Design Glossary
If you are new to online marketing and are fed up of hearing design terminology that you simply don’t understand, then you’ll love the following.
Below we have constructed a basic Design glossary, to put all your design confusions behind you and make your route to harnessing the online marketing arena even more attainable.
Come take a look. Over the coming months we shall endeavour to expand this page, so keep checking it regularly for future updates:
A
Accessibility
The accessibility of a site is dependant on how well that site can be used by people with varying disabilities. It often revolves around ensuring text to speech editors can work correctly and that no part of the site specifically relies on a sound or colour.
The W3C control accessibility standards.
Agent
An intelligent agent automates tasks such as web searching to make web pages more interactive.
Active Server Page (ASP)
ASP stands for Active Server Page and it is a web server technology supplied by Microsoft Corporation. ASP pages support dynamic components and are most commonly made up of HTML, VBScript and Jscript.
AjaX
AJaX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and its most important feature is allowing web pages to be much more interactive and communicate with a server without a full page refresh. This means a server can validate and retrieve form fields without the user having to fill everyone out before pressing the submit button and waiting.
B
Backlink
A backlink is a link coming from another site to your own. The number and quality of banklinks to your site can affect your SEO efforts as some search engines can provide significant weight to the backlinks of your site.
Below the Fold
Is the position on a web page where the majority of browsers viewing the page will begin to scroll. Any features below the fold will not be seen when the page first loads.
Beta
A beta is simply a testing or working version of something. In web development it is usually a site or backend system that is being shown to the client or a few selected users for testing. A common web 2.0 marketing strategy involves launching a revised beta version to the public to make potential customers feel involved and valued.
Blog
A blog is simple a web page or site that features frequent updates about any number of topics. It is similar to an electronic journal but is not specifically for personal entries. Blog’s often comes from CMS systems such as Wordpress or TypePad.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on a web site and only view that page. It is often caused by incorrect searches or clicks on the wrong link. A poorly designed website can drastically increase your bounce rate and lower conversions therefore it is a very important metric to keep in check.
Breadcrumb
A breadcrumb or a breadcrumb trails is the part of the navigation that shows you were you are. These are often found at the top of webpages and are used to define both your current location within the site as well as the primary pages above the current page.
Browser
A browser is a computer program that lets you to view pages on the internet. It often has special features that make browsing easier. Popular browsers include Internet Explorer, FireFox and Google Chrome.
C
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
CSS is a comprehensive web design language that allows designers to manipulate positions, fonts, colours, images and pretty much everything else that can be included on a web page. Styles for different attributes are often store in a central CSS file which is accessed by all pages on the site, eliminating the need for extensive code on each page!
Chrome
Chrome is a brand new browser than has been developed by Google.
It has an attractive interface but is still in beta phase meaning errors occur on certain sites every now and again.
The popularity of the browser is already rising swayed by Google’s massive internet influence and new, polished feel of the product. You can download it here.
Comments
There are several meaning and uses for comments in web design and development. One use is inside web pages and systems to help label up different sections of code. These comments can not be seen by the front end users but help developers and designers edit or fix the pages later.
Another use of the word comments comes from blogs where comments are small responses left by users in reply to blog posts by the owner. Comments constitute a good portion of blog UGC.
Content
Content is the actual text and themes your website is made up of. It is mostly considered to be text but can include videos, sounds and images as well as games and more innovative solutions.
Quality content is important for both SEO and marketing so developing it should be regarded as just as important as designing your site.
Content Management System (CMS)
A CMS controls large amounts of content on a website and usually stores data in a database so that it can be easily backed up and preserved. It can work in many different languages including PHP and ASP and usually incorporates themes, templates and a WYSIWYG editor so anyone can add or remove content to the site without design knowledge.
D
Document Object Model (DOM)
DOM is a powerful API that binds scripting languages such as JavaScript together with HTML.
Domain
A domain name is the web address of a website; it often has a numerical version associated with it called an IP address. All domains have an extension such as .com or .co.uk and are made up of a combination of letters, numbers and hyphens.
It is important your domain is memorable for your customers so think carefully when choosing one.
Domain Name Service (DNS)
The DNS is the technology that converts numerical IP address into easier to remember domain names. DNS servers are told your IP address when the site is set up so that when that particular domain name is requested it can convert it to the relevant IP address and show the user the correct site.
Dynamic HTML (DHTML)
DHTML is a fusion of XHTML, the DOM, CSS and Javascript. It is used to make dynamic pages with lots of functions or forms.
