Ecommerce Glossary

A/A Testing

Testing two identical pages against each other using A/B testing.

A/B Testing

Comparing two versions of a web page to determine which converts better.

A/B/N Testing

Comparing more than one variation of a webpage at the same time.

Above the Fold

The portion of a webpage that is available without clicking or scrolling.

Ad Viewability

The measure of the ability for an ad to be seen by web users.

Affiliate

The web site that gets paid to direct traffic to another party that sells products/services of interest to affiliates' target audience.

Affiliate Marketing

Marketing through people or companies that are linked by either buying or selling to the company advertising.

Alt Text

A description which appears within an HTML document that tells visitors the nature of an image.

Analytics Events

Event is the specific hit and report that appears in Google Analytics.

Anchor Text

The anchor text is the clickable part of the text in a hyperlink.

Anxiety

Negative emotional response that certain elements of the page cause making the visitors less likely to convert.

App Personalization

Process of enabling changes to an app settings and preferences to meet user's specific needs.

Assisted Conversions

The value and number of conversions a specific channel assists in.

Attribution model

The set of rules used for determining how credit for sales conversions are assigned to touch points in conversion paths.

Attribution rate

Attribution rate is the share of individual attribution source in total conversions.

Authority Site

Websites that search engines consider highly accurate and of high quality.

Average Order Value (AOV)

The average amount of money spent on an order per customer through a website or app.

Backlink

An inbound link from one website to another.

Bandit Testing

Testing method that eliminates individual variations that underperform when doing A/B/N or multivariate tests.

Banner Blindness

The tendency for a website visitor not to notice a banner.

Banners

Usually rectangular shaped ads on webpages linked to advertiser's website.

Baseline

The first version of a landing page that is kept and used as a benchmark which other versions are measured against in the future.

Bayesian

Bayesian statistics is a statistical method of making statistical analysis by using probabilities and past experience to determine the characteristics of entire population.

Behavioral Targeting

Ads that are targeted to a person's specific interests or beliefs.

Below the Fold

Content/ads that are found on a web page that is only accessible by scrolling down the page.

Bot Traffic

Online traffic or activities that are artificially generated by an internet robot.

Bounce

When a visitor to a page leaves the site without taking any action or viewing any other page.

Bounce Rate

The percentage at which visitors leave a page without visiting another page from a site. Bounce rate = Total number of visitors only viewing that page divided by the total number of page views.

Breadcrumb Navigation

Navigation links that show the exact location of a page within a web site.

Broken Link

A URL connection within an HTML that is not working.

Business to Business (B2B)

Business to business is a relationship that marks businesses that sell directly to other businesses and is typically referred to as B2B.

Business to Consumer (B2C)

Business to consumer relates to businesses that sell directly to consumers are typically referred to as B2C.

Call to Action

A prompt that tells a website user to take a specified action.

Campaign

A set of ad groups that share a budget and a location.

Canonical URL

Webmaster defined preferred URL for pages with multiple URLs.

Carrier Calculated Shipping

Shipping costs calculated by the carrier at the time of the order.

Cart Abandonment Rate

The proportion of the web visitors that will begin a purchase but not follow through to complete it in any given amount of time.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

CSS are used to format web page layout.

Category (Google Analytics)

Categories of events in Google Analytics include mouse, keyboard, frame and form events. Two broad categories exist over this, one which generates pageviews when they occur and one which does not generate page views when they occur.

Certified Metrics

Metrics which are based on a direct measure of certified traffic.

Channel Groupings

Analytics rules based on groupings for channel traffic sources.

Churn (Attrition) Rate

Churn rate when it applies to subscriptions is the rate at which subscribers "unsubscribe" or stop their subscription.

Clarity

Clarity refers to the ease of use of a website, that includes the visual layout as well as the text on the pages.

Click Bait

Content that is made to draw attention/traffic to a specific site.

Click Stream

The series of movements of a particular user through their time on the internet.

Click Through

When a person clicks on an ad to follow the link. Also called requests or ad clicks.

