Glossary
Here you will find the definitions of some key concepts and taxonomies of Website findability. Of course, there are many more terms coming up every day in Web development. For this reason, I will limit my presentation to the jargon used on this webpage exclusively.
- Accessibility:
- Refers to the structuring of web content in such a way that it is easily accessible to all users, in particular users with disabilities. Not to be confused with usability.
- Content:
- The content of a web site refers to all the text, images, sound etc. that make up the web site, but not the layout elements such as the background or navigation links.
- Design:
- Web design is a Web development process for creating a website that focuses on aesthetic factors like layout, user interface and other visual imagery in order to make the website more visually appealing and easy to use.
- Email Marketing:
- Email marketing is the targeting of consumers through electronic mail (email). Often associated with data mining, email marketing can be used to impact consumers in a variety of ways. In general, email marketing is a more evolved, digital form of traditional direct mail marketing.
- Keywords:
- In search engine optimisation, the term keyword refers to words that potential visitors to a site would use in a search. Understanding what keywords users are most likely to use is a crucial component of planning a search engine optimization campaign.
- Metadata:
- It is the sum of all information available beyond the visible content of a webpage. It is often organised in metatags such as the "meta description" and the "meta keywords" tag.
- PPC:
- PPC (Pay Per Click) is an advertising model where the advertiser pays only when a user clicks on his or her advertisement. The amount per click is agreed beforehand.
- SEO:
- The act of creating or changing web pages so that their ranking in search engine results pages improve. Search engine optimization (SEO) is not quite the same as search engine marketing (SEM). The latter is a collective name for all search engine marketing activities including SEO, PPC marketing, link building etc.
- SERP:
- Search Engine Results Page. The SERP is the page that a search engine displays in response to a search by a user.
- Search engine:
- A search engine operates like a directory for the World Wide Web. A search engine is a web site that attempts to index (store) all or most of the Web in a database. When a user visits the search engine and conducts a search, the search engine returns results from its database, together with links to the actual sites where the information was collected from. Search engines use proprietary algorithms (formulas) to determine which web pages are most relevant to a user's search and displays the most relevant results first.
- Sitemap:
- A sitemap is a page within a web site that offers links to all the pages within that web site - or, at least, to the important pages within the web site. It is a great tool to offer your web site visitors and it helps search engine spiders to quickly find all of the internal pages on your web site, including pages that they might otherwise miss.
- Tags:
- Used in HTML mark-up to contain HTML code. The information between HTML tags is displayed on the web site. Also represent the important "anchor words" on a particular web page. They give human visitors a way to quickly gauge what the page is about and it helps focus the page content for SEO purposes.
- Traffic:
- A very broad term that refers to the amount of activity and/or the number of users on a web site. If something is advertised as a "traffic-magnet", the advertiser claims that it can bring many new visitors to your web site.
- UX:
- User experience (UX) is a concept in computing system and application design that studies and evaluates human feelings and expressions when using such systems. UX facilitates and enables the development of computing systems that are centered on ease of use and accessibility for a human user.
- UI:
- User interface (UI) is a broad term for any system, either physical or software based, that allows a user to connect with a given technology. Many different kinds of user interfaces come with various devices and software programs.
- URL:
- URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a fancy name for a web site address, for example http://www.webdesigndictionary.com/terms.php?letter=u
- Usability:
- Usability refers to how easily web site visitors can find what they are looking for or accomplish a task such as contacting the company. The study of usability is critical to e-commerce, where the aim is to make the customer's path to the order page or sign-up page as clear as possible.
