Ecommerce terms to help you run a successful store

When it comes to running a successful and fast growing Ecommerce store, certain terms will start to emerge that help you communicate faster to your employees or collegues. In this article we will list some of those terms and try to give a clear description on what they mean.

Within any business tons of acronyms can exist, and they can be different depending on the business you are in.

So lets get started.

Product detail page (PDP)

This is the name given to the page in your website that presents your product. The PDP contains one of your products and is where a visitor can add the product to their cart or buy now.

This page may also advertise your other products to encourage a visitor to buy more.

Category detail page (CDP)

The category detail page is the name give to a page for a specific product category. It is used to list products around a specific category.

This page may also have filters to help a visitor find the products they are looking for.

Stock keeping unit (SKU)

The SKU is a unique number to help you track the movement of your product. The code is normally around 8 characters and contains information to help track the price, the manufacturer and the product details.

Cart abandonment

This is a metric that refers to how many people do not check out their cart, hence abandonment.

Split testing, (AB testing)

Split testing is a technique to test two or more versions of something against a subset of different people. The goal is to find what version is the most effective. After a certain amount of time the more successful version would become the primary version.

It's good to run split testing to optimise a page or to impact a metric.

Affliates

Inbound marketing

Outbound marketing

Keywords

A keyword is a word used to link a search engine result to your page.

When Google or another search engine read your website/store they try to gain an understanding on what content your website has. This better helps store your website and help visitors looking for the content you provide. The content is linked to a few keywords.

So if you wrote an article about a dog collar, some of the relevant keywords may be "Dog" and "Collar". So when someone search "Dog" and "Collar" your article may appear in the search results.

Search engines today are a lot more sophisticated, but they still rely on the foundation of keywords.

Search engine results page (SERP)

This is simply a results page in Google, for example. Once you make a search, the page you arrive to with a list of results is know as the SERP.

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation is the optimisations of how visitors find your website through search engines like Google. This is normally done by ensuring your page is fast, but also contains high quality and clear content. Google when reading your website will generate the relevent keywords for your pages.

We recommend you read a guide on how to improve SEO to increase the chances of someone finding your content.

Search engine marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing is when you pay for your content to appear in a search engine results page (SERP), if you use Google adwords, for example, you will need to choose a few keywords to target.

Keywords can be more expensive depending on competition and traffic to that word.

Pay per click (PPC)

Pay per click refers to the advertising method you can decide to use. Pay per click means you only pay for when someone clicks on your advertisement.

This is the typical method used by Google adwords.

Pay per impression (PPI)

Pay per impression is a method used in advertising. It normally means you pay per 1000 person who see your advertisement. This is more normal in websites that have banners you can choose to advertise with.

Such as buysellads.com, they would provide options to choose pay per impression.

Average revenue per customer (ARC)

This is a generic metric used to help you calculate the average revenue per customer. Typically to calculate this you can take all your revenue and device by total number of customers.

You should do this over a time period, maybe per month and use it as a comparision from the previous period if you are focusing on impacting this metric.

Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

This refers to the amount of reveneue you are making per month. This metric is normally graphed and helps to highlight the health of your business.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

This refers to the cost to aquire a new customer. If you run an advertisement for 1 month and it costs 100 euro, and you gain 10 new customers, then your Customer acquistion cost would be 10 euro per customer.

In a real world scenario this number is normally a lot higher.

Click through rate (CTR)

The click through rate is normally used for advertising, it refers to how many people clicked on your advertisement versus how many saw your advertisement.

Qualified lead

A qualified lead is someone who has been vetted by the sales team and is most likely to convert to become a valuable customer.

Social proof

This is a technique to show a visitor that other people have already converted and were happy with their decision. This technique is quite effective and encourages other people to convert by assuring them that this is a safe purchase.

This technique can also be used to provide a sense of urgency. Websites like Booking.com are famous for providing social proof around their product, an example may be "only 2 rooms left in this hotel" or even "a visitor from London has just purchased a room"

Testimonial

A testimonial is a writen, or a video, of a customer who was happy with their purchase. You may see these on product detail pages or on landing pages for a service.

Churn

Churn is a term normally used in the Software as a Service industry, but in ECommerce it can also be used. Churn refers to the dropoff of customers for your product. So if you have monthly customers, the churn would be a percentage of those who are no longer monthly customers for that month.

Average time on site

This refers to the amount of time your visitors are on your website, ideally the higher this number the better, the more engaging your website is.

If you have a lot of high quality products, you may see a high average time on site metric. You can see this number either in Embedery or in Google analytics.

Bounce rate

The bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who leave your website after visiting only one page. You want this number to be as low as possible.

Open rate (For emails)

The open rate is used for email tracking, this refers to the percentage of people who have opened your email. The higher the number the better. Normally a great subject line influences this metric.

Sessions vs Users

These metrics are used for analytics. A user normally refers to one real person, a session is when that user (real person) visited your store. A user can create multiple sessions by visiting your store at different times.

Conversion

Conversion refers to how many people convert, so if could be how many people convert to becoming a customer vs how many do not.

The user Journey

The user journey is a map a visitor is likely to make in your website. This is very interesting to see how a visitor goes from your homepage to checkout and analysing the steps inbetween.

Embedery can provide this to you.

Bottom of the funnel

The bottom of the funnel refers to people who are making the decision to purchase your product. Its used in marketing to help understand people interacting with your store.

This is where you convert visitors into customers.

Top of the funnel

The top of the funnel refers to initial visitors who you want to engage with your store and eventually reach the bottom of the funnel where they become customers.

They may be visitors who have found your store from Google or social media.

Brick and morter

Brick and morter refers to a physical store that people in real life can visit. Here visitors can touch and interact with your products.

A lot of bigger stores who have a physical store someone could visit.

Call to action

A call to action is used in advertising to refer to how the visitor can interact with the advertisement, so it could be a button in the advert, once a visitor clicks on it they have converted with the call to action.

Buy to detail

This is a metric to refer to a visitor who bought the product from your product detail page (PDP)

Buyer persona

The buyer persona is a way for you to write down who your ideal buyer is, it helps you understand your potential customers and it helps you decide on what products to sell for those ideal buyers.

You may describe their likes and dislikes, along with why they would buy from you.

Charge back

This refers to a refund from a credit card, so if a customer bought something with a credit card and they then return the product. You can make a charge back to return their money.

Engagement rate

This refers to the amount of people who engage with something, the higher the metric the more engaged people have been with it.

Fulfillment

This refers to the shipping of a product, from initial packaging to arriving to the customer. In order to fulfill the purchase we need to package and ship the product.

Key performance indicator (KPI)

A KPI is a metric used to help you understand if something is working or not, for example a KPI for your business may be the amount of sales made over a monthly period. Over time you could see the KPI either increase or decrease.

Objectives and key results (OKR)

An OKR is similar to a KPI except it lists objectives and key metrics you need to watch to ensure you are achieving the objectives you have listed.

Customer satisfaction score (CSat)

The CSat score is how satisfied a customer is with your product, you can send a CSat survey after a few days of a purchase to gather this information. Based on the results you will know how happy customers are with your entire store, from initial purchase to it arriving to their address.

This is also a great place to gather positive reviews if the CSat has been positive.

Point of sale (POC)

Point of sale is a terminal used to help make a purchase, they are used normally in physical stores to handle payments and to help the store owner manage inventory from a single screen.

Return on investment (ROI)

Return on investment refers to the return of value to you. So if you invest 100 euro/dollars in something today and in 2 years its values at 1000 euro/dollars, then your ROI is 900 euro/dollars.