50 eCommerce Terms You Should Know
Do you remember how you learned your native language when you were a child? You learned new words by listening to your parents and then repeating what they said.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This applies to learning new business/eCommerce vocabulary as well. Because when the music stops you do not want to be the one left without a chair.
So, here are 50 cliche eCommerce terms you should know before looking to break into the eCommerce ecosystem. But first, what is eCommerce?
Millennium’s hottest & most competitive markets- eCommerce.
eCommerce is basically a term used for the process of buying & selling of goods online.
Let’s Learn some eCommerce Buzz Terms
Brick & Mortar
A term used to refer traditional businesses that have a physical presence. A store of groceries, a bank or any warehouse can be a brick & mortar store.
Brick & Click
Brick and Click store basically means running an online eCommerce store along with an offline one.
There are tons of merchants who initially start with an offline store (brick) and then go online (click) to cover a larger audience and build an online presence.
B2B
Business-to-Business, a process of selling products or services to other businesses.
B2C
Business-to-Consumer, the process of selling products or services directly to the consumers. Example: Shopping from physical stores or eating at a restaurant.
m-Commerce
Mobile Commerce, a headway of eCommerce. In simple terms, enabling your customers to buy goods & services on their way, anytime, anywhere using mobile devices.
Hyperlocal
In a hyperlocal marketplace, the merchant can restrict their service area to a particular geographical region. Since the hyperlocal ecosystem is based on the ‘near me’ concept, this makes the delivery of services/goods in a very short span of time.
📃 Further Reading
Omnichannel
It is a multi-channel approach for selling goods, servicing customer & marketing in a way that provides your customers with the best experience.
API
An Application Program Interface allows the software to communicate and exchange data.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is the percentage of times a visitor leaves your website from the landing page without navigating to any other pages.
In other words, when visitors land on your website’s landing page and they don’t bother to navigate or click on any internal links. Due to this, Google’s analytics server will not get triggered due to zero engagement. Resulting in a bounce rate.
📃 Further Reading
How to Reduce the Bounce Rate of Your Website?
Average Order Value (AOV)
Average Order Value (AOV) is the total revenue of a business divided by the number of orders.
📃 Further Reading
Hike Up the Average Order Value
Sales Funnel
The sales funnel dipicts the journey of your customers from their visitor phase to becoming the customers. Multiple visitors will visit your website (enter the funnel) but a few will buy from your store (thus, make their way out from the bottom of the funnel).
📃 Further Reading
Smarketing (Sales + Marketing)
An amalgamation of the sales and marketing aspect of a business. The goal is to align your sales & marketing techniques together to hike up the revenues.
Point Of Sales (POS)
It is a way out of managing your physical store with ease. POS system helps retailers to manage their products, inventories, customer details & order related information of their physical store.
301 Redirect
When an original URL of a website has been moved or changed, the search engine detects 301-redirect and index the updated URL. This helps to maintain search engine ranking even after updating your original link.
404 Error
It is a Not Found Error. This happens when a user tries to find a page that is not available on the server. In other words, it means that the server is reachable but that specific page is not available.
Cache
Websites temporarily store data to help websites load faster each time a user returns to the site. The data stored is termed as Cache.
Cookie
Cookies are basically the data used to store the browsing activity of the user. Cookies can be further used to auto-fill forms, passwords, account or other details.
Above The Fold
The space on a web page that users see without having to scroll. This area should be designed to capture the visitor’s attention to make them scroll more. This area must have a call to action.
This term is derived from newspapers. Newspapers have their upper half front page so well designed to make the customers read ahead. The front page has all the top headlines with topics that you’re going to have ahead in the pages.
Abandoned Cart
When a customer adds an item to the cart but leaves the site without completing the purchasing process.
📃 Further Reading
How Will Push Notifications Help You Recover Abandoned Carts?
Landing Page
A landing page also referred to as a destination page, is the web page your visitors will land on once clicking on your website’s search engine result link.
📃 Further Reading
SEO
Search Engine Optimization is a plan of action to leverage the search engine to increase your website traffic.
SERP
Search Engine Result Pages, the term says it all. SERP is the list of web pages returned by a search engine in response to the keyword searched by the user.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing
If your customers are loyal to you, they’ll use your service & spend on your brand. Moreover, they’ll recommend your service/product to their family, friends, colleagues, etc.