Click to Call

Clicking a link on a web page to speak directly to a live person.

Clickmap

Analysis tool used to show which links users click on the most on any particular page.

Clickthrough Page

An intermediate page that a web user is brought to before they go on to complete the purchase.

Clickthrough Rate

The number of web visitors that click on an advertisement on any particular page.

Client Relations Management System (CRM)

CRM is all contact that a business has with its customers, both service and sales related.

ClientID

A special number that identifies a client or a customer of the site individually.

Cloaking

The practice of masking content to spiders and showing an alternate version.

Competitive Intelligence

The action of defining, gathering, analyzing and sharing information about a company's products, customers and any other definable aspect of the operation.

Confidence Interval

Confidence interval represents the percentage of the sample that is closest to the mean of the sample.

Confidence Level

Confidence level is an indicator of certainty we have in the result of a sample measurement.

Contact to Customer Conversion Rate

Contact to customer conversion rate is the number of customers divided by the number of people contacted times 100. Also called conversation rate, this percentage applies to how many people you contact versus how many end up doing what you want.

Contacts

List of users of a web site or link of people who interact.

Content Grouping

Feature that allows the ability to group content together in order to view aggregate metrics.

Content Management System (CMS)

Computer application that supports digital content.

Content Marketing

Content marketing refers to the process of having content on a site with the purpose of marketing a certain site, service or product. <br />

Control Page

The initial (unchanged) variation used for comparison purposes in A/B testing. It is an A in A/B.

Conversion

The act of making an action favorable to the visitor of a website in order to make them proceed to next step.

Conversion Funnel

The journey a consumer takes through the web site and the ads to end with a purchase.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the share of the visitors who made the conversion in the total number of the visitors that landed on the website.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization is a methodology for improving the performance of e-commerce websites measured through the conversion rate of the visitors.

Cookie

Information placed by a company on a customer's computer to remember something about them such as their account or location.

Cost Per Acquisition

Average cost of a lead or a customer.

Cost Per Click

The cost to the business each time a web user clicks on an ad.

Cost per '000 impressions (CPM)

Costs in an advertising campaign broken down per ad view.

Coupon

Coupon is a one time benefit offered to the customer.

Crawler Error

A crawler error is a report that is generated and saved in a database of any site, HTML or URL that a crawler was unable to access on the web.

Crawler/Spider/Bot

A program that reads web site pages to retrieve information for adding to a search engine index.

Cross Sell

Selling a new product to an existing customer is called a cross sell.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

An estimation of the potential total profit to be gained from one customer over the lifetime of the commercial relationship.

Data

Data is the combined characters and symbols that are stored on a computer that are a representation of information.

Data Visualization

Data visualization is creating or understanding visual data.

Dead End Page

Dead end page is the page that features no logical progression from it.

Decision Fatigue

Decision fatigue happens when too many choices or frequent decision making is required from the visitor.

Descriptive Statistics

Analyzing data to help describe or summarize data in a meaningful way.

Development

Development in terms of websites refers to the process of the actual creation of the web site itself.

Device

For websites a device refers to the machine used to access the site. Device categories include: desktop, tablets, mobile phones, and even TVs.<br />

Directional Cues

Visual elements on a web page that attracts visitors to certain areas on the page.

Discount Code

A code that is used during an e-commerce purchase to avail of money savings offer on a given product or order.

Domain

A subset of the internet owned by a business with several links that are all ran from the domain.

Drop Shipping

Sending products from manufacturer to buyer or retailer at the point it is ordered.

Duplicate Content

Content that appears twice or more in a website or on a search engine.

Dynamic Content

Website content responses that are tailored for the individual as opposed to generic style content.

Email Marketing

Advertising a product through sending a promotional email to target market consumers.

Engagement Rate

A metric that measures the level of interaction a piece of internet content receives.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Process management software that enables a business to operate back office functions as well as front office needs.

Exit Page

The exit page is the last page a user viewed during a web site visit.

