Website Development & Internet Marketing Terms (A-D)


This glossary for most common Internet terms is a work in progress. We'll add more web development and other Internet marketing terms as possible.

Define: AIDA
Often considered the essential sequence of responses needed to generate a sale. Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

Define: Autoresponders
Automatic emails that are sent when triggered by an email or form being received. Autoresponders are often used to confirm an order or some communication such as an email or form submission. Sequential autoresponders are used to deliver a series of messages, such as marketing, newsletters, free or paid courses or subscriptions. They are set up in a pre-determined order of delivery at defined intervals. Some CRMs allow a wide variety of options with autoresponders including customization of the message or the ability to delay emails over a weekend.

Define: Blog
Short for Web log, these websites are similar to a journal, easy to update and are often used for commentary on a narrow or niche subject. Blogs can be link to and often comments to the author’s post are allowed. Blogs can be effective marketing tools as search engines have put a lot of credence in them. See the Web Asylum blog on website success at http://webasylum.typepad.com.

Define: Bounce Rate
The percentage of website visitors that leave a site without clicking on a second page. A bounce rate of 60% means that 6 out of 10 visitors leave a site without sampling other pages. Web strategists will study the bounce rate on various site pages and for various traffic sources to make informed decisions on content and strategy.

Define: Click-Thru-Rate
Often expressed as CTR, this is the ratio of clicks on a link to the number of impressions. If a web link, banner ad or search engine sponsored link is displayed 1,000 times and somebody clicks on it 18 times, then the CTR is 1.8% (18/1,000=0.018)

Define: Content Management Tools
A CMT is used usually by non-webmasters to update content on a website or intranet. Virtually anything on a page (text, graphics, video, PDFs) can be updated using a CMT.

Define: Conversion
The number or percentage of site visitors who do what the site owner wants-usually buy something. If an offer is viewed 100 times and 6 sales are made, the conversion is 6% (6/100=0.06)

Define: CRM
Customer Relationship Management. It's a means for managing relationships with prospects and customers. It often includes the ability to send broadcast emails, direct mail or faxes to a list or list segment. There are a number of online CRMs.

Define: Directory
An online directory is similar to a search engine, except that non-paid results are determined more by humans and not by robotic spiders that search engines use to capture, categorize and rank web content.