Web design, development, and digital marketing glossary.

Plain-English definitions for 277+ terms across web design, web development, SEO, paid media, analytics, CRO, email, and strategy — written for business owners, marketers, and anyone briefing an agency.

Start with an audit Explore SEO Services

Use this glossary to decode agency language, brief projects clearly, and understand how websites, search, ads, and tracking fit together. Terms are grouped by discipline and ordered alphabetically within each section.

277+ definitions20 categories3 disciplines

Web Design58 terms · 4 categories

Web Design Fundamentals

Core concepts behind how websites are planned, structured, and designed before development begins.

Above the Fold: Content visible before scrolling on first load. For service businesses, this area should quickly explain what you do, who you help, and the next step.
Call to Action (CTA): A prompt that tells visitors what to do next, such as “Get a quote”, “Book a call”, or “Request an audit”. CTAs appear as buttons, links, or form entry points.
Component: A reusable UI building block such as a button, card, form field, navigation bar, or testimonial module. Components speed up design and development while improving consistency.
Design System: A documented set of reusable components, colours, typography, spacing rules, and patterns that keep a website visually and functionally consistent across pages.
Favicon: The small icon shown in browser tabs, bookmarks, and mobile home screens. It reinforces brand recognition in subtle but useful ways.
Grid System: A column-based layout framework that aligns content consistently across screen sizes. Common grids use 12 columns with defined gutters and margins.
Hero Section: The prominent top section of a page, usually containing a headline, supporting copy, primary CTA, and key visual. It sets context for the rest of the page.
Information Architecture (IA): How website content is organised, labelled, and connected. Strong IA makes services easy to find and helps search engines understand site structure.
Mockup: A static visual design of a page or screen showing colours, typography, imagery, and component styling. Mockups look like the finished site but are not interactive.
Prototype: An interactive version of a design used to test navigation, forms, menus, and user flows before build. Prototypes can be low-fidelity click-throughs or high-fidelity coded demos.
Style Guide: Documentation of brand rules for a website including logo usage, colour palette, fonts, tone of voice, and image treatment. Often part of a broader design system.
Visual Hierarchy: The arrangement of design elements so visitors notice the most important information first — usually through size, contrast, spacing, and position.
Web Design: The process of planning how a website looks, reads, and guides visitors toward action. It combines layout, typography, imagery, brand, UX, and content structure — not just decoration.
Whitespace: Empty space between elements on a page. Good whitespace improves readability, reduces clutter, and helps visitors focus on headings, offers, and calls to action.
Wireframe: A low-fidelity layout sketch showing page structure, content blocks, and hierarchy without final colours or images. Wireframes help teams agree on layout before visual design or development.

UX & UI Design

Terms related to how people experience, navigate, and interact with a website.

A/B Testing: Comparing two versions of a page or element to see which performs better against a goal such as form submissions or clicks.
Form UX: How easy and trustworthy a form feels to complete. Good form UX uses clear labels, minimal fields, helpful errors, and mobile-friendly inputs.
Friction: Anything that makes it harder for a visitor to act — slow load times, confusing menus, weak proof, long forms, or unclear pricing.
Heatmap: A visual report showing where users click, scroll, or move on a page. Heatmaps help identify ignored content and high-interest areas.
Heuristic Evaluation: An expert review of a website against established usability principles to find friction points without running a full user test.
Mega Menu: A large dropdown navigation panel that groups many links under categories such as Services, Industries, or Resources.
Microinteraction: Small interface feedback moments such as button hover states, form validation messages, loading indicators, or success confirmations.
Navigation: The system that helps visitors move around a site — main menu, footer links, breadcrumbs, in-page anchors, and contextual links.
Persona: A research-based profile of a typical customer type, including goals, objections, and decision factors. Personas help shape page content and layout priorities.
Session Recording: Playback of real user sessions showing mouse movement, scrolling, clicks, and form interactions. Useful for diagnosing UX problems.
Usability: How easy a website is to use. Usable sites have clear labels, predictable navigation, readable text, and forms that are simple to complete on mobile.
User Experience (UX): The overall experience someone has using a website — clarity, speed, trust, ease of navigation, and how smoothly they can complete a task like enquiring or booking.
User Flow: The path a visitor takes through a website to complete a goal, such as homepage → service page → contact form → thank-you page.
User Interface (UI): The visible interface people interact with: buttons, forms, menus, icons, cards, and visual states such as hover, focus, and error messages.
User Journey: A broader view of how someone discovers, evaluates, and converts — often spanning ads, search, social, email, and multiple site visits before enquiring.

