Jargon Buster for Beginners

Jargon Buster for Beginners

A number of people I have worked with in the past (both distant and recent) have admitted to a lack of knowledge in Internet Marketing.  This is especially prevalent when it comes to the jargon and abbreviations us internet marketing types use.

In this page I will cut through some of the terms we use, to help beginners or non-internet marketeers.

If you are one of those beginners, feel free to post a comment with the term you need deciphering.

Media Terms

CPM – Cost per 1000 (based on Roman numeral for 1000) – this is a buying metric used by media agencies and publishers to indicate how much a client will pay per thousand impressions.  If you see £2.00 CPM, it means you will pay £2 for every 1000 impressions

CPC – Another traditional buying metric used.  One of the most common buying metrics.  CPC relates to Cost per Click.  This means you would pay a set amount for every click on your placement.  If you see £2.00 CPC, it means you will pay £2 for every click

CPA – the most common explanations of CPA are Cost per Action or Cost per Acquisition.  On the majority of occassions they refer to the same thing, where a client would pay a set amount for each sale made.  However as action infers, it could be a set payment for any type of action, e.g. cost per lead or cost per call.  If you see £2.00 CPA, it means you will pay £2 for each action/acquisition

UV – Unique Visits (or visitors) – this is the occassions when a different “person” sees a complete page.  This measurement is different from impressions as impressions counts the total number of times an item has been seen, e.g. if one person has loads the same page 5 times, that would be 5 impressions, but only one UV

CTR – Click Through Rate – this is a simple equation that should provide a percentage result.  It is essentially the proportion of your impressions that resulted in clicks

Search Terms

PPC – Pay per click – this is the term most commonly used for sponsored search.  It is the area on Google, Yahoo or Bing that is reserved for advertisers who pay for positions in designated areas on search results

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – this is used to describe the art of affecting one’s position in organic (natural) search results.  Techniques used include on-site optimisation (keywords, navigation and ALT text) and off-site link building

SEM – Search Engine Marketing – this is the term often used to described a joined up approach to search – incorporating both PPC and SEO

PR – Page Rank – this is a measurement that is used by Google to ascertain how web friendly or prominent a page is in its overall rankings.  Whilst it is still widely used by practitioners of SEO, it is widely considered to have lower importance than once thought

Black Hat – This is a term used to describe SEO techniques that appear effective in improving Google position, however they are regarded as going against the formal and informal rules of SEO.  Any site found guilty of using Black Hat techniques are in danger of becoming delisted from Google – a high profile example of this was when Google delisted BMW german pages due to ‘dishonest behaviour’ (read the article here at The Register)

Algorithm – a complex mathematical calculations used predominantly by search engines to evaluate a site and place it within its rankings.  Primarily used within SEO, however Google also use an algorithm within AdWords (its PPC engine) that ranks sponsored searches not only by the advertiser bid but including other factors such as relevance and page load times

eCommerce Terms

AOV – Average Order Value – this is a standard commercial measure that looks at aggregate order revenue, devided by total number of orders (not units) over a set period of time – result should be a pound and pence number (also known as ATV – Average Transaction Value)

Abandonment Rate – This is a calculation of the number of started baskets/shopping carts that didn’t result in a confirmed transaction

ROI – Return on Investment – Commonly used to evaluate campaign success or to evaluate or set KPIs for eCommerce Projects – should be seen as a ratio i.e. if I spent £10 and made £100 my ROI would be 10:1

 Other terms

Affiliate Marketing – this is a vital channel for most e-Commerce websites.  An affiliate network is generally employed by a company (merchant) to act as a broker to many sites.  Affiliates are individuals or companies that have their own sites and choose to advertise merchant’s products on their site.  The most common metric for rewarding affiliates is CPA

UGC – User Generated Content – this is a term that is used most commonly to describe social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter.  However, it includes all media generated by users or visitors rather than the site publisher.  Common forms of UGC include forums, chat, blogs and video sites such as YouTube

HTML – Hypertext Markup Language – this is the most common programming language that underpins most website design and build

CMS – Content Management Systems – these systems are database driven software applications that aid speed of design of new web pages.  These tools are generally used by most eCommerce web sites

Web 2.0 – a generic term that is used to describe the new web.  This new web is now the basis of some of the most popular websites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.  It generally captures sites that contain UGC and collaborative content

MVT – Multi-Variate Testing – this is a method of dynamic page development that can test a huge number of intricate changes to improve conversion

CRM – Customer Relationship Management – a combination of techniques that utilises the information a company has on its customers to improve its targeting and offers.  It is also used to descibe complex high level database systems from the likes of Oracle to do similar tasks at an enterprise level

VRM – Vendor Relationship Management – a term that was used to describe how customers select vendors (retailers/brands).  This has now been adopted to describe how customers and web users can influence vendors into changing their approach – a good example of this is Best Buy in the US with their Idea X scheme