E
E-Commerce
E-Commerce is the name for online businesses such as shops and hire services. E-Commerce often goes hand in hand with payment gateways and dynamic CMS to create dynamic online stores with product descriptions, product images and the ability to pay for the item automatically.
E-Mail
E-Mail is short for electronic mail and is the system that allows you to receive messages from customers and friends. If you have purchased a domain then more often than no you can have an email address with the same domain.
Entry Page
An entry page or landing page is the first page a user sees when they arrive on the site. The home page is often the entry page but lots of different things can help visitors land on internal pages of your site.
F
Font
A font is the style of the text that appears on a page. It is very important to balance font styles with design as well as use the right kind of font for the occasion.
The two main styles of font are serif and sans serif which is basically with or without the decorative tabs on the ends of letters.
This site uses a sans serif font for its main text although some browser settings can override this.
Many other styles of font exist including script and gothic.
G
Google is the net’s largest search engine. It is powerful tool that indexes and searches billions of web pages and returns the most relevant results to your request. To appear as a relevant result in Google you need SEO.
Google’s ‘rankings’ constantly fluctuate and change meaning the position of your site can also fluctuate quite heavily.
Google runs several huge projects including Adwords and Analytics as well as unrelated apps like Google Android and Google Earth.
Google Adwords
Google Adwords is Google’s major source of revenue. It is a Pay per Click advertising system where competitors big against each other for higher positions inside the searches sponsored listings. It generally drives good traffic although can cost a lot in certain industries.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is Google’s own web tracking application that can tell you how many visitors you have had, where they came from and what they did on your site. It offers a massive amount of different metrics and is an incredibly useful tool for understanding online marketing.
Graphic Design
Graphic Design is the term used to describe a huge number of professions that all focus around effectively or artistically communicating ideas.
In this context graphic design refers more to the logo and style works of the site as well as related print products such as business cards, flyers and banners.
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)
GIF is an image format that is commonly used to display simple (or flat) animations and static on web pages such as those inside forum avatars.
H
.htaccess
The htaccess file controls many things on your site relating to URL redirection, rewriting and many other advanced server functions. It is generally exclusive to Linux servers.
Hosting or Host
A website is stored on a central computer also known as a server which is connected to the internet, the company that provides this service is called a host.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
HTML is the language many web pages are written in as well as a file extension for web pages themselves. The shortened version of the file type is .htm.
HTML heavily influenced what the internet is today and has since evolved into XHTML. Many other markup languages are expanded from HTML however.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
HTTP is a set of rules that is used in the exchange of information online. The reason it precedes a URL is to tell the user-agent what protocols and system to use in gathering the data for display.
I
Indexing
Indexing is the process used by search engines to filter through web pages and save them to its database so that it can be searched by users. It is sometimes referred to as spidering and can be greatly hindered if your site does not have a good link structure and sitemap.
Internet Protocol (IP)
Internet Protocol is a packet based technology solution for send and receiving data across networks including the internet. The protocol sends small packets of information from one address to another, on the internet these addresses are converted to domains via a DNS.
J
Java
Java is object-orientated program language that shares many things with C++. It is consider much more portable as it works on almost any platform and manages memory on its own.
Java is often used to back up advanced functions on web sites like interactive forms and games.
JavaScript
JavaScript is the “little brother” of Java and while it has some reduced functionality it can be embedded inside websites. It is often considered easier to learn than standard Java but simply cannot achieve as much.
Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)
A JPEG is a file type used mainly for photographs or colour images with a large range of colours. It tends to be used commonly online due to it’s size efficiency. JPEG filetypes are sometimes shortened to JPG.
K
Kilobyte (KB)
A kilobyte is 1024 bytes and is, at the moment, what most web files are measured in.
L
Landing Page
The landing page is generally the first page a user will see and normally the homepage.
Link Farm
Link farms are a black hat or negative SEO technique that involves a site or network of sites all which link to each other and a huge amount of other sites. They are created with the soul purpose of manipulating rankings and can cause a site to be earned from Google and most other search engines.
M
Meta Data
Meta Data or Meta Tags as they are sometimes refereed too are special fields that help external websites like search engines categorise your site.
Due to abuse in the past they are not as heavily relied upon as they once were but they still have an influencing factor and are used in modern SEO.
Microsoft
Microsoft develops programs and software including Microsoft Office which is very popular; Office includes Word for word processing, Excel for creating spreadsheets and Outlook for emails. Some of their more complex projects include the .NET framework of programs which is a group of Microsoft technologies giving the ability to build and deploy for the web.
Modem
A hardware device that enables connections to the internet via a telephone line.