Visual Design & Branding

Language for typography, colour, imagery, and brand expression on the web.

Border Radius: How rounded corners appear on buttons, cards, and images. Radius choices affect whether a site feels soft, modern, or more corporate.
Brand Identity: The visual and verbal expression of a business — logo, colours, typography, imagery style, and tone of voice — carried through the website.
Colour Palette: The set of brand colours used across a website, usually including primary, secondary, neutral, accent, and semantic colours for success or error states.
Contrast: The difference in lightness or colour between text and background. Sufficient contrast is essential for readability and accessibility compliance.
Font Weight: How thick or light text appears, such as regular (400), medium (500), or bold (700). Weight helps create hierarchy without changing font size.
Iconography: The style and use of icons across a website to support scanning, such as service icons, feature bullets, or navigation cues.
Imagery Direction: Guidelines for photography, illustration, and icon style on a site. Consistent imagery builds trust and supports the brand story.
Line Height: Vertical spacing between lines of text. Adequate line height improves readability, especially for long service descriptions and blog content.
Logo Mark: The symbol or icon portion of a logo, often used in favicons, social profiles, and compact header layouts.
Sans-serif: Fonts without decorative strokes. Common for web UI and body text because they are clean and readable on screens.
Serif: Fonts with small decorative strokes on letters. Often used for editorial or premium brand feels, though many modern sites use sans-serif for screens.
Shadow & Elevation: Visual depth cues that separate layers such as cards, dropdowns, and modals from the page background.
Typeface: A font family such as Inter, Google Sans, or a custom brand font. Websites usually use one display font and one body font for clarity.
Typography: The selection and styling of fonts on a website, including size, weight, line height, and letter spacing. Typography strongly affects readability and brand tone.

Responsive Design & Accessibility

How websites adapt to devices and remain usable for people with diverse needs.

Accessibility (a11y): Design and development practices that make websites usable for people with disabilities, including visual, motor, auditory, and cognitive needs.
Alt Text: Descriptive text for images used by screen readers and shown when images fail to load. Important for accessibility and image SEO context.
ARIA: Accessible Rich Internet Applications attributes that help assistive technologies understand dynamic UI elements like menus, tabs, and modals.
Breakpoint: A screen width where layout rules change, such as switching from a single-column mobile layout to a multi-column desktop layout.
Fluid Layout: A layout that scales proportionally with screen width rather than staying fixed at one size.
Focus State: The visible indicator showing which element is currently selected during keyboard navigation. Critical for accessible forms and menus.
Keyboard Navigation: The ability to use a website with keyboard only, including visible focus states and logical tab order through links and form fields.
Mobile-first Design: Designing for small screens first, then expanding layout for tablet and desktop. Often improves performance and clarity on phones.
Responsive Design: A design approach where layout, typography, and components adapt to different screen sizes using flexible grids, images, and CSS breakpoints.
Screen Reader: Assistive software that reads page content aloud. Semantic HTML and proper labels make screen reader experiences much better.
Semantic HTML: Using HTML elements for their intended meaning — headings, nav, main, article, button — rather than generic divs everywhere.
Touch Target: The tappable area of a button or link on mobile. Targets should be large enough and spaced enough for comfortable finger use.
Viewport: The visible area of a web page on a device. The viewport meta tag tells mobile browsers how to scale and render content correctly.
WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — international standards for accessible web content, often referenced as WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 levels A, AA, or AAA.

Web Development83 terms · 6 categories

Frontend Development

How the visible part of a website is built, styled, and made interactive in the browser.

