eBusiness Glossary

Above the Fold: Content and/or ads that appear on a page before a viewer needs to scroll.

B2B (business to business): Companies and sites that market to other businesses.

B2C (business to consumer): Companies and sites that market to individual customers.

Banner Ad: A graphic ad that links to the advertiser’s site.

Domain Name: this is your Internet Address or URL.

Call to Action: A marketing technique that asks prospects to take a specific action to move toward a sale.

Content Management System: CMS is an architecture that allows users to update their own content without knowing HTML code.

Cookie: Identifying code downloaded to a user’s computer to recognize repeat visitors or track online activity.

Geo-targeting: Targeting ads to particular geographic regions.

Google.com: Google is a search engine company that provides a system to allow people to locate things they are looking for on the Internet. Since 2005 Google has replaced radio, print and television to become the #1 medium used by business to gather information on a product or service.

Landing Page: The page the visitor lands on after clicking an ad.

Merchant Account: This is the banking and credit card company information that directs payments into your bank account.

Organic search results: Nonpaid search results. Organic results attract more clicks than paid advertising.

Payment Gateways: Real time gateways (the software that manages real-time processing) also validate credit cards for billing address, card verification number, and spending limits, all of which reduce your risk as a merchant. Most sites that process eCommerce transactions requires a payment gateway system and a merchant account.

PPC (Pay per Click): An advertising campaign in which the advertiser must pay each time someone clicks an ad.

ROI (return on investment): The amount of money earned (or lost) as a percent of the amount invested, usually stated for a period of a year; can compute for a website, an ad campaign, or an entire business.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing): Activities designed to generate business through Web Search engines.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The process of making a website search-engine-friendly to improve ranking in search results.

Shopping Cart System: Users place their tentative purchases into a cart, which tracks the contents, allows shoppers to delete items or change quantities, and provides a subtotal of the amount due.

URL (uniform resource locator): Address designating the location of information on the Web; includes a registered domain name.

Unique Visitor: The number of user sessions from different computers.