Words and phrases you need to know as a online retailer

1. eCommerce Dictionary
- words and phrases all online retailers should know.

2. Words and phrases you need to know
as a online retailer
Coming from 480 billion euros in 2016 to 534 billion euros in 2017, and reaching the 602
billion euros in 2018, the phenomenon of online marketing and e-commerce has been
taking over all around the globe in the last couple of decades, with the evolution of the
internet and the constant development of technologies, different platforms and tools.
It is no secret that the world of online selling has been growing in gigantic steps during
the last couple of decades making it alone one of the fastest growing businesses in the
world.
We have collected the eCommerce dictionary to help you understand more about the
online store of business and digital marketing.

3. Abandonment: Typically refers to those users that leave the online store / website before
completing any desired action. This could be making an account, subscribing to a newsletter
or leaving a shopping cart without making a purchase.
Affiliate Marketing: Is an advertising model where a company pays a third party for
advertising their product or finding leads for the company’s products or services (for example,
advertising through a banner or text ads on websites with a big poll of daily visitors).
Amazon: One of the largest marketplaces. A third party ecommerce platform. Online retailer
can sell on the Amazon Marketplace, and Amazon charges fees on every sale through the
Marketplace.
API or Application Programming Interface: API is a service that makes the communication
between two or more individuals or platforms possible. Open API means that integration is
available to be built.
ASINs: Amazon Standard Identification Number: Specific to Amazon, are blocks of 10 letters
and/or numbers that identify them. ASINs can be used to make actual searches on Amazon.
A

4. Blog: Content that is crucial for any ecommerce business. A blog is an online post of content
relevant to your audience, and helps you attract both traffic and links to your online store.
Brick and Mortar: Brick and mortar is a business with a physical store for the customers to visit
and see the products rather than only on the internet.
Business to Business (B2B): When a company sells a product to another company. Usually in
online stores prices are without Vat and delivery in online stores are paid more depending on
the actual size of the shipment. The payment method can also be with an invoice.
Business to Consumer (B2C): When a company sells a product to a consumer. In online stores
this is the most commonly known transaction. Usually delivery is charged with a flat rate or
even for free if the size of the shopping cart is larger. Payment is usually with a credit card,
paypal, or money transfer or cash on delivery.
B

5. Call-To-Action (CTA): is a marketing strategy referring to an image, button, form or message that should
encourage the customer to make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, book a demo, ask more questions
or anything alike. All digital marketing activities should have a clear call to action.
Cash on Delivery (COD): This is one of the oldest and still somehow common practice when performing
a sale on the internet. It consists of on sending the goods to the customer by mail, and the customer
pays for the order in total when receiving the order rather than paying in advance.
Channel: Usually used to describe a marketing channel. Place online store uses to transfer information
to the customers, for example, from the website, email, newsletter, social media, organic searches, paid
searches, mobile and display ads.
Click-trough rate (CTR): is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who
view a page, email, or advertisement. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online store
advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.
Consistency: One of the most important traits of a brand / online store. Usually referred to as how
consistent actions are in marketing, sales, customer service etc. For example, a company that markets
their products with green initiative should not ship their orders in a non-recycled plastic
bag since this would go against their message and thus, they may lose clients that are
there because of the green initiative.
C

6. Consumer to Business (C2B): When an individual sells a product or service to a business / company (for
example, a photographer selling licensed pictures of a product to the company for commercial use).
Consumer to Consumer (C2C): Where an individual consumer sells products to another consumer.
Usually, sold products are bought from retail stores or have been used. Most commonly sold websites
such as Ebay or Facebook marketplace.
Consumer to Government (C2G): Common practice since it covers paying taxes online, traffic tickets and
some other services from consumer to government.
Container: This is a big metal box used to place goods inside of it for later transportation. Commonly used
in sea cargo.
Content Management System (CMS): Usually an Online Software or back-end interface that helps you
create content as more user-friendly, e.g. WordPress.
Conversion: Means how many visitors on the online store made a call to action, for example, a
subscription or a purchase.
Conversion Funnel: Also known as “sales funnel”. It refers to the path the visitor
took until full conversion. (Path from the visit to the transaction)
C

