There are many terms in web development and sometimes it is difficult to keep track of them all. That's why we have collected 30 terms that are good to know.

5 quick concepts in web development

• A/B tester - A way to measure the effectiveness of campaigns or website performance.
• Sessions - A group of interactions with a website that occur over a specific period of time.
• Bounce Rate - When visitors land on one of the website's pages and leave without clicking through and it is calculated as a percentage.
• UTM tags - A code that you add to a URL to track the visitor on max 5 & minimum 3 parameters.
• JavaScript - A scripting language based on the Java programming language but inserted directly into HTML code.

Glossary for web development

A/B tester

A way to measure the effectiveness of campaigns or website performance. Conversion tracking allows you to see how many of your visitors actually convert.

Did you know? Conversion tracking tools are provided free of charge by Google Ads.

Bounce Rate

Called bounce rate in Swedish. Is a metric that shows the percentage of sessions that come to the site but then leave after just one interaction. It gives a general picture of how engaging the site is as a whole.

Did you know? Bounce Rate is one of the most discussed metrics in Google Analytics.

Cookies

Called cookies in Swedish. Text files stored on the user's computer that a website requests to be saved on the visitor's computer, tablet or mobile phone. Cookies make it possible to track users' browsing behaviour. They are also used to give visitors access to various functions.

Did you know? The user must give their consent for cookies to be used.

CTA

Stands for Call to Action. It is a term often used to describe elements or prompts that take the visitor further in a buying process, for example.

Did you know? Call to Actions are most common in e-commerce segments, where they are naturally present. However, they are equally important in other segments, such as informational or business websites. Even on these, it is important to entice the visitor to take action and show them the way to a conversion.

Dimensions

A value to measure in your web statistics. You give the value an attribute, such as which device the user visited your page from or from which city.

Eye tracking

Eye-tracking technology allows a computer to know exactly where on the page the user is looking. An eye tracker can read your presence, attention, focus, sleepiness, awareness or other mental states. This information can be used to gain deep insights into consumer behaviour or to design new user interfaces for different types of technological products.

Google Search Console

Google's tool to keep track of and maintain your website's ranking in Google search results. Google Search Console makes it easier to understand and improve how your website appears on Google.

Growth hacking

A process of rapid testing to see how to increase the growth of a business.

Did you know? The idea behind growth hacking is to use e.g. A/B testing, social media or viral spread features to get more leverage out of every marketing dollar spent.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a Google tool that shows how certain keywords/search phrases compare to others over a selected period of time in a specific geographical area.

Impressions

A measurement of the response of a web server to a page request from the user browser.

JavaScript

Javascript is a scripting language based on the Java programming language but inserted directly into HTML code, unlike Java which is a programme file.

click

Clicks are often used as a concept in marketing or web analytics, for example, to measure how many times an advert or web page is clicked on.

Conversion pixels

Conversion pixels (also called tracking pixels) are a code that is embedded in a website, app or advert. By including the pixel in your strategy, it becomes possible to monitor visitors' activities from the moment they click on an advert until they complete the desired actions.

Leads

Leads are about finding a qualified customer who can be turned into a buying or selling customer. In the online world, it's about converting the web visitor into a lead that you can process.

Metrics

Metrics is a quantitative value that is measured to produce web statistics. For example, how many people have visited your site or, if you want to go deeper, how many people have downloaded some material or chosen to email you.

Page Rank

Pagerank is an algorithm for measuring the relative information value of web pages.

Did you know? The algorithm has become famous as it is the basic method by which the world's most successful search engine, Google, weighs the information value of different websites against each other.

Referrals

Referral traffic in Swedish. Means that another website or blog, for example, links to you. An effective way to measure traffic on paid adverts, for example.

ROI

Stands for Return on Investment. Means return on investment in Swedish. ROI is used to measure and compare results.

SEM

Stands for Search Engine Marketing. Means search engine marketing in Swedish. SEM is a form of marketing that takes place via search engines, such as Google. SEM is a collective term for SEO and SEA. This means that SEM is the umbrella term for both paid marketing and search engine optimised marketing, i.e. marketing via search engines.

SEO

Stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Means search engine optimisation in Swedish. SEO is a generic term for the various methods and techniques used to make a website appear as high as possible in search engine results. It is also a type of digital marketing that focuses on increasing a company's visibility in organic search engine results. That is, the results that are not paid adverts in Google, Bing and Yahoo, for example.

SERP

Stands for Search Engine Result Page. It is the result page (or all the result pages) that a search service like Google displays in the browser when a user performs a search on different keywords.

Sessions

A session is recorded when a user is active on a website. A session is a group of interactions with a website that occur over a period of time. For example, a session may include multiple page views, events and social interactions. A user can initiate multiple sessions.

Session length

The period of time a user is active on your site. If the user had a break or left your site during their first session within 30 minutes, it counts as the same session. If the user returns after 30 minutes, it counts as a new session.

Page views

Page view means that a page on your website has been viewed. Each unique visitor can make multiple visits and during each visit make multiple page views.

Tracking code

Tracking code is used on a website to send information about the website to Google Analytics, the tracking code itself is a snippet of code in JavaScript. You fill in the code directly in the HTML code or you can use a tag management system such as Google tag management.

tobacconist's

Traffic is visitors directed to your site. You want to identify traffic sources such as organic traffic, referral traffic, social traffic and paid traffic to understand which traffic is relevant to you and converts.

User

Visitors to your site. Most often shown as new and total visitors in web statistics. Both are important metrics where new visitors give you facts about the number of unique visitors you have had and the total number of visitors which also gives you an idea if you have interesting content.

UTM tags

A UTM tag is a code that you add to a URL to track the visitor on max 5 & minimum 3 parameters. When a visitor comes to your website, your Google Analytics account captures data via cookies. The data consists of e.g. how the visitor found your page, was it via Google organic search, was it via an advert, or did the visitor click through via a blog post, or Facebook post? In addition to this, it can also show the source, i.e. which site the visitor came from.

UX

UX stands for user experience and means user experience. UX design is about design work that improves users' experience of a service or product.

Web statistics

Data on visits to the web page/website. Collects statistics through the web server (most common), cookies or login function.

Now you've learnt a bunch of web development concepts. Want to know more about web development? Contact us and we will organise a meeting over coffee.

This is part 2 of 4 in the series on key concepts in the marketing and web development industry. Stay tuned for upcoming parts!