Astro: A modern web framework focused on content sites with minimal client JavaScript by default. Useful for fast SEO-led marketing websites.
Bundling: Combining multiple JavaScript or CSS files into optimised output files for production deployment.
CDN (Content Delivery Network): A network of servers that caches and serves website assets from locations closer to visitors, reducing latency and improving speed.
CSS: Cascading Style Sheets — the language that controls layout, colours, typography, spacing, animations, and responsive behaviour.
CSS Variables: Custom properties that store reusable values like colours, spacing, and font sizes. Design tokens are often implemented as CSS variables.
DOM: Document Object Model — the browser’s live representation of a page that JavaScript can read and update.
Framework: A structured toolkit for building websites or apps, such as Astro, React, Vue, or Next.js. Frameworks speed development and enforce patterns.
Frontend: The part of a website visitors see and interact with in the browser — HTML structure, CSS styling, and JavaScript behaviour.
HTML: HyperText Markup Language — the structural layer of web pages. HTML defines headings, paragraphs, links, images, forms, and semantic page regions.
Hydration: The process where client-side JavaScript attaches interactivity to server-rendered HTML. Poor hydration can hurt performance if overused.
Jamstack: An architecture pattern using JavaScript, APIs, and Markup to build fast websites — often static frontends with serverless functions for forms or dynamic features.
JavaScript: A programming language that adds interactivity to websites — menus, sliders, form validation, analytics events, and dynamic content loading.
Lazy Loading: Deferring loading of images, videos, or scripts until they are needed, such as images below the fold or off-screen media.
Minification: Removing unnecessary characters from CSS, JavaScript, or HTML files to reduce file size and improve load speed.
React: A JavaScript library for building component-based user interfaces, commonly used for dashboards, apps, and interactive site features.
SPA (Single Page Application): A web app that loads one HTML shell and updates content dynamically with JavaScript. SPAs can feel app-like but need careful SEO handling.
SSR (Server-side Rendering): Generating HTML on the server for each request or at build time so pages arrive ready for browsers and search engines to read.
Static Site: A website pre-built into HTML files at deploy time. Static sites are often fast, secure, and cost-effective for marketing websites.
Tailwind CSS: A utility-first CSS framework where styles are applied through small class names rather than writing separate CSS files for every element.

Backend, APIs & Databases

Server-side systems that power forms, authentication, data storage, and integrations.

API (Application Programming Interface): A structured way for systems to exchange data. Websites use APIs for forms, CRM sync, payments, maps, reviews, and marketing tools.
Authentication: Verifying who a user is, usually through login credentials, magic links, or OAuth providers.
Authorization: Determining what an authenticated user is allowed to do, such as editing pages or viewing admin reports.
Backend: The server-side part of a website or application that handles data, authentication, business logic, email delivery, and integrations.
Database: A structured store for website or application data such as users, orders, blog posts, or form submissions.
Environment Variables: Configuration values stored outside code, such as API keys or database URLs, to keep secrets out of repositories.
NoSQL: Database systems that store data in flexible formats such as documents or key-value pairs instead of traditional tables.
Production Environment: The live website environment that real visitors and customers use.
REST API: A common API style using HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE to read and write data in a predictable way.
Serverless Function: A small piece of backend code that runs on demand without managing a full server — often used for contact forms, audits, or webhooks.
SQL: Structured Query Language used to query relational databases like PostgreSQL or MySQL.
Staging Environment: A pre-production copy of a website used to test changes safely before going live.
Webhook: An automated HTTP callback that sends data from one system to another when an event happens, such as a form submission or payment.

CMS & WordPress

Content management systems and how non-technical teams update websites.

Block Editor (Gutenberg): WordPress’s modern editor for building pages from reusable content blocks such as headings, images, columns, and buttons.
CMS (Content Management System): Software that lets teams create and edit website pages without writing code. Examples include WordPress, Sanity, Contentful, and Webflow CMS.
Custom Post Type: A CMS content type beyond standard pages and posts, such as case studies, team members, or locations.
Headless CMS: A CMS that stores content separately from the frontend, delivering it via API to Astro, React, or other frameworks.
Media Library: The CMS storage area for images, PDFs, videos, and other uploaded files used across the site.
Page Builder: A drag-and-drop editor for assembling pages visually. Can speed launches but may add performance or maintenance trade-offs.
Plugin: An add-on that extends CMS functionality — SEO, forms, caching, security, ecommerce, or page builders.
Revision History: Saved versions of page content in a CMS, allowing editors to compare or roll back changes.
Shortcode: A small placeholder tag in WordPress content that renders a specific feature or layout when the page loads.
Theme: A packaged design and template system that controls how a WordPress or CMS site looks and behaves.
WordPress: The world’s most widely used CMS, powering blogs, business sites, and ecommerce stores through themes, plugins, and the block editor.
WYSIWYG Editor: “What you see is what you get” editing where content appears in the admin similar to the live page layout.

