E-Commerce Dictionary
Terms related to online stores and retail.
A/B Testing
Comparing two versions of a webpage or app against each other to determine which one performs better.
Above the Fold
Content that appears on a webpage before the user scrolls down.
Acquisition Cost
The total cost associated with acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses.
Affiliate Marketing
A performance-based marketing strategy where a business rewards affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.
Average Order Value (AOV)
The average amount of money each customer spends per transaction with your store.
B2B (Business-to-Business)
A business model where companies sell products or services to other businesses.
B2C (Business-to-Consumer)
A business model where companies sell products or services directly to individual consumers.
Backorder
An order for a product that is temporarily out of stock but is expected to be shipped once available.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.
Brick and Click
A business model that combines a physical retail store (brick) with an online store (click).
Bundling
Marketing strategy that involves offering several products for sale as one combined product.
Buy Button
An interactive icon that allows customers to add items to their cart or purchase immediately.
Call to Action (CTA)
A prompt on a website that tells the user to take some specified action, like "Buy Now" or "Sign Up".
Cart Abandonment
When a potential customer starts a checkout process for an online order but drops out of the process before completing the purchase.
Chargeback
A return of funds to a consumer, forcibly initiated by the issuing bank of the instrument used by a consumer to settle a debt.
Checkout Process
The steps a customer takes to purchase items in their shopping cart.
Churn Rate
The percentage of customers who stop doing business with an entity during a given time period.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement.
Cohort Analysis
A subset of behavioral analytics that takes the data from a given dataset and rather than looking at all users as one unit, it breaks them into related groups for analysis.
Conversion Funnel
The path a potential customer takes through a site that ultimately results in a conversion.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of visitors to a website that complete a desired goal (a conversion) out of the total number of visitors.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
The systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action.
Cookies
Small text files stored on a user's computer by their web browser that track their movements within websites.
Cross-Selling
The practice of selling an additional product or service to an existing customer.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
The cost of winning a customer to purchase a product or service.
Customer Journey
The complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company and brand.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
A prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer.
Customer Loyalty
A measure of a customer's likelihood to do business with a company or buy a specific brand repeatedly.
Cyber Monday
A marketing term for the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, known for online shopping deals.
Direct-to-Consumer (DTC)
A business model where brands sell directly to their end customers without selling through a retailer, distributor, wholesaler, or other outlet.
Discount Code
A series of letters or numbers that a customer can enter at checkout to receive a discount on their order.
Dropshipping
A retail fulfillment method where a store doesn't keep the products it sells in stock but instead purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer.
Email Marketing
The act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email.
Engagement Rate
A metric that measures the level of engagement that a piece of created content collects from an audience.
Exit Rate
The percentage of people who left your site from a particular page.
Flash Sale
A discount or promotion offered by an ecommerce store for a short period of time.
Fulfillment
The process of receiving, packaging, and shipping orders for goods.
Gateway
An e-commerce service that authorizes credit card payments for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar.
Google Analytics
A web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.
Gross Margin
A company's total sales revenue minus its cost of goods sold (COGS), divided by total sales revenue, expressed as a percentage.
Headless Commerce
An e-commerce architecture where the front-end presentation layer is decoupled from the back-end commerce functionality.
Homepage
The introductory page of a website, typically serving as a table of contents for the site.
Impression
A metric used to quantify the display of an advertisement on a web page.
Inventory Management
The supervision of non-capitalized assets (inventory) and stock items.
Keyword
Words or phrases describing your product or service that you choose to help determine when and where your ad can appear.
Landing Page
A standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign.
Lead Magnet
A free item or service that is given away for the purpose of gathering contact details.
Logistics
The overall process of managing how resources are acquired, stored, and transported to their final destination.
Long Tail Keywords
Search phrases that are highly relevant to your specific niche, product, service or topic, usually with low competition.
Loyalty Program
A structured marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program.
Marketplace
An e-commerce site where third-party companies can sell their products or services to consumers.
Merchant
A person or company involved in wholesale trade, especially one dealing with foreign countries or supplying merchandise to a particular trade.
Mobile Commerce (m-commerce)
The buying and selling of goods and services through wireless handheld devices such as cellular telephone and personal digital assistants.
Multichannel Retailing
The practice of selling merchandise on more than one sales channel.
Native Advertising
A type of advertising that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
A management tool that can be used to gauge the loyalty of a firm's customer relationships.
Omnichannel
A cross-channel content strategy that organizations use to improve their user experience and drive better relationships with their audience across points of contact.
Organic Traffic
Visitors who land on your website from unpaid sources, aka essentially free traffic.
Page View
An instance of an Internet user visiting a particular page on a website.
Payment Gateway
A merchant service provided by an e-commerce application service provider that authorizes credit card or direct payments processing for e-businesses.
Payment Processor
A company aimed at handling transactions from various channels such as credit cards and debit cards for merchant acquiring banks.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
An internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.
Personalization
The process of tailoring a service or a product to accommodate specific individuals.
Point of Sale (POS)
The time and place where a retail transaction is completed.
Private Label
Products manufactured by one company for sale under another company's brand.
Product Description
The marketing copy used to describe a product's value proposition to potential customers.
Product Feed
A file containing a list of products and attributes of those products organized so that each product can be displayed, advertised or compared in a unique way.
QR Code
A machine-readable code consisting of an array of black and white squares, typically used for storing URLs or other information for reading by the camera on a smartphone.
Recurring Billing
A payment model where a merchant automatically charges a customer for goods or services on a prearranged schedule.
Remarketing
A form of online advertising that enables sites to show targeted ads to users who have already visited their site.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
A marketing metric that measures the efficacy of a digital advertising campaign.
Return on Investment (ROI)
A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
The page displayed by a web search engine in response to a query by a searcher.
Shipping Costs
The amount charged to a customer for the delivery of an order.
Shopping Cart
Software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online.
Showrooming
The practice of visiting a shop or shops in order to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
A session and user authentication service that permits a user to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications.
Site Speed
A measurement of how fast the content on your page loads.
Sku (Stock Keeping Unit)
A scannable bar code, most often seen printed on product labels in a retail store.
Social Commerce
A subset of electronic commerce that involves social media, online media that supports social interaction, and user contributions to assist online buying and selling of products and services.
Social Proof
A psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
Subscription Box
A recurring delivery of niche products as part of a marketing strategy and a method of product distribution.
Supply Chain
A network between a company and its suppliers to produce and distribute a specific product to the final buyer.
Target Audience
A specific group of people at whom a product or the marketing message of a product is aimed.
Third-Party Logistics (3PL)
Use of third-party businesses to outsource elements of the distribution, warehousing, and fulfillment services.
Traffic
The number of visitors to a website.
Transaction
An instance of buying or selling something; a business deal.
Trust Seal
A seal displayed on a website to demonstrate to customers that the business is legitimate and secure.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
A factor that differentiates a product from its competitors, such as the lowest cost, the highest quality or the first-ever product of its kind.
Up-Selling
A sales technique where a seller induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale.
User Experience (UX)
The overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.
User Interface (UI)
The means by which the user and a computer system interact, in particular the use of input devices and software.
User Generated Content (UGC)
Any form of content, such as images, videos, text, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms.
Value Proposition
A promise of value to be delivered, communicated, and acknowledged.
Viral Marketing
A business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product.
Virtual Reality (VR)
A computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way.
Web Analytics
The measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.
Wholesale
The sale of goods in large quantities to be retailed by others.
Wishlist
A feature in an online store that allows customers to save items they desire to a list for future purchase.