop without involving your customers.

Bing

Bing is a web search engine developed by Microsoft.

As Bing has only a 5.1 % market share in the search engine sector (status as of 2015), this search engine is merely inferior in Great Britain.

Blog

A blog is a webpage on the internet where an internet user (also called “blogger”) can publish editorial articles.

Originally, blogs were used by individuals to have a private diary on the internet. It is now common for companies to have a blog as another medium to provide current information.

As a general rule, the welcome page of a blog displays the latest posts (articles) in a descending chronological order. A lot of blogs also have a commenting function, which enables readers to leave a note or comment concerning the article and thereby enter into dialogue with the author.

Bookmark

The term “bookmark“ implies a digital bookmark in the world wide web. Users of the internet can save webpages that they want to access later again as a bookmark in their browser.

Browser

A browser (also called web browser) is a computer program, which enables users to access and view webpages.

The most known browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Browsers are available for PCs/laptops as well as for tablets and smartphones.

Button

Buttons on a website or in an email are clickable areas that direct you to another page or location.

By clicking on the button, a particular action will be triggered.

Examples for buttons are the “like” button on Facebook or the “Add to basket” button on the home page or product page of an online shop.

CC

CC means “carbon copy“, and signifies a copy of an e-mail.

If you want to send an e-mail, you can also type in recipients who are supposed to receive a copy (CC) or a blind copy (BCC) next to the original addressee. While in a common CC-copy all recipients are displayed to the other ones, e-mail addresses of BCC-recipients are hidden.

In your online shop, you can type in any number of CC-recipients as well as BCC-recipients for e-mail events (for instance when sending a confirmation of receipt of an order).

Community

Online, the term “community” usually describes a discussion forum on particular issues.

After registering for the website of the discussion forum, users can create and write own forum entrys or reply to others’.

Content

Content generally describes all content on a website.

This includes editorial content and product descriptions. Images and videos are also considered as content.

Conversion

In Online Marketing, conversion indicates a particular change of status of a webpage user. As desired by the website operator, the user would preferably pass through the process of being a simple online-shop visitor to becoming a paying customer.

For instance, this conversion process is performed by the customer by typing in the e-mail address in the newsletter subscription form or by clicking on the “Buy Now” button in the online shop.

The desired conversion complies with the objectives of the website operator. If for example you want to win over new subscribers for your newsletter, the most important conversion for you would be the new registration of a customer for the newsletter. For online shops, the most frequently desired conversion is an order from a customer.

The percentage figure of visitors to a website, who take part in a conversion, can be stated as conversion rate.

Conversion rate

The conversion rate describes the visitors of a website who pass through a particular conversion.

The conversion rate of your online shop can be determined by means of analytical tools such as Google Analytics or etracker. They help you to find out how many visitors your shop had during a given period of time. Subsequently, in the administration area of your shop, you can check how many orders you had during that period. If you divide the amount of orders by the amount of visitors and multiply the result by 100, you’ll get the conversion rate for the given period as a final result.

Example: For your online shop, the most important conversion is the conversion of a visitor to a paying customer. If in June 2015, every fourth customer ordered something in your shop, the conversion rate for this month would be 25%.

CSS

CSS, abbreviation of “cascading style sheets“, is a design language, which is especially used for websites.

With CSS, font sizes and font colours of a website can be set, elements can be positioned and much more.

Moreover, the fundamental design of your shop is based on CSS. This means, if you for example want to carry out greater adjustments of the design, you can type in an individual CSS code in the administration area.

For this purpose, please read our help article.

Domain

A domain is the underlying address under which you can find a website – for example www.myonlineshop.com.

Usually, a domain consists of three parts that are separated by three issues:

Third-Level-Domain: For websites this normally is “www“

Second-Level-Domain: This is the actual domain name that the website operator chooses.

Top-Level-Domain (TLD): This is the last part of the domain and usually indicates the country where the website originates from – for example “.com” for Great Britain or “.fr” for France. The most used TLD “.com” principally means “commercial“ (commercial offers) but now, it can also be used for nearly every purpose. In recent years, a lot of new TLDs came into the market as for instance “.berlin” or “.online”.

E-Commerce

E-commerce means “electronic commerce” and normally indicates electronic trading. This includes the selling of products via online shops.

E-mail marketing

The term e-mail marketing summarises all marketing activities that are carried out via e-mail.