Hosting, DNS & Domains

Infrastructure terms for how a website is published and found on the internet.

A Record: A DNS record pointing a domain or subdomain directly to an IPv4 server address.
Cloud Hosting: Hosting on scalable cloud infrastructure such as AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, or Cloudflare.
CNAME Record: A DNS record that aliases one hostname to another, commonly used for www, CDN, or verification records.
DNS (Domain Name System): The internet phonebook that maps domain names to server IP addresses and email providers through records like A, CNAME, and MX.
Domain Name: The human-readable web address of a site, such as transformdigital.co.nz. Domains are registered through a domain registrar.
HTTPS: The secure version of HTTP. Browsers show padlock indicators and search engines prefer secure sites.
MX Record: A DNS record specifying which mail servers handle email for a domain.
Nameserver: DNS servers authoritative for a domain. Changing nameservers moves DNS control to another provider.
Shared Hosting: Low-cost hosting where many websites share one server. Fine for small sites but can have performance limits.
SSL/TLS Certificate: A security certificate enabling HTTPS encryption between browser and server. Essential for trust, forms, and SEO.
TXT Record: A DNS text record used for domain verification, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and other email or security configurations.
Uptime: The percentage of time a website is available and responding. Good hosts target 99.9% uptime or better.
VPS (Virtual Private Server): A partitioned virtual server with more control and resources than shared hosting.
Web Hosting: Server infrastructure where website files live and are served to visitors. Hosting types include shared, VPS, cloud, and static hosts.

Performance & Security

How fast, stable, and protected a website is for visitors and search engines.

Backup: A stored copy of website files and database used for recovery after errors, hacks, or failed updates.
Brute Force Attack: Automated attempts to guess login passwords, commonly targeting WordPress admin pages.
Caching: Storing copies of pages or assets so repeat visits load faster. Caching happens in browsers, CDNs, and server plugins.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Measures unexpected layout movement while a page loads, such as buttons shifting when images appear.
Core Web Vitals: Google’s key user experience metrics: LCP (loading), INP (interactivity), and CLS (visual stability).
DDoS Attack: A distributed denial-of-service attack that overwhelms a server with traffic to make a site unavailable.
Firewall (WAF): A Web Application Firewall that filters malicious traffic before it reaches your website.
HSTS: HTTP Strict Transport Security — a policy telling browsers to only connect over HTTPS, reducing downgrade attacks.
Image Optimisation: Compressing and sizing images correctly, often using modern formats like WebP or AVIF, to reduce load time without visible quality loss.
INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Measures responsiveness to user interactions such as clicks and taps across a page visit.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Measures how long the largest visible content element takes to render. Often influenced by hero images, fonts, and server response time.
Malware: Malicious code injected into a compromised website, often through outdated plugins or weak credentials.
Page Speed: How quickly a page loads and becomes usable. Speed affects user experience, conversion rates, and SEO on mobile and desktop.
Render-blocking Resources: CSS or JavaScript files that delay first paint because the browser must load them before showing content.
Two-factor Authentication (2FA): An extra login security step requiring a second verification method beyond a password.

DevOps & Deployment

How websites are versioned, tested, and released to production.

301 Redirect: A permanent redirect from one URL to another, passing most SEO value and preventing broken links after migrations.
302 Redirect: A temporary redirect used when a page is moved short term. Search engines may not pass full ranking signals.
Build Process: The automated step that compiles, optimises, and packages a site for production, such as `astro build`.
CI/CD: Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment — automated pipelines that test and deploy code changes.
Deployment: Publishing a new version of a website or application to a live or staging environment.
DNS Propagation: The time it takes DNS record changes to spread across the internet, often minutes to 48 hours.
Git: A version control system that tracks code changes, supports collaboration, and enables rollbacks.
Repository (Repo): The stored project codebase, often hosted on GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket.
Rollback: Reverting to a previous working version after a failed deployment or bug.
Version Control: Tracking every change to code or content over time so teams can collaborate safely and audit history.