Exit Popup

A final message from a web site before a user leaves a page.

Exit Survey

An exit survey is a series of questions that are asked of individual when they are about to leave a website or when they want to cancel their account.

Experimentation

Experimentation is a process of setting up variations of a web page on your website with aim to compare them in real time and finding out which one performs better in causing your visitors to purchase.

Filter

Filter in analytical tool is a definition of a traffic source that is manipulated on prior to reporting.

Form

Form is any type of interaction where visitor is required to provide information using text input fields.

Form Testing

Form testing is the technique applied to optimize the forms.

Frequentist Statistics

Frequentist statistics is a statistical technique that relies on analyzing a limited sample to derive information on the entire population.

Friction

Friction is the psychological resistance that a visitor must overcome to complete conversion.

Funnel

A funnel or Conversion funnel is a phrase used in e-commerce to describe the process a consumer takes through the website that leads them to making a purchase.

Funnel Testing

The process of testing various elements through the different steps of the conversion funnel.

Gamification

The application of basic elements of game playing to other type of activities in order to make them more appealing or frequently used.

Goal

The activity the visitor is supposed to complete in order to make a conversion. In analytical tools, such as Google Analytics, goal is a specific milestone the visitor is supposed to reach that is tracked and measured.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web based application that is used to track and report traffic on your website.

Google Analytics 360

A suite of tools made by Google that includes Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Optimize, Google Surveys and Google Data Studio in an attempt to make a one go to CRO solution.

Google Analytics Annotations

Notes that can be added to Google Analytics reports for tracking or referencing at later occurrences.

Google Analytics Dimensions

Dimension in Google Analytics is any non-numerical or descriptive field. A data set which is made up of data elements that are individual and do not overlap.

Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is a data integration and business intelligence platform and a part of Google Analytics 360 package.

Google Optimize

Experiment platform made by Google and it features the three main types of tests, as well as close integration with Google Analytics.

Google Tag Manager (GTM)

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tag management system that is developed by Google.

Growth Hacking

Process of experimenting rapidly across many marketing channels and different product development types to find the best, most efficient way to grow a business.

Headline Testing

Process of creating multiple title variations for the same article in order to test them on different audiences.

Heat Map

A visual aid that helps visualize visitors activity on a web page by using colors to indicate areas of higher or lower activity such as clicking, hovering with a mouse and scrolling.

Hero Image

Typically an image that is placed prominently on a web page, usually in the front and center of the page.

Heuristic Analysis

Heuristic analysis or Heuristic evaluation is a usability inspection method for websites that helps to identify usability problems ion the user interface design. <br />

Hit

When a website gains a visitor it is considered a hit.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

Hypertext Markup Language, a standardized system for tagging text files to achieve font, color, graphic, and hyperlink effects on webpages.

IOS A/B Testing

The process of running controlled experiments to compare variations of an IOS app against the original.

Impression

Impression, sometimes called a view or an ad view, refers to the point at which an ad is viewed.

Inbound Marketing

Promoting a company through videos, blogs, ebooks or other content that markets a product or service.

Inferential Statistics

Drawing conclusions from statistics over given data.

Infographic

A visual representation of information or data, e.g. as a chart or diagram.

Information Foraging Theory

Theory that uses the foraging theory to understand how people look for information online.

Information Scent

Visual cues on a web site as to the information it contains.

Interaction Score

Interaction Score, also called engagement score, is a metric used to measure how engaged your visitors are.

Internal Search

Every type of search completed on a website.

Interruption

An interruption is an attention-driven technique used to catch your attention.

Javascript

A computer programming language popularly used to make interactive effects in web browsers.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

A KPI is a value that is measurable and which demonstrates the effectiveness of a company in achieving their key business goals.

Keyword

Words that describe website content most accurately.

Label (Google Analytics)

A label is a component of a Google Analytics event, and is used to provide additional information for events that you want to track.

Landing Page

The web page that is the entry point for a website or section of a site.