A very popular measure of e-mail marketing are newsletters that inform online retailers’ customers about new products or special offers.

In e-mail marketing it is important that the receiver agrees to receive such e-mails. Otherwise, those e-mails would be spam.

FAQ

FAQ means “frequently asked questions”, questions that users ask most often. A lot of websites gather all the questions on individual FAQ pages with the respective answers.

If you create a FAQ page in your online shop, you could answer questions regarding delivery or payment. This way, your support effort is reduced, as less customers ask those questions via e-mail or by telephone.

Footer

The footer is the bottom part of a website.

It often contains internal links that link to legal pages, such as the terms and conditions or the privacy policy.

Forum

In a forum, visitors of a website can exchange ideas, thoughts and communicate with each other.

After the registration, users can write entries in the forum and reply to entries of other users.

Google

The US-company Google became well-known because of its eponymous search engine.

In Great Britain, Google has a market share of 90 % in the search engine sector (as of 2015) and has nearly a monopolist position.

That is why, if you choose to use search engine optimisation, you should concentrate on improving the ranking of search engine results on Google.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords is an online advertising service of Google. Advertisers can use this service to place an ad within Google search results pages.

For the operators of online shops or other websites, placing AdWords-ads is very appealing. The main reason for this is that ads are always placed in combination with distinctive keywords. If for example a merchant sells diving goggles in his online shop, he can ensure that his advertisement is only shown to users that searched for the keyword “diving goggles” in Google.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner

The Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a tool designed by Google that helps website operators see information and statistics concerning the Google search and Google AdWords.

This Keyword Planner can also help to find out how many Google users search for a distinctive search term and how high the costs for placing an AdWord-advertisement for this keyword could be.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free-of-charge service that website operators can use in order to view extensive statistics regarding the usage of their webpage.

With Google Analytics it is for example possible to define the amount and origin of visitors or the time a visitor stays on the webpage.

Your online shop, you can easily use Google Analytics. You can find detailed instructions for this in our article about Google Analytics.

Header

The header is the upper part of a website.

In online shops, you can typically see the following elements in the header:

  • Logo

  • Main navigation

  • Search field

  • Shopping basket

Homepage

The homepage is the main page of an online shop/website, which usually provides an overview of the contents of the site.

Internal Link

An internal link is a link between two subpages of a website.

If you link in your online shop for example from the homepage to a product page then this link can be considered as an internal link.

Internal links enable users to navigate a website and are also important in regards to search engine optimisation. The better subpages of a website are linked to each other, the better it is for your ranking in search engines.

Most websites have internal links but also back links that lead from one website to another website.

Keyword

A keyword is a search term that an internet user types in a search engine like Google.

Operators of websites and online shops should identify the keywords that are the most important for them to help with their search engine optimisation: Which search terms are most frequently typed in by potential customers in search engines? Subsequently, the online shops and websites should be optimised following those keywords – for instance by mentioning those keywords in headlines.

KPI

KPI is the abbreviation for Key Performance Indicator. KPIs are numbers that measure the success of a company.

Depending on the goals of a company, different KPIs can be defined.

For an online shop, those KPIs could be for example:

  • Amount of visitors

  • Amount of orders

  • Amount of articles per order

  • Average order value

  • Amount of returns

Long tail

The term long tail, in the theory of e-commerce, describes the potential for niche products. Those are only sold rarely in comparison to bestsellers. However, if one offers a great amount of those niche products in an online shop, it is possible to generate a high turnover.

In contrast to stationary trading, online retailers don’t have to present their offer on a limited shop area and can therefore rather profit from long tail.

The long tail theory is also used in search engine optimisation. Long tail keywords are considered search terms that are not often searched for but, because of how targeted they are can bring a lot of relevant visitors on one website.

Newsletter

A newsletter is used to send information via e-mail to a high number of recipients (subscribers).

In e-commerce, newsletters are used to inform customers about products and special offers.

Ranking

The term ranking describes the positioning of a website on search result pages of search engines for a certain search term. If a user searches for “online shops for bikes” on Google, he will get the websites with the best ranking according to this search term on the search results page.

In general, it can be said: The better the ranking of a website, the more frequently the website can be found by search engine users and the more visitors can be gained.

Search engine optimisation helps to improve one’s ranking.

Ranking signal

Search engines, such as Google or Bing, work with complicated algorithms to always show users the most relevant search results. In order to enable this function, a variety of ranking signals that influence the results of search engines are examined.