Digital Marketing136 terms · 10 categories

Digital Marketing Fundamentals

Core concepts for promoting a business online and turning attention into enquiries.

Brand Awareness: How familiar your target market is with your business name, offer, and reputation.
Conversion: When a visitor completes a desired action — enquiry, purchase, signup, download, or booking.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who convert. If 100 people visit and 3 enquire, the conversion rate is 3%.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The average cost to acquire one new customer across marketing and sales efforts.
Digital Marketing: Marketing delivered through digital channels — websites, search engines, paid ads, email, social media, and analytics — to attract, educate, and convert customers.
Funnel: The stages a prospect moves through from awareness to consideration to decision, such as ad click → service page → contact form.
Inbound Marketing: Attracting customers through useful content, search visibility, and helpful experiences rather than interruptive outbound tactics alone.
Lead: A potential customer who has shown interest, such as by submitting a form, calling, booking, or requesting a quote.
Omnichannel Marketing: Coordinating messaging and tracking across multiple channels — search, ads, email, social, and website — so the customer journey feels connected.
Outbound Marketing: Proactively reaching audiences through ads, cold email, display campaigns, or sponsorships to generate awareness and leads.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Revenue generated divided by ad spend. A ROAS of 4 means $4 revenue for every $1 spent on ads.
Return on Investment (ROI): Overall profit or value gained relative to marketing investment, including labour, tools, and media spend.
Target Audience: The group of people most likely to need your service, based on location, industry, budget, urgency, and buying behaviour.
Value Proposition: A clear statement of what you offer, who it helps, and why someone should choose you over alternatives.

SEO Fundamentals

Search engine optimisation terms every business website owner should know.

Backlink: A link from another website to yours. Quality backlinks act as trust signals and can improve authority for competitive searches.
Content Marketing: Creating useful articles, guides, case studies, and resources that attract search traffic and support sales conversations.
Domain Authority: A third-party score estimating how strong a domain’s backlink profile is. Useful for comparison, not an official Google metric.
E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — Google’s quality framework for evaluating helpful, credible content.
Featured Snippet: A highlighted answer box at the top of some search results, often pulled from a well-structured page section or FAQ.
Heading Tags (H1–H6): HTML headings that structure page content. A page should usually have one clear H1 and logical subheadings beneath it.
Internal Link: A link from one page on your site to another. Internal links help visitors and search engines discover important service and resource pages.
Keyword: A word or phrase people type into search engines. Businesses target keywords that match services and intent, such as “SEO Auckland”.
Long-tail Keyword: A more specific, lower-volume search phrase such as “conversion-focused web design Auckland” that often converts better than broad terms.
Meta Description: A short summary of a page that search engines may show below the title. It influences click-through rate even though it is not a direct ranking factor.
Off-page SEO: Signals outside your website that affect rankings, mainly backlinks, brand mentions, reviews, and local citations.
On-page SEO: Optimising individual pages through titles, headings, content, internal links, images, and metadata to match target queries.
Organic Search: Unpaid search results on Google, Bing, or other engines. Organic traffic is earned through content, technical health, authority, and relevance.
Search Intent: The goal behind a search query — informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional. Matching intent is central to good SEO.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): The practice of improving a website so it ranks better in organic search results and attracts qualified visitors who are actively looking for your services.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page): The page of results shown after a search query, including organic listings, ads, maps, images, FAQs, and AI overviews.
Title Tag: The HTML title of a page, often shown as the clickable headline in search results. It should be clear, relevant, and within sensible length limits.

Technical SEO

Behind-the-scenes website factors that affect crawling, indexing, and rankings.

