QuickGuide to
E-Commerce...E-commerce Terms / Definitions
Affiliate:
Any web site or business that provides links or sales to
your site through their own marketing efforts. Affiliate
Marketing: Revenue sharing between online
advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople,
where compensation is based on performance measures,
typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a
hybrid model. Affiliate
Tracking: Software that tracks clicks, sales or
other performance measures to determine revenue sharing or
commission. B2B: Generally
refers to selling products or services to other businesses. B2C:
Generally refers to selling products or services to
end consumers. Banner:
An advertisement or image displayed on one or more web
sites to attract visitors to your site. Caching:
The storage of web files on a computer or server so they
can be accessed quicker by the end user. Click-through:
The act of clicking on an online advertisement
(banner) to the advertiser's web site. Conversion
rate: Also Transaction Conversion Rate... The
percentage of visitors who take a desired action on your web
site. Cookie:
Information stored on the users computer by a web site.
The information can be recalled by the web site at a later
time. Cost-per-click:
Online advertising payment process where payment is based on
qualifying actions such as clicking on a banner or search
engine listing. Directory:
A search service that arranges the web pages in it's
database (often through a registration process) into
categories and subcategories. Domain
Name: A user friendly name that represents a
location on the Internet. Doorway
Page: A page made specifically to rank well in
search engines for particular keywords. Also... an entry
point through which visitors pass to reach your web site's
main content.
E-commerce: Generally
refers to the exchange of goods or services via the
Internet. Also e-business... both electronic sales via the
Internet and business to business transactions via a
dedicated connection (modem or broadband). E-commerce
catalog software / solution: Generally refers to a
fully functional online catalog site management system.
Management functionality generally includes products,
shipping, sales tax, sale pricing, featuring products,
sales, payment processing, order processing as well as
marketing features. Email
Marketing: The use of email to promote or market
your products or services. Email
Spam: Unsolicited commercial email. Ezine:
An electronic magazine generally on the web or delivered
through email. FFA:
Free-for-all... Sites that have no qualifications for adding
a link to your web site. Generally these sites provide
little or no traffic to your site. Forum:
An online discussion where visitors may read and post
information or comments. .gif:
Image file format used widely on the web. Hit:
Any request for any file located on the web. Home
page: The opening page of your web site. Impression:
A single instance of an online ad being displayed. Inbound
link: A link from a site other than yours. JavaScript:
A scripting language used in the development of web
pages. Generally refers to client side web programming. .jpg
/ .jpeg:
Image file format used widely on the web. Keyword:
A word used to perform a search. Key
phrase: A phrase used to perform a search. Keyword
density: On a web page, the keywords as a percentage
of indexable text on the web page. Keyword
research: The search for keywords related to your
web site. Also... the analysis of which words or phrases are
used by visitors to locate sites similar to yours. Also...
the analysis of which key words or phrases will yield the
highest return on investment. Link
popularity: A measure of the quality and quantity of
sites that link to your site. Link
text: The text (words) used to create a hyperlink. Log
file: The files that maintain a record of the
requests for resources on your web site.
Merchant Account:
A bank service account that allows you to accept credit card
transactions. Just one part of the process of accepting
online credit card orders. (See Payment Gateway) META
tags: Tags that describe various aspects of a web
page. META Keywords, META Title, META Description are the
most commonly used. Natural
Search Results: The non-paid listings displayed as a
result of a key phrase search using a search engine.
Featured, pay-per-click and sponsored listings are generally
used by less than 40% of search engine users. This makes
natural search placement over twice as effective as paid
search results. Navigation:
Generally referred to as the structure and process of moving
from one page or section of a web site to another. Opt-in
email: A process for allowing people to request
email from you. Opt-out email:
A process for allowing people to request that you stop
sending email. Page view:
A request to load a single HTML page.
Payment Gateway: An
internet service that connects your e-commerce site with
your Merchant Account. A gateway accepts your order
information and connects to your Merchant Account to
authorize and transfer funds. Pay-per-click:
Used to describe those search engine services that
charge for creating visitors to your site. The cost of each
visitor is determined either by a BID or FLAT FEE that you
are charged each time a search engine user clicks on a link
to your site from these sponsored links. Permission
marketing: Marketing based on getting a users
consent to receive information from your company or web
site. Pop-up-ad: An ad that
automatically opens a new browser window. Reciprocal
links: Mutually agreed upon links between two sites. Search
engine: A program that indexes web documents and
attempts to match those documents with search words or
phrases enter by a user. Search
engine optimization: The process of building web
pages target toward getting higher ranking in search
engines.
Shopping Cart: Generally
refers to the portion of an e-commerce site that maintains a
list of the products chosen by a visitor to purchase. Can be
stand alone (using an HTML or other product presentation
format) or part of an e-commerce solution. SPAM:
Unsolicited commercial email. Spiders:
Software used by search engines to locate
new Web pages for their document databases. Unique
visitors: An individual visitor to a web site at
least once within a fixed time frame. URL:
Universal Resource Location - Location of a
resource (web page, file, image, etc.) on the Internet. Web
browser: A software application that allows you to
view resources (primarily HTML web pages) on the Internet. Web
design: The creation and coordination of information
in a web site. Web hosting:
A computer that is always connected to the internet and
provides access to web resources for a web site. Web
Resource: Any HTML file, image or other computer
file that can be reached through a URL. Web
site traffic: The number of visitors and visits to
your web site. Can be measured in Hits, Page Hits or Unique
Visitors.
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