Examples for ranking signals are the age of the domain, the relevance of text on the website and the amount of backlinks, which are linking to a certain website.

According to estimates, the algorithm of Google covers more than 200 different ranking signals.

Relaunch

A relaunch is the restart of a website after it has been completely revised.

Most of the time, a relaunch comes with a new design and optimised content.

Search engine

Search engines such as Google or Bing help users search the web. After having typed in a search term (keyword), they will get to the search engine result page. On this page, he will find all websites that match this search term.

Search engines are frequently used by nearly all internet users. Google has to reply to nearly 3.5 billions requests on a daily basis. That is why it is important for website and shop operators to achieve a good search engine ranking. This ranking can be improved by search engine optimisation.

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation covers all the measures that improve the ranking of a website in search engines such as Google. Often, the term is abbreviated to SEO.

The objective of SEO is to be on top of the search engine results page.

Search engine result page

The search engine result page is shown to the users after they type in a search term in a search engine. Users will see websites that have the best ranking corresponding to the typed search term.

Often, search engine result pages are also called SERPs.

On the search engine result page of your online shop, customers will see the products that match their search.

SMB

The term SMB means small and medium sized business(es).

These are businesses that do not exceed a certain number of employees or revenue.

There is no general valid definition on how small companies must be in order to be considered as a SMB. According to the Commission of the European Union, a medium sized company has approximately a maximum of 250 employees.

Spam

E-mails that a recipient does not want to receive are considered spam. Typically, those e-mails consist of advertisements.

If you send mails to your customers in the course of your e-mail marketing strategy, you should always remember to first get their permission regarding sending those emails. If you do not ask them, you will send spam and could be penalised.

Start page

The start page, also known as the homepage, is the main page that often provides an overview of the content of the website.

If a website has an own domain, you can reach the start page if you activate the corresponding domain – for example www.yourshop.com.

Online shops should if possible provide a clear overview on their start page and convey to their visitors the unique selling point of their shop.

Top-Level-Domain

The Top-Level-Domain (TLD) is the last part of a domain. An example: for the domain www.amazon.com, the TLD is “.com”.

Often, the TLD stands for the country where the website originates – for example “.co.uk” for the United Kingdom, or “.fr” for France. The most frequently used TLD “.com” stands for “commercial” but can nowadays also be used for any kind of purpose. During the last years, a lot of new TLDs came to the market, such as “.berlin” or “.online”.

Traffic

Traffic means in general the transmission of data on the Internet. In online marketing, traffic usually means the flow of visitors: the more traffic a website has, the more visitors it has.

The number of visitors a website has can be determined by analytical tools such as Google Analytics or etracker.

Tweet

Twitter is a social network in which users can publish short messages (called tweets).

The maximum length of a tweet is 280 characters long.

Twitter plays an important role in online marketing, as it enables a huge amount of users to send messages all over the world.

Twitter

Twitter is a social network, in which users can publish short messages (called tweets).

The maximum length of a tweet is 280 characters long.

Twitter plays an important role in online marketing, as it enables a huge amount of users to send messages all over the world.

Unique selling point

Unique selling point or unique selling proposition, often shortened to USP is the term in marketing for a unique characteristic or a unique feature of an offer/product that stands out from the competition.

Possible USP’s of an online shop are for example special favorable prices, a unique service or product that is not available anywhere else.

Every online shop should have an USP and should clearly convey it to visitors.

Usability

Usability considers how „user friendly“ a product is. This includes how easy it can be understood or used amongst others.

Operators of online shops or websites should attach importance to good usability. This particularly includes a user-friendly design. For instance, elements such as the logo should be at the usual, known to users’ places, texts should be prepared in an appealing and readable way and the navigation should be logical and intuitively understandable.

User-friendliness

See Usability

Visitor

Visitors are people that open a website in their browser.

In online shops, users and customers are usually distinguished: customers are visitors that have already placed an order in the shop.

The amount of visitors can be determined by the administrator of a website with analytical tools such as Google Analytics or etracker.

Website

A website is the appearance of a company, person or organisation in the web.

A website usually consists of several subpages. For the most part, a website has its own domain – for example www.yourshop.com. Online shops are also websites.

Wording

Wording means text you use on your website to communicate with the visitors of your website or online shop.

In order to find the right wording, you should keep your target group in mind when writing the text. Product names and descriptions should carry formulations that are used and expected by your target group.