Optimization glossary
The digital space is full of acronyms and jargon, and the optimization glossary is here to help. Our glossary is a dictionary of the terminology most commonly used by optimization, content and commerce professionals.
Expand your content, commerce and optimization vocabulary!
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 online marketing? 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 documentationA/B/n testing
A method of comparing multiple versions of webpage or mobile app against each other to determine which performs best.
Read full documentationAbove the fold
The top most portion of a webpage that is visible without users having to scroll.
Read full documentationA/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 documentationAccount based marketing
A business marketing strategy that concentrates resources on a set of target accounts within a market.
Read full documentationAd viewability
The concept of how visible ads on a website or mobile app are to users.
Read full documentationAgile CMS
Agile content development and project management is efficient and increasingly used by content and marketing teams. Learn how agile CMS facilitates the process of moving content from development to omnichannel delivery.
Read full documentationApp personalization
The process of building a mobile application to meet the needs of specific audiences.
Read full documentationAverage order value
The average dollar amount spent each time a customer places an order on a website or mobile app.
Read full documentationB
What is B2B commerce?
The online sale of goods or services between businesses.
Read full documentationBehavioral science
Behavioral science studies the way that emotions, the environment, and social factors influence our decisions.
Read full documentationBelow the fold
The portion of a webpage that is not immediately visible when the page loads, that users must scroll to see.
Read full documentationBlue-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 documentationBounce rate
The percentage of site visits that are single-page sessions, with the visitor leaving without viewing any other pages.
Read full documentationBrand 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 documentationBrand home
An event that involves people interacting in an online environment on the web, rather than meeting in a physical location
Read full documentationBucket 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 documentationC
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 documentationCanary testing
A way to reduce risk and validate new software by releasing software to a small percentage of users.
Read full documentationClick-through rate
The percentage of people that click on an element that they have been exposed to.
Read full documentationCommerce
Learn what commerce is, why it’s important, the different branches of commerce, and the major commerce business models.
Read full documentationContent Calendar
Learn what a content calendar is, why it's important, and how you can leverage it to better manage your marketing activities.
Read full documentationContent delivery
Digital content delivery requires far more strategy than posting an article and tweeting about your product; it requires delivering digital content that appeals to different customers at various stages in their customer journey. Learn some pro tips here.
Read full documentationContent 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 documentationContent 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 documentationContent intelligence
A technique which uses software and artificial intelligence to measure the impact of content and generate content strategy insights.
Read full documentationContent Lifecycle Management
With 70% of businesses leveraging content marketing, understanding your company’s content lifecycle is crucial. So, what is content lifecycle management? Read on to explore this essential technique.
Read full documentationContent 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 documentationContent management system
An application that allows multiple contributors to create, edit and publish web content.
Read full documentationContent recommendation engine
Learn what a content recommendation does and how it works, including the three types of filtering engines – collaborative, content-based, and hybrid.
Read full documentationContinuous Delivery
A software development process for getting code changes into production quickly and safely.
Read full documentationContinuous 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 documentationConversion rate
The number of conversions on a webpage or app divided by the total number of visitors.
Read full documentationConversion rate optimization
The process of increasing the percentage of conversions from a website or mobile app.
Read full documentationCustomer 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 documentationCustomer journey management
A headless CMS is a content management system that separates the backend content management from the frontend, presentation layer.
Read full documentationCustomer journey mapping
Customer journey mapping helps you optimize every customer experience by tying together all touchpoints into a cohesive story.
Read full documentationD
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 documentationDecoupled CMS
Decoupled CMS offers companies the most robust and future-proof option of all CMS designs. Learn more about what decoupled CMS is and why it may be the right choice for your company.
Read full documentationDigital Asset Management (DAM)
Discover what digital asset management is and how it's used to manage all aspects of the digital asset lifecycle, from content creation to asset retirement.
Read full documentationDigital 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 documentationDigital 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 documentationDigital 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 documentationDigital customer experience
Digital customer experience (DCX) lies at the core of today’s successful businesses. Learn what DCX is, how to manage it for your company, and the benefits of choosing a cloud-based DXP to earn maximum revenue from your customers.
Read full documentationDigital ecosystem
Contextualizing your value-added proposition across diverse digital landscapes will help your business grow its market, find new customers and innovate. Learn how to determine your company’s role in different digital ecosystems and strategize for growth.
Read full documentationDigital experience platform
A software platform that manages digital experience across a broad range of digital touchpoints
Read full documentationDigital 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 documentationDigital web strategy
Organizations use a digital web strategy to maximize the business benefits of web content across all digital channels.
Read full documentationE
Ecommerce platform
An ecommerce platform will help your company reach customers and make sales online, nearly all the time. You have several ecommerce platform choices. We review ecommerce options for different types of businesses.
