Optimization Glossary

The optimization space is full of acronyms and jargon, and Optipedia is here to help. Our optimization glossary is a dictionary of the terminology most commonly used by optimization professionals.

Expand your optimization vocabulary today!

Want to know the difference between A/B Testing, Split Testing, and Multivariate Testing? Or what the heck CRO, LPO, and EXO stand for? Maybe you're looking for a refresher on Statistical Significance and Sales Funnels? Browse our optimization glossary and learn to speak the language of optimizers!

A

A/A Testing

A method of comparing two versions of a webpage or mobile app experience against each other in order to test the accuracy of the testing tool.

Read full description

A/B/N Testing

A method of comparing multiple versions of webpage or mobile app against each other to determine which performs best.

Read full description

Above The Fold

The top most portion of a webpage that is visible without users having to scroll.

Read full description

A/B Testing

A method of comparing two versions of a webpage or mobile app experience against each other to determine which performs best.

Read full description

Account Based Marketing

A business marketing strategy that concentrates resources on a set of target accounts within a market.

Read full description

Ad Viewability

The concept of how visible ads on a website or mobile app are to users.

Read full description

App Personalization

The process of building a mobile application to meet the needs of specific audiences.

Read full description

Average Order Value

The average dollar amount spent each time a customer places an order on a website or mobile app.

Read full description

B

B2B eCommerce

The online sale of goods or services between businesses.

Read full description

Behavioral Science

Behavioral science studies the way that emotions, the environment, and social factors influence our decisions.

Read full description

Below The Fold

The portion of a webpage that is not immediately visible when the page loads, that users must scroll to see.

Read full description

Blue-Green Deployment

A software development technique which utilizes two production environments (a "blue environment" and a "green environment") in order to make the software deployment process easier and safer.

Read full description

Bounce Rate

The percentage of site visits that are single-page sessions, with the visitor leaving without viewing any other pages.

Read full description

Brand Engagement

Brand engagement refers to the creation of attachments between consumers and brands. These attachments may be emotional or rational, and they produce brand loyalty over time. This solidifies the brand and helps to improve the customer experience.

Read full description

Brand Home

An event that involves people interacting in an online environment on the web, rather than meeting in a physical location

Read full description

Bucket Testing

A method of testing two versions of a website or app against one another to see which one performs better on specified key metrics. Synonym for split testing.

Read full description

C

Call To Action

A call to action or CTA is a prompt on a website that tells the user to take some specified action.

Read full description

Canary Testing

A way to reduce risk and validate new software by releasing software to a small percentage of users.

Read full description

Click-Through Rate

The percentage of people that click on an element that they have been exposed to.

Read full description

Content Hub

A content hub is a curated collection of branded content on a specific topic or subject. It houses articles, videos, infographics, and other forms of content that let users take a deep dive into a specific area in which the brand is an authority or expert.

Read full description

Content Hub Software

Ever wondered what content hub software is and how it differs from a CMS? Content hub software allows you to streamline and integrate your omnichannel content seamlessly across teams and platforms. Learn how.

Read full description

Content Intelligence

A technique which uses software and artificial intelligence to measure the impact of content and generate content strategy insights.

Read full description

Content Management Infrastructure

A content management infrastructure (CMI) solution is key to streamlining production and delivery of your digital content. Learn why CMI is so important and how to find the exact CMI solution you need.

Read full description

Content Management System

An application that allows multiple contributors to create, edit and publish web content.

Read full description

Continuous Delivery

A software development process for getting code changes into production quickly and safely.

Read full description

Continuous Integration

A devops and software development practice where code is continuously integrated into the trunk where these integrations are automatically built and tested.

Read full description

Conversion

When a user completes some predetermined action on your site.

Read full description

Conversion Rate

The number of conversions on a webpage or app divided by the total number of visitors.

Read full description

Conversion Rate Optimization

The process of increasing the percentage of conversions from a website or mobile app.

Read full description

Customer Data Platform

A customer data platform (CDP) is one of the most efficient tracking technologies in data-driven metrics being adopted by marketing firms.

