Jargon buster
33 words web companies use and rarely explain. Written for the people who hire us, not for other designers. Nobody should have to nod along.
Getting online
The plumbing. Boring, but it is the part people get locked out of.
- Domain also called Domain name, web address, URL
- Your address on the internet, like yourbusiness.co.uk. You rent it yearly rather than buy it outright, usually for about £10 to £15 a year. Whoever it is registered to controls it. We register and look after yours as part of the service, so it is one less account for you to keep track of. If you would rather it sat in your own name, just ask and we will move it across, free.
- Hosting
- The computer that stores your website and hands it to people who visit. Your site has to live somewhere, and that somewhere costs a small amount every month. If hosting stops being paid for, the site goes offline. That is why yours sits on the care plan rather than being one more renewal for you to remember.
- DNS also called Nameservers
- The signpost that connects your web address to the computer your site is stored on. Change it and your address points somewhere new, usually within a few hours. This is what actually gets moved when you change web companies. It is a ten minute job for whoever holds the login.
- SSL also called HTTPS, the padlock
- The padlock next to your web address. It scrambles anything sent between your site and the person using it, so a form or a payment cannot be read on the way. Without it browsers show a "Not secure" warning across your homepage. It should be included as standard and never be a paid extra.
- Business email also called Email hosting, MX records
- Email at your own address, like hello@yourbusiness.co.uk, rather than a Gmail or Hotmail one. It runs separately from your website even though it uses the same domain. Because it is separate, a badly handled website move can take your email down with it. It is worth asking about before anyone touches anything.
Having it built
What the words on a quote actually mean.
- Template also called Theme
- A ready made design that gets your logo and your words dropped into it. Cheap and quick, and used by however many other businesses also bought it.
- Bespoke also called Custom, from scratch
- Designed around your business rather than chosen from a shelf. Takes longer and costs more, and nobody else has the same one.
- CMS also called Content management system, the back end
- A login that lets you change things on your own site without knowing any code. WordPress, Squarespace and Wix are all versions of this. Ours is built into your own site rather than bought in, so there is nothing extra to log into and no monthly fee for the privilege. On smaller sites we make the changes for you instead, usually the same day.
- Responsive also called Mobile-friendly, mobile-first
- The site rearranges itself to fit whatever it is being viewed on, so a phone gets a phone layout rather than a shrunken desktop one. Most people will see your site on a phone first. If it is only good on a laptop, it is only good for the minority.
- Wireframe also called Mockup, prototype
- A rough plan of what goes where, done before any real design work. Usually grey boxes, deliberately ugly so the conversation stays about the layout.
- Staging site
- A private copy of your website where changes get made and checked before anyone else sees them. It is why a site can be rebuilt without your current one going down.
- Accessibility
- Making the site usable by people with a visual impairment, a motor difficulty, or anyone using a screen reader or keyboard instead of a mouse. Around one in five people in the UK has a disability. It is also a legal expectation, not just a nice idea.
Being found
Everything anyone has ever cold called you about.
- SEO also called Search engine optimisation
- The work that helps your site show up when somebody searches for what you do. Partly how the site is built, partly what is written on it, partly who links to it. Nobody can promise you position one, and anyone who does is guessing. Google does not sell rankings.
- Google Business Profile also called Google listing, Google My Business
- The free box that appears on the right of Google with your opening hours, photos, reviews and a map pin. It is free, and it works with your site rather than instead of it: the profile gets you found, the site is what convinces them. We set yours up as part of the build.
- Keywords
- The words people type into Google. "Emergency plumber Bedford" is a keyword; so is "how much to fix a leaking tap".
- Meta title and description
- The blue headline and the grey paragraph under it in Google results. Written by you, not pulled at random from the page. It is your advert on the results page, and it is free to change.
- Indexing also called Crawling, getting indexed
- Google reading your site and adding it to its list. Until that happens you cannot appear in results at all, however good the site is. A brand new site can take days or weeks to appear. That is normal, not a fault.
- Backlink
- A link to your site from somebody else’s. A trade body, a supplier or the local paper linking to you tells Google other people take you seriously. Anyone offering to sell you a thousand of them is selling something that can get your site penalised.
- 301 redirect
- A permanent forwarding address for a page that has moved, so old links and Google both end up in the right place. Skipping these during a rebuild is how a business loses its Google rankings overnight and nobody notices for a month.
Knowing if it worked
The numbers, and which of them are worth your attention.
- Analytics
- The reporting that shows how many people visited, what they looked at, and how they found you.
- Traffic
- How many people came to your site, usually counted per month. Traffic on its own is vanity. A hundred visitors who ring you beat ten thousand who do not.
- Conversion
- Someone doing the thing you wanted: filling the form, ringing, booking, buying. The conversion rate is what share of visitors did it.
- Bounce rate
- The share of people who arrive, look at one page and leave without going anywhere else. A high number is not automatically bad. Someone who lands on your contact page, gets the number and phones you has bounced.
- Call to action also called CTA
- The button or line telling someone what to do next. "Get a quote", "Book now", "Call us".
- Landing page
- Whatever page somebody arrives on. Often not your homepage, because Google sends people straight to the page that answered their question.
Keeping it running
What happens after launch, and what you should expect to pay for.
- Care plan also called Maintenance, retainer, support plan
- A monthly arrangement covering hosting, updates, backups, monitoring and small changes. Check what "small changes" actually means and whether there is a minimum contract. Ours is £35 a month with neither.
- Backup
- A saved copy of your site from a previous day, so it can be put back if something breaks or gets deleted. Ask how often they are taken and how far back they go. Weekly backups mean up to a week of lost work.
- Uptime
- The share of time your site is actually reachable. Quoted as a percentage, and anything below 99.9% is worth asking about.
- Cache
- A stored copy of your pages kept nearer the visitor so the site loads faster. It is also why a change you have just made can take a few minutes to show up for you.
- Page speed also called Core Web Vitals
- How quickly the site becomes usable, and whether it jumps about while loading. Google measures it and takes it into account. People leave slow sites. On a phone on mobile data, a few seconds is the difference between an enquiry and a lost one.
- Plugin also called Add-on, extension
- A bolt-on that adds a feature to a site built on something like WordPress. Bookings, forms and galleries are usually plugins. Each one is written by somebody else and each one can break or stop being updated. A site running thirty of them is thirty things that can go wrong.
- Integration also called API
- Two systems talking to each other, so a booking on your site lands in your calendar or an enquiry lands in your customer list without anyone retyping it.
- CRM also called Customer relationship management
- A list of your customers and enquiries in one place, with what was said and what happens next. A tidier version of the notebook by the phone.
Ring us and ask. There is no such thing as a stupid question here, and you will not get a sales pitch for something you do not need.