A glossary is a list of terms in a special subject, field, or area of usage with definitions. It contains explanations of concepts relevant to a certain field of study or action. Just like other businesses eCommerce also uses some terminology and professional word that you must have known.
You may need some additional clarification on certain common words and phrases while reading any eCommerce-related articles. So, we’re here to make it clear of the E-commerce glossary.
E-commerce Glossary:
A
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a promotional model that connects merchants with independent marketers who are willing to invest money to sell a merchant’s products. With affiliate marketing, you can get more traffic to your eCommerce site.
The industry has four core players:
- the merchant
- the network
- the publisher is also known as ‘the affiliate’
- the customer
Affiliate Link
An affiliate link is a specific URL that allows the merchant to track the identity of their affiliates. This contains both the identification number of the affiliate as well as extra useful information for the advertiser. These links are essential to monitoring the online performance of marketers.
Affiliate Link looks like the following:
Amazon Marketplace
Amazon is the largest 3rd party online marketplaces used by both individuals as well as businesses. The site is available in many different countries and languages and is the fourth most valuable company in the world. There are more than dozen of Amazon storefront websites around the world. It charges its third-party merchants a referral fee for each sale which is a percentage of the sales price.
Abandonment
Abandon means to give up or discontinue any interesting thing because of discouragement. You will probably have heard the term ‘shopping cart abandonment during shopping time as a shop owner or as a customer. The statistics of abandonment can help sellers to understand customer behavior and observe common points at which the abandonment occurs.
Analytics
Analytics is the most commonly used terms in eCommerce and website building. Marketing organizations use analytics to determine the outcomes of campaigns or offers and to guide decisions for investment and consumer targeting. Through analytics you can get basic data such as the number of visitors to a particular page to more in depth observations such as the amount of visitors that exit after seeing a pop up.
Analytics provide a picture how visitors behave before and during the time they visit a website. It can also help a shop owner to understand the weak or strong points of their website, and make improvements of the shop to increase conversions.
Authorization
Authorization is the process of granting or denying access to a network resource which allows the user access to various resources based on the user’s identity.
It is the confirmation when a transaction performed by using a credit card to determine if the card holder has sufficient funds on his/her card. There are few possibilities when an authorization is declined.
B
Bounce Rate
The number of visitors that visits your website and leaves without interacting further with your site is called as bounce rate. It shows you the percentage of your visitors who bounce off of your site. By monitoring the bounce rate of a page you can measure how effective the page is at encouraging users to continue browsing the site.
Brick & Mortar Shop
A brick and mortar shop is a business or retail outlet that has at least one physical location. Traditional shops that you find in your local shopping mall are known as brick and mortar shops.
Many customers still prefer a brick and mortar shop where they can physically view the product before buying it as well as asking the advice from physical rather than virtual shop assistants.
Brick & Click store
The store that has both a retail outlet as well as a website is known as brick and click store. Brick and click concept comes when eCommerce entrepreneurs realized that people like physical stores. According to a research the majority of individuals still prefer to buy their goods from a physical store instead of online store. Customers like to research their purchase online and then head off to the merchants physical location to complete the purchase.
Blog
Blog is essential for any eCommerce business. Basically, it is a name for an online publication or journal that will include shorts posts and articles. These should be attached to your eCommerce site. Most platforms you select to run your site will have an in built blogging function, so you can attract both traffic and links to your store.
Business to Business (B2B)
In both eCommerce and marketing B2B refers to commerce between two businesses rather than to commerce between a business and an individual consumer.
Business to Consumer (B2C)
Similar to B2B, B2C refers to the transactions conducted directly between a company and consumers who are the end-users of its products or services.
C
Call to Action (CTA)
In eCommerce a call to action is an instruction that prompt users to carry out an action immediately. For example, ‘add to cart’. CTA have an massive impact on conversion rates.
Click through Rate
Click through rate is the measurement of success of an advertising campaign.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of visitors on a page that convert into customer is known as Conversion Rate. By measuring conversion rates you can assess the effectiveness of changes made to your shop.
Cookies
Cookies are a small amount of text files stored in a web user’s browser directory or data folder. The purpose of a cookie is to remember the site visitor. This allows the browser to remember that the visitor has browsed a certain website before.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors that convert to a customer or what the desired conversion goal is.
Content Management System (CMS)
Content management system (CMS) is an application that is used to manage web content, allowing multiple contributors to create, edit and publish.
Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday is a online marketing term for the Monday after the thanks giving holiday in the United States. It was actually created by retailers to encourage people to shop online.
D
Domain Name
The main page or URL is known as domain. Domain name is the web address of your online store or any website. For example: www.google.com
Dropshipping
Drop shipping allows you to purchase the item from a supplier as someone places an order with your store. The beauty of building a drop shipping business is it removes the back end inventory management.