7. Conversion Rate: It is the way of measuring how many visitors became actual customers of your services.
Rate is shown as percents.
Cost-per-click (CPC): also known as pay-per-click (PPC): is a digital advertising model used to direct traffic to
websites in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a website owner or a network of websites) when
the ad is clicked. Pay-per-click is commonly associated with search engines (Google Ads and Bing Ads). PPC
"display" advertisements, also known as "banner" ads, are shown on websites with related content that
have agreed to show ads and are typically not pay-per-click advertising. Social networks such as Facebook
and Twitter have also adopted pay-per-click as one of their advertising models.
Customer Experience (CX): Usually CX in referred to the customer journey, the brand touchpoints the
customer interacts with, and the environments of the customer experiences. Trend is to combine UX and
CX.
Crowdfunding: It is the collection of money in advance of a specific product or service
in order to raise the startup capital to build the product and place it in the market.
C

8. Door-to-Door Delivery: This is the most convenient way of shipping online store orders. Meaning that
the order is shipped directly to your door and not to a pick-up point.
Dropshipping: A form of ecommerce where the items are bought from the manufacturer or distributor
after the end-sale is done. This means you don’t hold stock, but expect to pay a greater cost per item
sold.
D
EAN - European Article Number: Is a 12 or 13 digit product ID code. Each code specifies the product,
manufacturer and some extra details or attributes.
Ebay: One of the largest market places. Auction site Ebay allows eRetailers to access a market of buyers.
Sellers pay a listing fee and a percentage of the sold items. On Ebay, you can choose the option to
auction or set a Buy It Now price.
E

9. Fulfillment: In short terms, order fulfillment refers the completion of an order with total success. The
order is received, picked and packed, and delivered.
Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA): Fulfillment service provided by Amazon to Amazon orders.
F
Gateway or Payment Gateway: is the platform used to get the payments done in an online store from
the customer’s bank account to your online store (This is something that also applies to the normal
retail stores (brick and mortar).
Google Analytics: One of the most common free tools you can analyze your website with. It enables
you to track traffic through your site and their interactions with your funnels and goals. Google
Analytics provides invaluable insights about your website, which can be used as a basis for identifying
growth hacks.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): is a regulation in EU law of data
protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and the
European Economic Area (EEA).
G

10. Inventory: The stock in your business. All items at your warehouse/store is your inventory. The bigger
your business grows, the more need there will be to regularly check inventory levels. You might need to
ensure you are monitoring minimum order levels, stock level alarms and the rotation of stock.
Inventory Turnover: Inventory turnover is a ratio showing how many times you have sold and replaced
inventory during a given period of time. A company can then divide the days in the period by the
inventory turnover formula to calculate the days it takes to sell the inventory in hand.
I
Keyword: Usually used to refer the words in search engines. Keywords are ideas and topics that define
your online store content. In terms of SEO, they're the words and phrases that searchers enter into
search engines, also called "search queries." If you write down all on your page (all the images,
products, video, copy, etc.) in simple words and phrases, you’ll have your primary keywords.
Keyword Ranking: It's used to show where your website ranks when using a specific word in the search
engine such as Google.
K

11. L
Landing page: This is the specific part of your website that is related to the call-to-action strategy, often
the landing page will show the consumer relevant data/ask them to subscribe/or will show specific
sales.
Margin: Is the profit percentage of your sales. It is calculated as the cost of goods and the expenses that
have been factored in. Margin percentage is an essential metric in establishing the level of profitability
in a given sale or product line.
Metrics: The metric is a measurement when dealing with advanced marketing tools, such as SEO or
analytics to show how effective the strategy has been, what the website traffic is like and it shows you
the keyword ranking.
Multi-Channel eCommerce: Usually multi-channel is referred to when selling goods and services across
multiple different channels and devices, including online store, actual store, mobile apps etc.
M