404 Page: The response shown when a URL is not found. A helpful 404 page should guide visitors back to key sections.
Broken Link: A link pointing to a page that no longer exists, returning a 404 error and wasting crawl equity.
Canonical Tag: An HTML hint indicating the preferred URL when duplicate or similar pages exist, helping consolidate ranking signals.
Crawl Budget: The number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site within a given period. More important on large sites.
Crawling: When search engine bots discover pages by following links across the web and your site.
Duplicate Content: Substantially similar content available at multiple URLs, which can dilute rankings unless handled with canonicals or redirects.
Hreflang: Markup indicating language or regional versions of pages for international or multilingual sites.
Indexability: Whether a page is allowed and able to be indexed — affected by robots rules, noindex tags, login walls, or poor quality.
Indexing: When a search engine stores a page in its database and considers it eligible to rank.
JSON-LD: A common format for embedding structured data in a page without affecting visible content layout.
Mobile-first Indexing: Google primarily uses the mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking, making mobile UX and speed critical.
Pagination: Splitting content across multiple pages. Should be handled carefully so search engines understand the relationship between pages.
Redirect Chain: Multiple redirects in sequence (A → B → C), which slows users and crawlers and should be simplified.
Robots.txt: A file that gives crawlers instructions about which paths they should or should not request. It does not guarantee de-indexing.
Structured Data (Schema): Standardised markup (often JSON-LD) that helps search engines understand entities like businesses, services, FAQs, articles, and breadcrumbs.
Technical SEO: Optimising site infrastructure so search engines can crawl, index, and understand pages efficiently — covering speed, structure, redirects, and markup.
XML Sitemap: A machine-readable list of important URLs submitted to search engines to aid discovery and prioritisation.

Local SEO & AI Search

Visibility in maps, local results, and AI-powered answer experiences.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation): Structuring content so answer engines and AI tools can extract clear, accurate responses about your services and expertise.
AI Overview: Google’s AI-generated summary shown for some searches, synthesising information from multiple sources.
Citation: A mention of your business on another site, often in directories, with or without a link.
Entity SEO: Making your business, people, services, and locations unambiguous to search systems through consistent naming, schema, and references.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation): Improving how your business appears in AI-generated answers by strengthening entity clarity, content quality, and trusted signals.
Google Business Profile (GBP): Google’s free business listing for maps and local search, showing name, category, hours, reviews, photos, and contact options.
Knowledge Panel: An information box about an entity shown in Google results, often influenced by authoritative sources and structured data.
Local Pack: The map-based block of local business results shown for many location-intent searches.
Local SEO: Optimising for location-based searches and map results so nearby customers can find and contact your business.
NAP Consistency: Keeping Name, Address, and Phone number consistent across your website, GBP, directories, and citations.
Review Management: The process of earning, monitoring, and responding to customer reviews on Google and other platforms.
Service Area Page: A page explaining services for a specific suburb, city, or region without creating thin duplicate location spam.

Google Ads & PPC

Paid search and performance advertising terminology.

Ad Group: A cluster of related keywords and ads within a campaign, often grouped by service or intent.
Attribution: How credit for conversions is assigned across touchpoints in a customer journey.
Campaign: The top-level container in ad platforms, usually organised around a goal, budget, and geographic targeting.
Conversion Tracking: Measuring valuable actions from ads — calls, forms, purchases, or bookings — usually via tags or server-side events.
CPC (Cost per Click): The average amount paid each time someone clicks your ad.
CPM (Cost per Mille): Cost per 1,000 ad impressions, common in display and awareness campaigns.
CTR (Click-through Rate): Clicks divided by impressions. Measures how compelling your ad is relative to who sees it.
Google Ads: Google’s advertising platform for search, display, YouTube, Performance Max, and remarketing campaigns.
Impression: Each time an ad is shown, whether or not it is clicked.
Keyword Match Type: Controls how closely a search query must match your keyword — broad, phrase, or exact match.
Landing Page: The page visitors reach after clicking an ad. It should match ad promise, load fast, and make the next step obvious.
Negative Keyword: A term that prevents your ads from showing for irrelevant searches, such as “free”, “jobs”, or “DIY”.
Performance Max: A Google Ads campaign type that uses automation across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Maps from one asset group.
PPC (Pay-per-click): An advertising model where you pay when someone clicks your ad, common on Google, Bing, and social platforms.
Quality Score: Google’s estimate of ad relevance, expected CTR, and landing page experience for a keyword. Higher scores can lower costs.
Remarketing: Showing ads to people who previously visited your website or engaged with your content.
ROAS: Return on ad spend — revenue attributed to ads divided by ad cost.