Read full description

Customer Journey Management

A headless CMS is a content management system that separates the backend content management from the frontend, presentation layer.

Read full description

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping helps you optimize every customer experience by tying together all touchpoints into a cohesive story.

Read full description

D

Decision Fatigue

When the mind becomes fatigued after a sustained period of decision making, such as when faced with too many options on a website.

Read full description

Digital Content

In today's digital age, online content is one of the primary ways to differentiate your brand from competitors. Different industries use digital content to create meaningful experiences deployed across different channels using a variety of formats.

Read full description

Digital Content Delivery Platform

A digital content delivery platform helps organizations create, stage and deliver media across all digital channels. Here is everything you need to know.

Read full description

Digital Content Management

Digital content management (DCM) is a set of processes allowing businesses to streamline digital content production, allocation and distribution. Think of DCM as a superhero librarian managing and protecting your digital capital.

Read full description

Digital Experience Platform

A software platform that manages digital experience across a broad range of digital touchpoints

Read full description

Digital Marketer

Wonder what a digital marketer actually does? Learn what a digital marketer is, can do for your company and what skills to look for when hiring one.

Read full description

Digital Web Strategy

Organizations use a digital web strategy to maximize the business benefits of web content across all digital channels.

Read full description

E

Enterprise Commerce

Enterprise commerce is selling that occurs on an enterprise-level. Typically, you’ll see this term applied to mean enterprise-grade ecommerce software.

Read full description

Experience Analytics

Data and analytics drive your customer experience (CX) and journey designs across all your digital touchpoints to create meaningful engagements with your customers.

Read full description

Experience Optimization

The process of providing your customers with the best possible experience across all touchpoints through analytics, user research, A/B testing, and personalization.

Read full description

Experiential Marketing

A marketing strategy which aims to provide audiences with unique, branded experiences.

Read full description

F

Feature Branch

A copy of the main codebase where an individual or team of software developers can work on a new feature until it is complete.

Read full description

Feature Flags

A software development technique that turns certain functionality on and off, without deploying new code.

Read full description

Feature Rollout

The software development process of introducing a new feature to a set of users.

Read full description

Feature Test

The software development process of testing multiple variations of a feature to determine the best user experience.

Read full description

Feature Toggle

A mechanism that allows code to be turned “on” or “off” remotely without the need for a deploy.

Read full description

G

Growth Hacking

The use of resource-light and cost effective marketing tactics to help grow and retain an active user base, sell products and gain exposure.

Read full description

H

Headless CMS

A headless CMS is a content management system where the front-end and back-end functions are separated.

Read full description

Headless CMS for Experience Management

Headless and Agile CMS are amazing tools, which will help you build and manage an engaging, omnichannel customer experience. Learn how to get the most out of your headless CMS solution.

Read full description

Headline Testing

The process of developing multiple title variations for an article or piece of online media to determine which one performs the best.

Read full description

Heatmap

A graphical representation of data such as clicks and scrolls that uses a system of color-coding to represent different values.

Read full description

Hero Image

An oversized image or video at the top of a website, often extending full-width and featuring a CTA and/or value proposition.

Read full description

Hyper-Personalization

Evolving consumer expectations require hyper-personalization to create meaningful connections with customers by utilizing modern digital experience platforms (DXP).

Read full description

I

How to Improve Conversion Rates

Learn how to improve your conversion rates through A/B testing to drive your business objectives.

Read full description

Inbound Marketing

A marketing methodology that is designed to draw visitors and potential customers in, rather than outwardly pushing a brand, product or service onto prospects.

Read full description

Information Scent

Visual and textual cues that provide website vistors with hints on what information a site contains.

Read full description

iOS A/B Testing

The process of running a controlled experiment comparing one or more versions of an iOS app against the original to improve certain metrics.

Read full description

L

Landing Page Optimization

The process of improving elements on a landing page to increase conversions.

Read full description

Lead Generation

The process of generating consumer interest for a product or service with the goal of turning that interest into a sale.

