Glossary

The words, explained plainly

Every term you'll hear from a web designer, a developer or a marketer, in a sentence or two you can use. Search it, or browse by topic.

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71 terms, in plain English. Search, or pick a topic.

71 shown

AccessibilityWebsites: Designing and building a website so people with disabilities can use it: readable contrast, text that resizes, buttons a screen reader can name. It helps every visitor, and it's what the law and Google expect.
APISoftware: Application programming interface: a door that lets one piece of software talk to another. Your website can read your Toast menu or Shopify catalog through the platform's API, and send orders back the same way. See website development.

BacklinkSEO: A link to your website from another site. Google reads links from trusted, relevant sites as votes of confidence; a few from local businesses and news beat hundreds you could buy.
Bounce rateAnalytics: The share of visitors who leave a page without doing anything else. A high bounce rate on a service page usually means it didn't answer the question people arrived with.
BrandBrand: What people remember about a business and expect from it: the name, the look, the voice, the way it behaves. More than a logo. See what a brand means for a small business.
Brand guidelinesBrand: A short document that sets out your logo, colours, type and voice, with examples, so everything you put out looks and sounds like the same business. See why brand guidelines matter.
Brand identityBrand: The visible parts of a brand: logo, colours, type, imagery and voice, designed to work together on a sign, a screen and an invoice. See brand identity design.

Call to action (CTA)Websites: The next step a page asks for: call, book, request a quote. Good pages have one clear call to action, placed where the answer to the visitor's question lands.
CitationSEO: A listing of your business name, address and phone number on another site: Yelp, Apple Maps, the chamber of commerce. Consistent citations help Google trust where you are. See local SEO for small businesses.
Client portalSoftware: A private part of your website that customers sign in to for their documents, bookings, invoices and messages. A patient portal and an owner portal are the same idea. See client portals.
CMSWebsites: Content management system: the part of a website that lets you edit words and photos without touching code. WordPress is one; a custom site can have a simpler one built for you.
Content calendarSocial: A month of posts planned at once: what goes out, when and where. It's how social media stops eating your week. See what to post on social media.
ConversionAnalytics: A visitor doing the thing the page is for: a call, a booking, a form, a purchase. Conversion rate is the share of visitors who do it.
Conversion trackingAds: Recording when an ad leads to a call, a form or a purchase, so you know which spend is working. Set it up before you spend a dollar. See Google Ads vs Meta Ads.
Core Web VitalsWebsites: Google's three measures of how a page feels to use: how quickly its main content shows, how soon it responds to a tap, and how much it shifts around while loading. They affect rankings. See is your website too slow?
CPCAds: Cost per click: what you pay each time someone clicks an ad. On its own it says little; what matters is the cost of each call or booking the clicks lead to.
CrawlingSEO: Google's software visiting your pages and reading them. A page has to be crawled before it can be indexed, and before it can rank.
CRMSoftware: Customer relationship management software: the place every lead, customer and conversation is recorded, so nothing falls through the cracks.
Custom softwareSoftware: A tool built for one business around how it actually works, rather than bought off the shelf and worked around. See custom software and custom software or off the shelf.
Custom websiteWebsites: A site designed and built for one business, in code, rather than assembled from a theme or a page builder. It carries only what that business needs. See website development.

Domain nameWebsites: Your address on the web, like stratasis.com. You rent it yearly from a registrar, and it should always be registered in your name, not your agency's.

EngagementSocial: Likes, comments, saves and shares on a post. A rough measure of whether people cared; bookings and calls are the real one.

Google AdsAds: Ads shown on Google Search when someone searches for what you do, and across Google's other properties. You pay per click. See Google Ads and Meta Ads management.
Google Analytics (GA4)Analytics: Google's free tool for seeing who visits your site, where they came from and what they did. The current version is GA4.
Google Business ProfileSEO: Your free listing on Google Search and Maps: hours, photos, reviews, services. It's what shows in the map results, and for a local business it often matters more than the website. See local SEO.

HeadlessWebsites: A setup where a platform like Shopify or Toast does the work behind the scenes (payments, orders, stock) and your own website is the face customers see, talking to it through an API. See why your own website beats the stock Toast or Shopify page.
HeatmapAnalytics: A picture of where visitors click, tap and scroll on a page, from a tool like Microsoft Clarity. It shows what people ignore.
HostingWebsites: The computer your website runs on, and the service that keeps it on. Cheap shared hosting is where slow, insecure sites come from. See website maintenance.
HTTPSWebsites: The padlock in the browser: your site encrypting everything between it and the visitor. Every page should have it; browsers warn about the ones that don't.

IndexingSEO: Google adding a page to its library so it can show up in results. A page can be live and still not indexed. See why your website isn't showing up on Google.
IntegrationSoftware: Two pieces of software connected so information moves between them on its own: a booking into your calendar, an order into your accounting. Done through APIs.

KeywordSEO: The words someone types into Google. A page ranks for a keyword when Google thinks it's one of the best answers to that search.