Analytics & Tracking

Measuring traffic, behaviour, campaigns, and business outcomes.

Bounce Rate: The percentage of sessions where a user left without meaningful engagement. Interpretation depends on page type and tracking setup.
Consent Mode: A framework for adjusting tracking based on user consent choices, important for privacy compliance.
Cookie: A small file stored in the browser used for sessions, preferences, analytics, and ad tracking — subject to privacy rules.
Dashboard: A visual report summarising key metrics such as traffic, leads, rankings, and campaign performance.
Direct Traffic: Visits with no tracked referral source, often from bookmarks, typed URLs, or untagged links.
Engagement Rate: In GA4, the share of sessions considered engaged based on duration, events, or conversions.
Event Tracking: Recording specific user actions such as button clicks, form starts, downloads, or video plays.
Goal: A defined conversion action in analytics, such as a submitted contact form or completed booking.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Google’s current analytics platform measuring events, users, conversions, and journeys across web and app.
Google Search Console: A free Google tool showing search queries, impressions, clicks, indexing status, and technical issues for your site.
Google Tag Manager (GTM): A tag management system for deploying analytics, ads, and marketing pixels without editing code each time.
Referral Traffic: Visitors who clicked a link on another website to reach yours.
Server-side Tracking: Sending conversion data from a server rather than only the browser, improving accuracy and data control.
Session: A group of interactions by a user within a time window. One person may have multiple sessions over days or weeks.
Source / Medium: Where traffic came from (source) and the marketing channel type (medium), such as google / organic or facebook / cpc.

CRO & Landing Pages

Improving how effectively a website turns visitors into leads and customers.

Above-the-fold Offer: The primary value proposition and CTA visible immediately on landing, before scrolling.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation): The practice of improving pages, forms, offers, and user flows to increase the percentage of visitors who take valuable actions.
Form Abandonment: When a user starts but does not complete a form. Short forms and clear value reduce abandonment.
Heatmap Analysis: Using visual click and scroll data to improve page layout and CTA placement.
Landing Page: A focused page built for one campaign or offer, minimising distractions and guiding visitors toward a single conversion goal.
Message Match: Alignment between ad copy, search result promise, and landing page headline so visitors feel they arrived in the right place.
Multivariate Testing: Testing multiple page elements simultaneously to find winning combinations.
Objection Handling: Addressing common buyer concerns on the page — price, timeline, process, credentials, or fit.
Social Proof: Evidence that others trust you — reviews, testimonials, logos, case studies, certifications, and before/after results.
Sticky CTA: A call to action that remains visible while scrolling, common on mobile service pages.
Thank-you Page: The page shown after a conversion, used for confirmation, next steps, and conversion tracking.
Trust Signal: Elements that reduce perceived risk, such as guarantees, clear pricing cues, real photos, and transparent contact details.

Email Marketing & Automation

Terms for newsletters, nurture sequences, and marketing automation platforms.

Click Rate: The percentage of recipients who click a link in an email.
DKIM / SPF / DMARC: Email authentication records that verify sending servers and reduce spoofing, improving deliverability.
Double Opt-in: A signup process requiring email confirmation before someone is added to a list, improving list quality and compliance.
Drip Campaign: An automated sequence of emails sent over time based on triggers such as signup or form submission.
Email Marketing: Using email to nurture leads, share updates, promote offers, and stay top of mind with prospects and customers.
ESP (Email Service Provider): A platform for sending marketing email at scale, such as Brevo, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or ActiveCampaign.
List Segmentation: Dividing subscribers into groups by interest, location, behaviour, or customer status for more relevant messaging.
Marketing Automation: Software that triggers emails, tasks, or ads based on user behaviour and lifecycle stage.
Newsletter: A recurring email update with news, resources, or offers sent to subscribers.
Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open an email. Less reliable now due to privacy features and image blocking.
SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol — the standard method servers use to send email. WordPress often sends via SMTP providers.
Spam Score: Indicators that an email may be filtered as spam, influenced by content, authentication, and sender reputation.

NEXT STEP

Want help turning terminology into action?

Start with a practical growth audit. We will review your website, search visibility, tracking, and conversion path so you know what to improve first.

Start with an audit

Search

Paid Media

Websites