I spend a lot of my day speaking to people about websites. I mean, a lot. I speak to people on Zoom calls, on the phone, in person, on Social Media, and sometimes (and I’m not proud of this) I even dream about websites. True story!
One of my favourite things about websites, other than the different design options to make them completely unique, is how accessible they are. You don’t need to wait for opening hours to access them. If you want to read a page more than once you can, interesting articles are posted to websites daily, the opportunities they present are endless.
There is something I’m not so keen on though and that’s when people use complicated terminology around websites. Just as you wouldn’t expect to know all the terminology and techniques used when building a house, it’s natural you wouldn’t know all the terminology and techniques used for websites.
From time to time you may come across some jargon that leaves you feeling a bit bewildered. So I have compiled a list of terminology used for websites which I hope you’ll find useful.
Holly's Website Jargon Buster
Accessibility
This is executing a series of practices and procedures to make sure a website is accessible for screen readers, those who are visually impaired & those who struggle with fine motor control.
Back Links
A link that goes from one website to another. If you link to another website from a page or post on your website you are creating a back link.
Bounce Rate
This is monitoring how long someone stays on your website before they 'bounce' off. The longer someone stays on a website, the more valuable the search engines think it is. We lower bounce rate by making sure navigation is good, Calls to Action are strong and blog posts lead to other relevant articles.
Broken Links
A link that no longer works when you click on it. It could be that the page it leads to has been removed.
Browser
Where you access the internet. This could be Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, etc.
Cache
This is where the server takes a snapshot of each page of a website and saves it in the memory. This makes the site quicker to load as it’s not delivering the live website in search results, only the snapshots. Your browser also caches websites. You can clear this by clearing your history on your browser.
Cookies
These are tiny text files on a website. They can play a role in the website functionality but most are there to monitor traffic and help the website owner understand how users are navigating their website.
Domain
This is the address of your website - for example: thisdemandinglife.com
Domain Authority
This is a search engine score which ranks how well your website is going to perform in search engine results. (This is why optimising your website and content for search engines is important).
Functionality
Functionality relates to the different functions available to add on to a website for example the WooCommerce plugin adds a shop functionality to a website.
Hosting
This is the server which stores your website files known as ‘hosting’ your website.
Landing page
This is a page designed solely for someone to ‘land on’. It will have a clear call to action - sign up, buy now etc. It usually is independent from the website (you can’t navigate to the rest of the site) and the visitor would have been led to the page via a link on Social Media or in an email.
Load times
This is how long it takes for a website page to load. How fast your website is directly affects how well it ranks on Search Engines. Things which affect load times are: server speed, size of images, number of clickable elements (like buttons) on a page.
Navigation
This is a fancy word for menu. The main navigation is the main menu on the website.
Page Builder
Page Builders are used to build the styling elements of websites such as text and image blocks. The most popular website themes come with page builders: Divi, Avada, Elementor. There are also stand alone page builders such as WP Bakery and Beaver Builder.
Page Speed Insights
This is a Google Tool that we use for measuring certain elements of a website page performance. This includes speed, accessibility, SEO and Best Practices.
Platform
A platform is the software used to build a website on, there are many but the popular ones are: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Wix, SquareSpace, Shopify.
Plugin
Plugins are used to extend the functionality on WordPress websites. You can have plugins for anything - contact forms, calendars, anti-virus, design & styling, there are over one million available.
Reskinning
Reskinning means using existing code for the framework of a website or app and building styling elements on top of it. This method is used when working with prebuilt websites and templates.
Responsive Design
This applies to website design that responds and adapts to the different devices accessing it. It means making sure the website always displays properly, whether on desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile.
SEO
Stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is where you run through procedures which makes your website and its’ content favourable for search engines (like Google) to choose your website in their search results.
Squeeze page
Another type of Landing page. These pages are 'squeezed' in between an ad campaign (think a Facebook Ad) and where the click from that page goes to. They could be hosted on your website, or on your mailing software. They particularly focus on collecting clicks, form data and ‘opt in’ email addresses.
SSL Certificate
Stands for ‘Secure Sockets Layer’. The technical explanation is it establishes an encrypted link between a website and its visitors which protects the website visitor when on the website. The layman’s explanation is it provides the little lock symbol next to your website address and if you don’t have an SSL Certificate (this gets setup with your website hosting) visitors will get a security warning when trying to access your website.
Template
This is a prebuilt website which you can then drop content into. There will be limited ways in which you can alter the design to make it fit your brand. Wix, SquareSpace and some free WordPress themes offer templates for website building.
Theme
These are building tools for WordPress. A theme will have the framework and tools (see page builders) to build custom websites.
URL
Stands for ‘Uniform Resource Locator’ - it’s essentially an address for different website pages. It uses the domain followed by the category or name of the page. For example: https://thisdemandinglife.com/digital-resources/
UX
This stands for User Experience which applies to how the user is expected to navigate around your website. The user experience, also known as user journey is one of the most important aspects of website design. If you'd like to learn more about the User Experience and how to create an amazing User Journey then you can check out this course I have on it: Understanding your User's Journey.
UI
UI Stands for User Interface. You'll sometimes see website designers use this term when talking about UX. This is because User Interface refers to the way someone is accessing technology. This could so applies to laptops, Phones, Keyboards, the mouse, etc. With website design we change the experience for the different ways people access it. For example, popovers (where text shows up when you hover over something) only work on desktops and laptops, not phones and tablets. We also change the order of display for columns so it looks better on phones and tablets. So when a designer is talking about the UI, they're often talking about the UX, too.
White Labelling
Replacing existing branding with another. For example you can use a White Label plugin to replace the name ‘WordPress’ with your own website on the admin login page. It’s also the technical term if you were to use a website template and replace the generic brand with your own.
301
This is a redirect website designers setup when taking down an old page or post. We then redirect it to the next best link. This is to preserve integrity with search engines.
404
This is a page which is generated by your website when a post or page has been removed and a redirect hasn’t been setup. It says ‘I can’t find what you’re looking for’. You don’t want this to happen as search engines monitor them closely & your website could lose integrity.
500
This is a server error when they can’t bring up your website. Could be it’s taking too long to respond, the server is overloaded or something on the site is broken.
What do you think?
Is there any jargon you did already know? Is there anything you think I’ve missed and you’d like an explanation for? Let me know in the comments below.
I also spoke about this on a Facebook Live which you can watch by clicking here.
Want to talk websites? Want a free, no-obligation chat? The button below will take you to my calendar where you can book a Zoom session with me.
