Jargon Buzzword BS Geekspeak Technobabble Gobbledygook buster
Buzzwords, Jargon, whatever you call it, there’s a lot of it in digital marketing and web development. It can be a useful shorthand, but it can also be an obstacle to understanding.
Sometimes it can be hard to even know where to start, sorting out your CTA from your CTR, and your SSL certificates from your SEO, not to mention securing that elusive perfect domain name or sorting out your hosting.
We think everyone should make the most of the opportunities the world wide web has to offer, so to help make things bit more accessible, we’ve put together a jargon busting buzzword dictionary.
Buster Buzzword's dictionary of jargon
Well I never knew that...thanks Buster!
Content Management System
Computer software used to manage the creation and management of digital content. Usually a CMS provides a user-friendly editor that creates web pages for you with little or no coding.
Call to Action,
A marketing device that encourages or instructs a customer to provoke a response. For instance a “buy it now” button, or a “sign up now” link.
Click Through Rate.
A measurement of how many people click on a link to view a page, email or advert.
A unique name which is used as the address where internet users can access your website. E.g cherwelldigital.co.uk. The .co.uk part is actually called a top level domain.
Domain Name System
Like the address book of the internet. Humans navigate the web using domain names. Computers use IP addresses. The Domain Name System is a decentralised system that translates domain names to IP addressees.
Search Engine Marketing
The process of making sure a website is high in the Search Engine Results Pages usually by using paid advertising, such as Pay Per Click (PPC) platforms like Google Ads or Facebook Ads, Differs from SEO which is usually a way of improving unpaid (or organic) search results.
Search Engine Optimisation – the process of making sure a website is set up to optimise its discoverability by search engines. SEO is usually a way of generating unpaid (or organic) search results, as opposed to SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or PPC (Pay Per Click) which are ways to improve paid search retails.
Search Engine Results Pages. The list of results that comes up when you enter a search term into Google or Bing etc. Coming high in the SERPS is a goal of SEO, SEM, and PPC.
Secure Socket Layer – the system of electronic authentication that gives a website a layer of security and confers a padlock in the domain name in the browser. Sites without a SSL certificate will not have the padlock and have some form of security warning in the browser. Although SSL has actually been superseded by TSL (Transport Socket Layer) the term “SSL” is still in common usage.
Essentially a very secure password, that lets browsers know that the domain of your website is authenticate.
A Content Management system, that enables users to build websites. It is estimated that around 60% of all websites using CMS are using WordPress, and around 28% of the top 10 million websites use WordPress.
A website has to live somewhere on the web. Hosting just means some space on a computer somewhere that is connected to the web, where people can find your website.
Transport Socket Layer – which is the standard which replaced SSL for security certificates.
Pay-per-click advertising. Every time a users on a link in your advert you pay a fee.
Pay Per Action. Similar to PPC advertising, but you only pay for a particular action. For instance if someone subscribed to your email list, or buys something.
User Experience. This is all about how a user will finding using your site. The focus is on functionality and flow. Is it hard to find the product you’re looking for, or check out? Compare this to UI, which is more focused on how a site looks.
User Interface. How a site looks. in terms of branding, logo, colours, fonts, page layout and design. As opposed to UX which is how a site functions and how easy it is to use.