Landing pageAds: A single page built for one audience or one ad, with one message and one next step. Ads sent to a focused landing page convert better than ads sent to a homepage.
Local packSEO: The three businesses shown on the map at the top of a local search. Getting into it depends on relevance, distance and how established you look.
Local SEOSEO: Getting found by customers nearby: your Google Business Profile, pages for each service and town, reviews, listings and local links. See local SEO services.
Local Services AdsAds: Google's ads for local trades, shown above everything else with a 'Google Guaranteed' badge. You pay per lead rather than per click, after a background check.
LogoBrand: The mark that stands for your business. A good one works small on a phone and large on a van, in one colour and in full colour.

Meta AdsAds: Ads on Facebook and Instagram, aimed by location, interests and behaviour rather than by search. Good for showing your work to people who weren't looking yet.
Meta descriptionSEO: The two lines under a page's title in Google's results. It doesn't affect ranking directly, but it decides whether people click.
Mobile-firstWebsites: Designing the phone version of a page first, then growing it for tablets and desktops, because most local customers find you on a phone. See website design.

NoindexSEO: A hidden instruction on a page telling Google not to include it in results. Useful for a page under construction, a disaster if it's left on by accident.

Off the shelfSoftware: Ready-made software you subscribe to. The right start for most businesses; the signs you've outgrown it are the workarounds piling up around it.
Organic trafficSEO: Visitors who found you through unpaid search results, as opposed to ads. It takes time to build and keeps coming once it does.

Page builderWebsites: Drag-and-drop tools like Wix, Squarespace or WordPress page builders. Quick to start, but pages get heavy and you can only change what the builder allows.
Page speedWebsites: How quickly a page loads and becomes usable. It affects whether visitors stay and how Google ranks you. Check yours with PageSpeed Insights.
PositioningBrand: The one-line answer to who you're for and why they'd choose you over the business down the road. Everything else in the brand follows from it.
PPCAds: Pay-per-click: advertising where you pay for each click rather than for the ad being shown. Google Ads and Meta Ads are both PPC.

ReachSocial: How many different people saw a post. Impressions count every view, including repeats; reach counts people.
RedirectSEO: A rule that sends an old web address to a new one. Essential in a redesign: without redirects, every old link and search result leads to a dead page and the trust Google had in it is lost.
ReelSocial: A short vertical video on Instagram or Facebook. Right now it's the format platforms show to the most people who don't already follow you.
Responsive designWebsites: A page that rearranges itself to fit any screen, from a phone to a wide monitor, rather than a separate mobile site.
RetargetingAds: Showing ads to people who visited your website and left without calling, to bring them back. See retargeting ads, explained.
ROASAds: Return on ad spend: the revenue an ad campaign brings in for each dollar spent. Only meaningful with conversion tracking in place.
Robots.txtSEO: A small file at yourdomain.com/robots.txt that tells crawlers which parts of a site they may visit. A single wrong line can block the whole site.

SaaSSoftware: Software as a service: software you use in a browser and pay for monthly rather than install and own. Most off-the-shelf business tools are SaaS.
Schema markupSEO: Structured data: code on a page that spells out facts for Google, like your business name, hours, services and reviews, or a post's author and date. It helps search engines and AI tools understand you.
Search ConsoleSEO: Google's free tool for site owners. It shows which pages are indexed, what people searched to find you, and what's broken.
SEOSEO: Search engine optimization: everything that helps your pages show up when people search for what you do. See how long does SEO take?
SERPSEO: Search engine results page: the page Google shows after a search, with the map, the ads and the ten blue links.
Service area pageSEO: A page about your services in one town or area you cover, so you can rank there. It only works with something real to say about that place.
SitemapSEO: A file listing every page on your site, usually at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, that you submit to Google so it knows what to crawl.
Social media managementSocial: Someone planning, making, posting and replying for your accounts every month, and reporting on what it brought in. See social media management.
SSL certificateWebsites: The file that makes HTTPS work. It has to be renewed, which is one of the things website maintenance handles for you.

Title tagSEO: The blue link in Google's results and the name on the browser tab. The single most important line on a page for search.
Tone of voiceBrand: How your business sounds in writing: a headline, a reply to a review, an email. Written down with examples so everyone on the team can match it.

UTM tagAnalytics: Extra text on the end of a link, like ?utm_source=gbp, so your analytics can tell which post, ad or profile a visitor came from.
UXWebsites: User experience: how easy and pleasant a site is to use, from finding the right page to finishing a booking. Good UX is mostly answering the visitor's question in the order they ask it.

Web appSoftware: Software that runs in a browser rather than being installed: a portal, a dashboard, a booking system. Built in the same code as a modern website.
Website maintenanceWebsites: The ongoing work that keeps a site healthy: hosting, security updates, backups, monitoring and content changes. See website maintenance.
Website redesignWebsites: Rebuilding or reworking an existing site. Done well it keeps what works, including your rankings and addresses, and fixes what's costing you customers. See website redesign.
WireframeWebsites: A plain sketch of a page's layout in boxes, before colour, photos or type go on. It's how the structure gets agreed before the design.