MP3
A digital audio recording of music over the internet given the file extension .mp3
N
Navigation
Navigation of a site is important and acts as a menu to help people find what they want on your site commonly referred to as a navigation bar.
Network
A group of computers connected by communication facilities, this can be based in the same building or over a larger area such as a company with different offices. The connected devices include computers, printers etc.
O
Online
Being online means that you are currently connected to a network or to the internet
Operating System
The software that manages the basis operating of a computer.
P
PageRank
PageRank is a ranking software from Google that calculates the relevance of a webpage. The measurement can be between 0 for low relevance and 10 is high
Password
A personal set of characters entered to verify your identity.
Photoshop
One of Adobes software products for editing and enhancing graphic images. You can colour manage, retouch photos and general graphic format control.
PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)
PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor and is an open source server side scripting language.
Pixel
A pixel is one spot in a grid, the grid makes up the screen and the image you see over the internet. If you magnified your web page it would appear pixelated, each square being known as a pixel.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is an online advertising model whereby people search for what they are looking for in a search engine and results appear at the side or top under sponsored links or ads which are related to your search.
Q
Quick Time
A software developed by Apple which enables you to create, edit, publish and view content. QuickTime requires installation but you can view video, animation graphics, 3-D etc.
R
Robot
Robot also referred to as a spider, is an automated program that “crawls” sites which indexes
Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary *(RSS)
RSS is a web feed which includes frequently updated information such as news and blog entries. Feeds are a huge benefit for publishers as it lets them syndicate content quickly and automatically. The new version of a newsletter.
S
Script
1. A script style font is one that looks like “fancy” or decorative handwriting. They are difficult to read, especially on the web and often not installed as standard. This means they are rarely used as a web font and more often embedded in images for the odd title.
2. A section of code that executes a specific function. This is usually embedded functionality (such as a form) or special effects.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is a marketing process that has the end goal of raising your rankings on search engines such as Google and Yahoo so that your site appears in response to targeted keywords entered by the user.
SEO can take time but results can be worth much more than investing in short term PPC traffic.
Style
A style is a set of attributes applies to a block of text or a picture to make it look a specific way in the browser. Styles can make text bold, apply borders to pictures or position something to the left or right of a page. They are extremely versatile and are used on almost every website.
Search Engine
A search engine is a website that organises and indexes content on the internet and then presents results when prompted by a user. To find a specific site you enter a subject into the search box, this is known as a keyword. The search engine then returns a selection of pages that it feels is most relevant to your search.
To appear higher in these searches SEO is almost essential.
Common search engines include Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Sitemap
A sitemap is similar to the contents page of a book providing an overview of the pages in a website.
Spam
Unwanted emails sent to many recipients. Spam is seen as the equivalent of junk email.
T
Tags
Tags are a web 2.0 related device that make it easy to navigate through categories or subjects of content. Each tag is a keyword or key phrase that is linked to sections if content usually posts in a blog.
Thumbnail
Thumbnails are smaller versions of graphics. For example you may be looking at a collection of related product images in thumbnail images and then click on the desired thumbnail to be shown a larger image with more detail.
Traffic
The amount of visits a website gets, is called traffic.
Typeface
A designer will design a site with a typeface that suits its design this includes lowercase, uppercase, numbers, punctuation, sizes and styles.
U
Usability
How user friendly a site is, this includes an easy to use and find navigation.
User Generate Content (UGC)
UGC is exactly what it sounds like, content that your customers and services user provide. It often comes in the form of reviews, testimonials or comments and can be a great tool for SEO and marketing as long as it is moderated. It often comes as part of CMS or blog.
V
Validation
Code validation is the process of checking if a site page has valid code.
W
Web Master
A webmaster is responsible for creating and maintaining websites. This can involve the updating of websites and ensuring that the site is in full working order.
Web Page
A web page is an HTML file which contains garphics and scripts to ensure that the page loads correctly.
Web Site
A group of related web pages form a web site. These web pages have associated files, graphics and scripts, these web pages are connected through hyperlinks.
World Wide Web (WWW)
Are interlinked hypertext documents. These documents (called web pages) are accessed via the internet.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The World Wide Web Consortium is a body that promotes web standards through specifications and guidelines. We aim to achieve W3C in all our sites.
X
eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML)
XHTML is a markup language that incorporates elements of HTML and XML
eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
eXtensible Markup Language allows greater flexibility for designers allowing them to create customized tags which offers greater flexibility than HTML.
Y
Yahoo
Yahoo was the first major search engine. Like Google you can use this tool to search the net for relevant results.
Z
.zip
A compressing format for computer files which you can identify by the .zip extension.