Landing Page Optimization

Part of conversion optimization which aims to make content on a specific web page (called landing page) more appealing to convert more visitors.

Last Adwords Click

The attribution model used by Google AdWords is the last click in a conversion path and receives all the credit for conversion in Google Adwords.

Last Nondirect Click

The attribution model that gives the full credit for conversion to the last click prior to the conversion itself.

Last Touch

Attribute which gives credit to the last link a web site user clicks before finalizing.

Latent Conversion

A measure of how visitors get to a certain web site that is more than just clicking through from an ad.

Lead Capture

Lead capture refers to the act of getting a contact information of the potential customer, such as an email address, phone number or other piece of information that can be used to contact the person directly and pitch your service or product.

Lead Generation

Creating customer or consumer interest into a new product or service.

Lead Magnet

Incentives offered to prospective buyers in exchange for their contact details.

Lead Nurturing

Process of developing relationships with buyers each stage of the sales funnel throughout a buyer's journey.

Leads

A potential sales contact.

Lifecycle Email

Segmenting potential customers into targets for specific products and then emailing them about those products.

Lifetime Value

Prediction of one customer's spend over the relationship with a specific business.

Link Building

Procedure of a website to acquire links to increase a sites' backlinks and create more quality backlinks.

Link Referrals

Link referrals is a traffic acquisition method that means providing referral links to products on your site to customers as a part of promotion.

List Segmentation

Marketing technique that segments a web site subscriber list by different conditions.

Live Chat

Web service that allows visitors to chat in real time with customer service representatives online.

Low Word Count

Using concise words to describe something resulting in few words being used.

Marketing Optimization

Process of improving marketing attempts in a business in order to maximize outcomes.

Marketing Technology Stack

Technologies leveraged by marketers to conduct or improve their marketing activities.

Meta Tags

Tags within the head section of code that defines web page content.

Metric (Google Analytics)

A measurement of a specific characteristic of a website's performance or efficiency.

Microsite

A smaller auxiliary website that was designed to function as a supplement to a primary website.

Minimum Order Size

The minimum amount that a customer can order in any specific order.

Minutes Per Visit

The amount of time a visitor to a web site spends per visit.

Mobile App A/B Testing

A/B testing which is undertaken on a mobile app.

Motivation

Part of the Fogg model that features trigger, motivation and ability to model user behavior.

Multi Channel e-Commerce

E-commerce selling strategy that targets consumers on channels outside of their own website.

Multivariate Testing

A technique that is used to test a hypothesis when multiple variables are modified.

New Visitor

A new visitor is a user that is on a website that never previously visited that website.

Niche

Subset where a specific focus is given.

Null hypothesis

A hypothesis which states there is no statistical significance between the two variables.

Online Marketing

Marketing which uses email and web links to increase sales through e-commerce.

Open Rate

The measure of how many people on an email list open or view an email.

Optimizely

Optimizely is currently the most popular testing platform and it has become a virtual standard for conducting experiments.

Organic Search

Searching for a subject by typing in the topic into a search engine and reviewing results.

Organic Traffic

Traffic that comes to a website from unpaid search results.

Outbound Links

Links out of a web site meant to take a user to an alternate website or location on the internet.

Outreach

The process of spreading awareness of a business by actively distributing information to find potential leads.

Page View

Page view is a metric on how many web pages on a web site have been opened.

Page Views Per Visit

An analytics measure of the number of web pages a particular user or group of users views when on a specific website.

PageRank

Algorithm used by Google Search to rank websites in their search engine results.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Business model where companies pay a set fee every time a user clicks on their ad.

Payment Gateway

A merchant service provided by an e-commerce service provider which authorizes credit cards and debit cards for direct payment processing on an e-commerce website page.

Persona

A marketing persona is a contrived personality that is created for marketing purposes.

Personalization

Tailoring a product or service to accommodate particular individuals.

Poll

A poll is a recorded opinion of a number of people on a given subject.

Product Bundles

Offering several products at a discount if purchased together.