12. N Niche market: Usually niche refers to a specific target group with specific needs. The market niche defines the
product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and
the demographics that it is intended to target. It is also a small market segment.
Omnichannel: is a cross-channel content strategy used to improve user experience. Rather than working in parallel,
communication channels and supporting resources are designed to cooperate. Omnichannel implies integration of
channels, and the experience of engaging across all the channels someone chooses to use.
Omnichannel marketing: Usually referred to as the effort to make the shopping experience the same regarding how
you log in/interact with the store (desktop, mobile, phone or even brick and mortar retail store).
Online Store: Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or
services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser. Customers can shop online using a range of different
computers and devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.
Organic Traffic: This refers to all visits to your website or store got by unpaid searches.
Outsource: 3PL outsourcing means you select a third party provider to handle
logistics on your behalf. Outsourcing is commonly used in e-commerce,
from web design to logistics and fulfillment.
O

13. P
Paid traffic: Traffic generated by paid digital marketing is called paid traffic. In other words, all visits to
your online store or website that comes from paid marketing, such as GoogleAds, Bing adwords, paid
social media marketing or any other paid advertising site.
Pallet: is a flat transport structure, which supports goods in a stable fashion while being lifted by a
forklift. A pallet is the structural foundation of a unit load which allows handling and storage efficiency.
Goods or shipping containers are often placed on a pallet secured with strapping, stretch wrap or shrink
wrap and shipped.
Parcel: A parcel is a package with the name and address of the recipient in order to be shipped to the
recipient. The size can range from a standard mail package to a larger box.
Payment Gateway: The payment processor used to handle transactions on your online store, your
payment gateway can be either on-site or off-site, depending on what works best for your model.
Paypal: One of the leading payment processors, preferred by a number of consumers over any other
single payment method. Owned by Ebay, Paypal is an essential component of your e-commerce
payment setup.

14. P
Pay-Per-Click marketing (PPC): also known as cost-per-click is a digital advertising model used to direct
traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a website owner or a network of
websites) when the ad is clicked.
Pick Up-Point Delivery: Delivery method where the end receiver picks up the parcel from a pre-selected
location or the nearest location. Most commonly used in consumer deliveries.
PR or Page Rank: It's the measure used to see how your website or any website is ranked (higher
ranked websites are closer to the top and first pages of the search).
R Return: A return or a financial return is the money made or lost on a investment.
Return Rate (RoR): Return rate is how much your company has made in profits or losses in a specific
time period expressed in percentages of the investments initial budget.

15. Search Engine: an internet search engine or web search engine is a software system that is designed to carry out a
web search (Internet search); which means to search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular
information specified in a web search query. The information may be a mix of web pages, images, videos, infographics,
articles, research papers and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open
directories.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM): refers to the multiple efforts made to promote a specific website in both organic and
in paid search listing. SEM refers to actions promoting websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website/online store in a web
search engine's unpaid results. Unpaid is often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. The SEO may
target different kinds of search, including image search, video search, academic search etc.
Search Engine Result Page (SERP): pages displayed by search engines in response to a query by a searcher. The main
component of the SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword query.
For example, when a person googles the result is presented in a line of results. This line of results is a search engine
result page.
S

16. Shopify: online store platform and retail point-of-sale systems. Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services
including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools to simplify the process of running an
online store for small merchants.
Shopping Cart/Shopping basket: in online stores the shopping cart is a piece of e-commerce software that allows
visitors to select items for eventual purchase.
Social Media: refers to interactive internet-based applications. For example, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Pinterest, LinkedIn. Social media channels are important sales channels in ecommerce.
Stock: also known as inventory. In online stores stock refers to all items in your warehouse/storage or store.
Stock Keeping Unit (SKU): is a number assigned to a product or a service. The SKU helps to identify the price,
product options and manufacturer of the merchandise. A SKU is used to track inventory in your retail store.
Stock update: stock update is a action where you add more products to your stock. All incoming goods are stock
updates.
Stock Value: also known as inventory value. Determination of the cost of unsold inventory at the end of an
accounting period. Inventory is valued usually at cost or at the market value, whichever is lower.
S