Read full description

Lean Hypothesis Testing

An approach to agile product development that’s designed to minimize risk, increase speed of development, and hone product market fit by building and iterating on a minimum viable product (MVP)

Read full description

Lifetime Value

An estimate of the average revenue that your customers will generate throughout their lifespan as a customer.

Read full description

M

Marketing Automation

The replacement of repetitive manual marketing processes and tasks with solutions that are automated, especially in regards to e-mail marketing.

Read full description

Marketing Technology Stack

A grouping of technologies that marketers leverage to conduct and improve their marketing activities.

Read full description

Mobile App A/B Testing

The practice of using A/B testing to test different experiences within mobile apps.

Read full description

Multi-Armed Bandit

A form of A/B testing that uses machine learning algorithms to dynamically allocate traffic to variations that are performing well.

Read full description

Multivariate Testing

A technique for testing a hypothesis where multiple variables are modified, in order to determine the best combination of variations on those elements of a website or mobile app.

Read full description

Multivariate Testing vs A/B Testing

Learn about the key differences between A/B testing and multivariate testing, and when is the best time to use each approach.

Read full description

O

Online Marketing

The strategy for leveraging web-based channels to spread a message about a company’s brand, products, or services to its potential customers.

Read full description

P

Progressive Delivery

A method of gradually rolling out new features in order to limit the potential negative impact and gauge the user engagement with new product features.

Read full description

R

Remote Config

A software development technique for mobile apps where the behavior or features of an app can be changed remotely without having to publish an app update.

Read full description

Revenue Per Visitor

A metric for website performance calculated by dividing the total revenue by the total number of visitors to your website.

Read full description

S

Sales Funnel

The path taken by a potential customer through a website or app as they move towards becoming a customer.

Read full description

Search Engine Marketing

A digital marketing strategy used to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages, especially with regards to paid advertising.

Read full description

Search Engine Optimization

The art and science of getting pages to rank higher in search engines such as Google and Bing.

Read full description

Visitor Segmentation

The process of dividing your visitors to your website based on a specific criteria, such as demographics or user behavior.

Read full description

Server-Side Testing

A form of experimentation where unlike in client-side testing, the variations of a test are rendered directly on the web server before it is delivered to the client.

Read full description

Shopping Cart Abandonment

When a potential customer starts a check out process for an online order but drops out of the process before completing the purchase.

Read full description

Social Proof

Evidence that a product or service is popular with a large number of people.

Read full description

Split Testing

A strategy for conducting controlled, randomized experiments with the goal of improving a conversion metric on a website or mobile app.

Read full description

Squeeze Page

A landing page which is specifically designed to 'squeeze' e-mail addresses out of visitors and prospects.

Read full description

Statistical Significance

The likelihood that the difference in conversion rates between a given variation and the baseline is not due to random chance.

Read full description

Strategic Data Management

Strategic data management is the process and resources that a business puts in place to collect, analyze, store, and use data to achieve business goals.

Read full description

T

Testing in Production

A software development practice in which new code changes are tested on live user traffic rather than in a staging environment.

Read full description

Trunk-Based Development

A strategy where engineers merge smaller changes more frequently into the main codebase and work off the trunk copy rather than work on long-lived feature branches.

Read full description

Type 1 Error

A statistics term used to refer to an error that is made in testing when a conclusive winner is declared although the test is actually inconclusive.

Read full description

Type 2 Error

A statistics term used to refer to a testing error that is made when no conclusive winner is declared between a control and a variation when there actually should be one.

Read full description

U

Unique Selling Point

The competitive differentiators that a business has over its competitors.

Read full description

Usability Testing

A method of evaluating a website or app’s readiness for release by testing it with real users who are part of your target audience.

Read full description

User Flow

The path taken by a prototypical user on a website or app to complete a task.

Read full description

User Journey Map

A diagram of the entire user experience, starting with initial contact or discovery, and continuing through the process of engagement into long-term loyalty and advocacy.

Read full description