This word-of-mouth marketing is a kind of free promotion for your business.
📃 Further Reading
Acquire Customers with Customer Loyalty Programs
Favicon
Favicon or a Favorite Icon. A small icon that is used to represent a website that is displayed in the address bar, page title on a browser tab, and bookmark list.
Store Credit
Offering your customers value for making a purchase on your store is generally said to be STORE CREDIT.
Store credit can be used on one particular store only (the one who has provided it), i.e., it can’t be used to make a purchase on different brands. This is a powerful tool to boost customer retention and revenue.
📃 Further Reading
Store Credit: A Solution to Customer Retention
SAAS
SAAS or Software As A Service is a model delivering software on a subscription basis. It is all cloud-based and hence, you can access the software using your web browser on desktop or mobile.
📃 Further Reading
Why consider Shopify, a SAAS based model as your eCommerce solution?
SLA
Service Level Agreement is a contract that describes the level of service a customer expects from their provider.
ROI
Return on Investment is a ratio between net profit and the investment cost.
UI
User Interface is defined as the space of interaction between a human & a machine. It is the commands, menus, options, etc using which a human can communicate with a machine.
UX
User Experience is how a user feels while interacting with a system. Basically, how a user connects with a system emotionally and finds it valuable & easy to use.
CTA
Call to Action is like a bait on your landing page. They help a lot with converting your visitors to prospects. Some good examples of CTA are a newsletter subscription, download button, social media links, etc.
CRM
Customer Relationship Management is an approach to manage a company’s relationship & interaction with potential customers.
CTR
Click-through-Rate is a metric that measures the number of clicks a page receives divided by the total number of visitors browsing through that page.
CAC
Customer Acquisition Cost is the cost to acquire or maintain a relationship with current & potential customers.
CLV
Customer Lifetime Value is a calculation business used to get the cost of acquiring new customers.
CSV
Comma Separate File is file-type that stores data in a tabular form generally looks like a spreadsheet but have a .csv extension.
Two-factor Authentication
The second layer of security that commonly needs a password to confirm the identity of the user. OTP (One Time Password) is a common example of the same.
📃 Further Reading
eCommerce Traffic Filter: Authenticating Customers
PCI Compliant
All businesses that accept, process and transmit card payments should be PCI Compliant. It is the security standards defined by the Payment Card Industry to keep private cardholder data safe.
Fulfillment
Fulfillment is a process of warehousing, packaging, and shipping orders to the customer. This is done ones the online store receives an order.
Inventory
The number of products that the retailers have in their stock.
AB Testing
Defines as a process of experimenting with the psychological factors like the color, content & positioning of CTAs of a website. Ultimately, tracking which gives you the best conversion rate results.
Bundling
Bundling is a concept of selling two or more products together instead of a single one. This is the perfect solution to combo up your slow-moving products with new ones. Thus, increasing your revenue.
📃 Further Reading
Bundle Up to Hike Up the Average Order Value
Churn Rate
Also called Attrition Rate. It is the percentage of customers who cut ties with the company or from the services in the given period of time.
Conversion
The process of transforming visitors to customers. The flow goes like Visitor → Prospect → Lead → Customer
Business Blogging
A marketing way to help your business to get more online visibility by sharing content that aligns with the need of your business.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a Google service that tracks & examines the traffic coming on your website. It works on the total behavior of your website. Thus, being a great tool to measure your website’s bounce rate.
To use it, you just need to have an account on Google. Furthermore, link your website with Google Analytics and get to know everything about your website’s traffic.
Inbound Link
Also called Backlinks. Referred to as a link on third-party websites that points to your website. It helps to improve SEO and SERP ranking of your website.
Cross-Selling
Cross-selling is a technique to make your customers spend more by making them purchase a product that’s complementary to what he has bought already.
Up-Selling
A technique to convince a customer to buy something more expensive i.e., an upgraded version of what’s being purchased.
Dropshipping
It’s just a way of selling goods without keeping the stock, labeling process or even shipping of goods. The merchant simply needs to display the products on the storefront and orders are fulfilled & shipped by your drop shipping service.
Knowing all eCommerce terms can be complex but as you go ahead with it, you’ll get the grip of all.
Got a term that should be added and I might have missed?
Drop it down in the comment section below!
💡 Need Help?
You can drop your query at shopify@webkul.com or raise a ticket at Webkul UV Desk.
Until next time. 👋