E
eBay
eBay is the most popular eCommerce sites that allow sales to occur between consumers in an auction format. Like amazon eBay is also a 3rd party marketplace.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message to a group of person. It usually use to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.
F
Fulfillment
In eCommerce fulfillment term is used when an order is completed. The term is also used for third party service which looks after warehousing, stock management and delivery.
Fraud
Fraud takes place when a person deliberately practices deception that is intentional and is used for the purpose of personal gain.
G
Google Analytics
It is a premium web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand.
Google Keywords
The trending words or phrases that user are using for searching purposes within Google. Google keywords are often used for marketing tactics.
Google Ads
It is an online advertising platform, where advertisers pay to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, video content and generate mobile application installs within the Google ad network to web users.
H
HTML
Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is a language that structures a web page or application. It can adjust syntax, font, layout, images or links throughout the page.
I
Inventory
It is the quantity or value of the current stock of a manufacturer or retailer. As your online store progresses, you will need to regularly check inventory levels, to ensure you are keeping an eye on shrinkage and minimum order levels, and that you are not promoting products you don’t have in stock.
J
JavaScript
It is a script language that makes web pages dynamic and interactive by scripting.
K
Keywords
In terms of eCommerce websites and SEO, keywords are important words or phrases that make it possible for visitors to find your website or products via any search engines.
L
Landing Page
It is a page where your customers will land on, either from paid traffic or search traffic, designed to maximize the chances of conversion on the desired action.
Logistics
In terms of eCommerce, logistics are the processes of shipping orders to customers or transporting inventory to a merchant. It proves an increasing challenge as your business scales, and many eCommerce store owners choose to outsource their logistics function.
Long Tail
It is a strategy that allows businesses to realize significant profit out of selling low volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of popular items.
M
Margin
By considering the cost of goods and expenses, margin is the profit percentage of a sale. It is an essential metric in establishing the level of profitability in a given sale or product line.
Mobile Commerce (MCommerce)
Just like eCommerce, mcommerce refers to the buying and selling of goods on a mobile or wireless handheld device.
Multi Channel eCommerce
Multi-channel eCommerce is the process of selling goods and services via multiple outlets.
N
Niche
Niche means a distinct segment within the market, generally a targetable part of a market where the customer demand is high.
O
Outsource
The contract of work to third party organizations, anywhere in the world. It is commonplace in eCommerce, on everything from web design to logistics and fulfillment.
Organic
With respect to SEO and marketing, this is the way users find a website through a search engine query. Google or other search engines arranges results on basis of page rankings, so higher-rank pages appear closer to the top.
Olark
It is a live chat platform that enables businesses to talk to customers browsing their website.
Open Rate
is an email marketing metrics that measures the percentage rate of recipients that open an email. You can use open rate to track the success of an email marketing campaign.
Optimise
The simple meaning of optimise is to make perfect or complete. In terms of eCommerce it means increase the number of conversions.
P
Pay per click (PPC)
It is a form of advertising to increase the number of traffics to a website. Google Adwords is the perfect example of a PPC network.
Payment Gateway
A payment gateway is a merchant service that authorizes the payment by credit cards for online retailers, brick and click stores, traditional stores, and for eCommerce ventures.
Point of Sale (POS)
It is the place where a customer executes the payment for goods or services, and where sales taxes may become payable, whether it be in a physical store.
R
Reseller
A reseller is a company or merchant that purchases goods or services with the intention of selling them rather than consuming or using them. A reseller will buy goods for resale and make a profit, a retailer purchase goods from a manufacturer that he will then sell on to his customer with a reasonable price.
Retailer
A retailer is a business or company that sells to the consumer directly. A retailer buy goods from a manufacturer, distributor or wholesaler and sell them to his customer with a reasonable price.
S
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
It is the process of setting out your website and building links in a Google-friendly way, to ensure your website is getting the best possible ranking within relevant SERPs.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
The pages that lists all the results from a search query within a search engine. The main component of the SERP is the listing of results that the search engine return in response to a keyword query.
Social Media
Social media is a collection of platforms where businesses can tap into targeted audiences through advertising, or through a comprehensive social media strategy.
Shopping Cart
It is a piece of software that facilitates the purchase of a product or service. All the products appear as a order on the page or “in the cart.”
T
Traffic
The number of visitors coming to your site from a number of sources. The success of any website or eCommerce depends on traffic.
Transaction
It is an agreement between a buyer and a seller to exchange goods, services or financial instruments.
U
Upselling
It is a sales technique where a seller provokes the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale.
W
Wholesale
The sale of products, often in bulk quantities, to retailers or other merchants.
WordPress
It is a free, open source blogging platform, used as a basis for creating eCommerce stores and a series of other websites. It is the most popular platform for CMS.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open source eCommerce platform which is free to download and offers you with an enormous amount of extended features. It is a WordPress plugin that has user-friendly features and functions to provide a better experience to have a perfect e-commerce startup.
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