17. Third Party Logistics (TPL/3PL): a service where a third party handles your logistics. In ecommerce it is usually where a
third party provider takes care of your warehousing and order fulfillment.
Transaction: making a purchase from a business to another seller, could be personal or to another business.
Trend (Traffic): this measures the traffic during specific periods; like specific holidays, time of the day, sales.
T
U Usability: the ease and efficiency with which your customers can use and interact with your website,
central to the quality of their experience and your conversion rate. Usability now also extends to mobile
and tablet devices, and the experience your ecommerce store offers across these channels.
User Experience (UX): refers to a person's emotions and attitudes about using a particular product,
system or service. It includes the practical, experiential, effective, meaningful and valuable aspects of
human–computer interaction and product ownership. Trend is to combine UX and CX.
Upselling: this is a method where you persuade a customer to buy more products or more expensive
products related to what they are looking at. A good example of this is Amazon showing you the
“Users that bought this also bought…”.

18. Warehouse Management System (WMS): is a software designed to support and optimize
warehouse functionality and distribution center management.
Website Traffic: number of visitors on an specific website and the amount of interactions they
have while they are in it.
Wholesale: this refers to the distributors and manufacturers that sells directly to the retailers.
WordPress: is a free, open source platform, used as a basis for creating websites and blogs.
WordPress ties up with WooCommerce to provide ecommerce functionality through the
WordPress platform.
W

19. HELPFUL SERVICES FOR ONLINE STORE OWNER
Check out the following helpful resources for improving your online store

20. Helpful services for
online store owner
dlvrit | https://dlvrit.com/
Automated Social Media Manager. Helps you to put your social media postings on autopilot.
Spend more time away from your desk and let the automation handle your social media postings.
Automatically recycle social media posts, auto post RSS to social media etc.
Google Analytics | www.google.com/analytics/
The best tool there is for tracking traffic and visitor behaviors on your website, Google Analytics
is another free service for website owners courtesy of Google.
Google Webmaster Tools | www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Tool for rank strongly in Google. Webmaster Tools is a free service offered by Google that can
help you drill down into the technical performance of your website. Identify where your site is
ranking and how it’s doing, as well as identifying specific issues with crawling or indexing your
site.

21. Helpful services for
online store owner
Hootsuite | www.hootsuite.com
Application for managing all of your social media profiles, Hootsuite makes it possible to cross-
post from a single account, so you don’t have to keep jumping in and out of Facebook, Twitter
and the other social networks you use.
Moz | www.moz.com
Moz offers a huge range of search engine optimization tools, aimed at SEO professionals and
serious website owners.
Nosto | https://www.nosto.com/
World's Leading E-commerce Personalization Platform. Nosto’s AI-powered
Ecommerce Intelligence Engine is Trained solely on ecommerce data. Set of machine learning
algorithms have analyzed billions of shopping journeys across thousands of online stores. With
each new interaction, Nosto is continuously learning what drives successful shopping
experiences so they can maximize the performance of individual store.

22. Helpful services for
online store owner
smartly.io | https://www.smartly.io/
Powering Beautifully Effective Ads. Smartly.io automates every step of social advertising to
unlock greater performance and creativity.
Stripe | www.stripe.com
Stripe is one of few serious alternatives to Paypal. Slightly more technical to integrate, Stripe is
much cheaper than receiving payments with Paypal, and has support for a wide variety of
payment methods.

23. OGOship as your
growth partner
OGOship Vantaa
OGOship Tallinn
OGOship Gothenburg
info@ogoship.com