Product Ladder

The concept that a consumer's brand perception of any product should be listed from top to bottom in the order of their familiarity and preference.

Property

A property denotes a specific website that is tied to a Google Analytics Account.

Proximity

Placing related design elements close together to draw user's attention from one related subject to another.

Qualified Lead

Potential customer that has shown interest in the product or service.

Quantitative Metrics

Quantitative metrics are all the metrics that can be expressed using numbers.

Redirect

The process of redirecting something from one address to another, such as an email or a URL for a web page.

Referral

The act of referring someone to a website or a product initiative.

Related Links

Links that take the user to the similar product or article.

Relevance

The concept of something being connected to something else through a relationship.

Remarketing

Marketing technique that sees advertisements sent to past customers of a web site.

Reporting

Data that is presented in a formal report.

Reporting API (Application Programming Interface)

Reporting API is a part of Google Analytics.

Responsive Website Design (RWD)

Web design approach which allows the viewing of webpages in response to the size of the screen being used.

Retargeting

Online advertising that is targeted to consumers that have bought something on a web site previously or visited. <br /><br />

Returning Visitor

A visitor to a site that came back to the site for a second time or more.

Revenue Per Visitor (RPV)

Revenue per Visitor (RPV) is a measure of the amount of money spent by each visitor to a site.

Revenue Report

Report on a company's sales or turnover.

Robots.txt

Text file that is uploaded to a web site's root directory and linked to the web site through HTML code to block search engine crawlers.

Sample Pollution

Sample pollution is a statistical phenomenon related to measuring and reporting the same observation twice.

Sample Size

Sample sizes are a representation of a demographic through a small number.

Sampling (Google Analytics)

Practice of selecting a subset of data from a website's traffic in order to report on trends in the sample set.

Scarcity

Scarcity is a concept in digital marketing that helps increase the urgency with the visitor.

Search Engine

Search engine is an algorithm that allows users to enter the term they are looking for and return the most relevant results after going through the websites on the internet.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Internet marketing which involves website promotion through increasing visibility in search engine results pages.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Method of strategies and techniques that are used to increase visitors to a website through gaining a high search engine ranking.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Page displayed by a search engine in response to a search query.

Segmentation

Technique which allows a business to target products to the right customers by breaking them down into different categories.

Session

Sessions are a primary metric of page visits used by analytical tools.

Shopping Cart Abandonment

When a user begins to make an order online and then abandons the order process.

Simple Decay

An attribution model available in attribution reports that distributes credit based on the six most recent interactions before a conversion event.

Site Audit

A complete analysis of a web site and all factors that influence the conversions on a e-commerce website.

Sitemap

List of pages a web site has accessible to users.

Social Proof

Social proof is giving the visitors visual indication that previous customers have bought the products or services from the website.

Social Referrals

Social referrals are the instances of mentioning the products or brand name on social networks.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software that is licensed by subscription and centrally hosted.

Sources

In analytical tool such as Google Analytics, source indicates the website from which the traffic originates to the analyzed website.

Split Path Testing

Split testing sends users down different paths instead of showing different page variations.

Split Testing

Split testing is a technique where the variation is tested by diverting equal (or different) amount of traffic to control and variation to ascertain which performs better.

Squeeze Page

Squeeze page can be any page created to get as many conversions as possible, for example email opt in addresses from potential subscribers.

Staging Environment

Pre production environment for the purpose of final testing before going live with software/website.

Standard Error

Measure of statistical accuracy of an estimate that is equal to the standard deviation of the theoretical distribution.

Statistical Significance

Statistical significance, or significance for short, represents the probability that the results observed in a test are not due to the chance.

Stickiness

Average minutes visitors spend on a website each month.

Survey

A way of gathering information from different people.

Tag (Google Analytics)

Piece of code that sends information to a third party. Used by many web analytics tools.

Tag Manager

Tag management system that allows a user to easily update tags and code snippets on a mobile website app.

Technical Analysis

Analysis that is used for checking a certain website works as planned through studying how it performs.