Read full documentationEnterprise 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 documentationExperience 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 documentationExperience management
Experience management requires using customer data to create engaging content and make compelling offers when your customer is ready to accept them. Learn what experience management is to earn more marketing ROI.
Read full documentationExperience 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 documentationExperiential marketing
A marketing strategy which aims to provide audiences with unique, branded experiences.
Read full documentationF
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 documentationFeature flags
A software development technique that turns certain functionality on and off, without deploying new code.
Read full documentationFeature rollout
The software development process of introducing a new feature to a set of users.
Read full documentationFeature test
The software development process of testing multiple variations of a feature to determine the best user experience.
Read full documentationFeature toggle
A mechanism that allows code to be turned “on” or “off” remotely without the need for a deploy.
Read full documentationG
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 documentationH
Headless CMS
A headless CMS is a content management system where the front-end and back-end functions are separated.
Read full documentationHeadless commerce
Discover the benefits of headless commerce – what it is, examples of headless commerce in action, and how to choose a headless commerce platform.
Read full documentationHeadline 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 documentationHeatmap
A graphical representation of data such as clicks and scrolls that uses a system of color-coding to represent different values.
Read full documentationHero 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 documentationHyper-Personalization
Evolving consumer expectations require hyper-personalization to create meaningful connections with customers by utilizing modern digital experience platforms (DXP).
Read full documentationI
How to improve conversion rates
Learn how to improve your conversion rates through A/B testing to drive your business objectives.
Read full documentationInbound 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 documentationInformation scent
Visual and textual cues that provide website vistors with hints on what information a site contains.
Read full documentationiOS 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 documentationL
Landing page optimization
The process of improving elements on a landing page to increase conversions.
Read full documentationLead generation
The process of generating consumer interest for a product or service with the goal of turning that interest into a sale.
Read full documentationLean 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 documentationLifetime value
An estimate of the average revenue that your customers will generate throughout their lifespan as a customer.
Read full documentationM
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 documentationMarketing Strategy
Discover what marketing strategy is, why it's important and how to create a successful marketing strategy for your business or brand.
Read full documentationMarketing technology stack
A grouping of technologies that marketers leverage to conduct and improve their marketing activities.
Read full documentationMobile app A/B testing
The practice of using A/B testing to test different experiences within mobile apps.
Read full documentationMulti-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 documentationMultivariate 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 documentationMultivariate 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 documentationO
Omnichannel marketing
Learn what omnichannel marketing is, how it differs from multichannel marketing, and why it can be important for your business.
Read full documentationOnline 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 documentationP
Personalization
Discover what personalization is, how it differs from customization, and why personalization is important to your customers and your business.
Read full documentationProgressive 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 documentationR
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 documentationRevenue per visitor
A metric for website performance calculated by dividing the total revenue by the total number of visitors to your website.
Read full documentationS
Sales funnel
The path taken by a potential customer through a website or app as they move towards becoming a customer.
Read full documentationSearch 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 documentationSearch engine optimization
The art and science of getting pages to rank higher in search engines such as Google and Bing.
Read full documentationVisitor segmentation
The process of dividing your visitors to your website based on a specific criteria, such as demographics or user behavior.
Read full documentationServer-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 documentationShopping 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 documentationSocial proof
Evidence that a product or service is popular with a large number of people.
Read full documentationSplit testing
A strategy for conducting controlled, randomized experiments with the goal of improving a conversion metric on a website or mobile app.
Read full documentationSqueeze page
A landing page which is specifically designed to 'squeeze' e-mail addresses out of visitors and prospects.
Read full documentationStatistical significance
The likelihood that the difference in conversion rates between a given variation and the baseline is not due to random chance.
Read full documentationStrategic 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 documentationT
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 documentationTrunk-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 documentationType 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 documentationType 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 documentationU
Unique selling point
The competitive differentiators that a business has over its competitors.
Read full documentationUsability 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 documentationUser flow
The path taken by a prototypical user on a website or app to complete a task.
Read full documentationUser 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 documentationV
Value proposition
The essence of the value that your product or service provides to the customer.
Read full documentationViewable impression
A standard measure of ad viewability defined by the IAB to be an ad which appears at least 50% on screen for more than one second.
Read full documentationVirtual event
An event that involves people interacting in an online environment on the web, rather than meeting in a physical location
Read full documentationW
Web analytics
The measurement and analysis of data to inform an understanding of user behavior across web pages.
Read full documentationWebsite optimization
The process of using controlled experimentation to improve a website's ability to drive business goals.
Read full documentationWebsite personalization
The process of creating customized experiences for visitors to a website.
Read full documentation