Test Hypothesis

Hypothesis is a definition of a solution to a problem or an issue, that contains explanation of a problem and defines a solution.

Testing Plan

Process/document which outlines the objectives, plans, internal beta team, target market and processes for a specific A/B test.

Third Party Logistics

A business' use of third party business for the purpose of outsourcing parts of the business' fulfillment and distribution services.

Time Decay Attribution

Time decay attribution is a model that assumes touch points closest to the conversion had the most influence.

Title Tag

HTML title element used to describe the topic and theme of an online article.

Tracking Code

Piece of JavaScript that collects and sends data from a website to Analytics.

Trigger (Google Analytics)

Triggers are used to observe interactions to determine if a tag should be used.

Trust Badges

Seals that are granted to a website or business for display showing that the business is concerned with safety and customer identity.

Type One Error

Inaccurate portrayal of a true null hypothesis.

Type Two Error

The failure to reject a false null hypothesis.

URL Redirect

When a user types in or clicks on one URL and is sent to another.

UTM Parameter (Google Analytics)

UTM parameters enable Google Analytics to accurately report and tie in visits from specific promotional campaigns. It is possible to add parameters to URLs in custom campaigns.

Unique Selling Point (USP)

The aspect of a product that is different from competitor products.<br />

Unique Visitor

Number of distinct visitors to a website.

Universal Resource Locator (URL)

A standard naming convention for addressing pages over the internet.

Upselling

Selling a more expensive or additional related product to a customer that was going to buy a cheaper model instead.

Uptime

Time that a server/machine is in operation/accessible.

Urgency

When a prospective buyer feels the need to act fast based on a promotion or time sensitive action.

Usability

The indicator of the accessibility of a website to its intended audience.

Usability Testing

The trial process that identifies the flaws in usability and enables us to improve it.

User Flow

Path a user takes through a website to complete a specific task.

User Generated Content

Web content that the user/visitor has input.

User Intent

A user's reason for viewing a site and whether that will lead to action, for example a purchase.

User Testing

Usability testing refers to evaluating a website or service by testing it with representative users. Typically, during a test, participants will try to complete typical tasks while observers watch, listen and takes notes.

Value (Google Analytics)

Value is a specific parameter of the event in Google Analytics event tracking that allows you to set a numeric value of the event.

Value Proposition

A feature or service intended to make a web site offering/deal attractive.

Variable

Used to store information to be referenced and acted upon, but in Google Analytics terms, usually refers to custom variable.

Variance (statistics)

The expectation of a squared deviation of a random variable from its mean.

View (Google Analytics)

The different levels in an Analytics account where you can access reports and analysis tools.

Viewable Impression

Common measure of ad viewability which means an ad appears for at least 50% on screen for more than one second.

Visitor Segmentation

Breaking down visitors into categories. Segmentation is one of the most important analytical techniques in web analytics.

Visits

Amount of times a user goes on a website.

Visits by Country

This is an analytical dimension that shows the visitors segmented by country from which they access the website.

Visual Hierarchy

Arrangement of presentation of elements in order of importance.

Visual Website Optimizer (VWO)

A well known tool for conducting experiments on websites, that in addition to experiments includes surveys and heat maps.

Web Analytics

The measure, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for use in understanding and optimizing web pages.

Web Optimization

Web optimization means improving the website so that it offers best possible performance to all visitors, regardless of the device, operating system or browser they may use.

Web Personalization

Tailoring the presentation of a website's content to match a specific user's instructions or preferences.

Webmaster

The person who maintains a particular website.

Whitespace

A section of document that is unused or the space that is around an object.

Widgets

Term used for a piece of self-contained code that displays a program, or a piece of a program, that is normally used as a shortcut to a larger application.

Z-score (statistics)

Z-score signifies the distance of an individual data point from the sample mean expressed as number of standard deviations.

eCommerce

eCommerce represents using web and internet to sell products or services to customers.

p-value (Statistics)

The probability of finding the extreme or observed results when the null hypothesis of a study question is true.