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Glossary of Terms – Cutting Through the Jargon

Glossary of Terms – Cutting Through the Jargon

If you come across people who like to speak in acronyms or jargon, then you probably won’t find that very helpful when you are just starting out or establishing the digital side of your business.

In this Take Five, we’re having a look at a few small but select digital terms that you may well come across when setting up your business and we hope that you won’t now have to ask what someone’s on about!

Websites

Domain Name – this is the address where visitors can access your website eg www.designandbesocial.com. 

Hosting Company – this is where your website lives (on their servers).

SSL -this should be added to your website when it goes live (a padlock will appear next to your domain name).  If it’s not there,  you then see “not secure” next to a domain name in a browser. SSL is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server (at the hosting company) and someone’s browser (eg Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer).

HTML & CSS – HTML is code that a basic website is written in and CCS stands for Cascading Style Sheet which means that if you alter the styling of something in CSS ie colour for your links – it changes everything throughout the site.

UX – User-Experience – so important and sometimes overlooked in preference for an over-designed look and flashy widgets.  A good UX means a site is designed with your customer in mind and ensures they can easily find what they are looking for (important!).

Social Media Marketing

Hashtags (#) – a # is a way of connecting your social media posts to other social media posts on the same subject eg an event or location.  You can also search for a specific hashtag which is relevant to your business by using a # search. This is more useful on Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn rather than Facebook.

@ Tagging –  tagging someone in a social media post or photo notifies that person (or page) that they have been mentioned or included in your update or photo.  It can help them/you join in with the social conversion or alert them/you to something interesting that they/you might like to share.  On your Facebook Busines Page, if you don’t have an @name underneath your Company Name, you can’t be tagged.

Bio – short summary of your business on your Facebook or Instagram page with important information and relevant links. Important – not to be neglected.

Scheduling – by planning and scheduling your posts using something like Buffer or Planoly you can save yourself the panic and rush of trying to post on the go.

KPIs – these are used to measure the success of Social Media and Advertising campaigns. Your KPIs can be any type of analytic you choose eg, engagement,  follower number growth, click-through rate or bounce rate.  This should be agreed on at the beginning of a campaign but regularly reviewed.

Facebook Advertising

Boosting a Post – boosted Facebook posts are less complex than Facebook Ads.  However, a boosted post is simply a regular Facebook post that you put money behind to reach a wider audience. An Ad offers more advanced solutions.

CTR and CPC – Click Through Rate and Cost Per Click – two metrics you should consider when looking at the data for your Facebook Ads.  The CTR (expressed as %) is the number of clicks on your advert divided by the number of impressions (the times it is seen).  The CPC is the price you pay for each click on your Facebook ad. 

Business Manager – this is where all your adverts should be run from.  You should set up your own Business Manager and then let others have access to your BM (not the other way round).  It also means you retain your own data and control of your page, audiences and previous ads, etc.

Audiences – these are created in your Facebook Business Manager and can be interest-based, location-based, visitors to your website, lookalikes of your audiences – the list goes on … This is who you show your ads to.

Facebook Pixel – this piece of code, created in your Business Manager, needs to be added to your website so that you can track and target visitors to your site.  If you’re running ads without a pixel (and there are even a couple of very large corporations who do this!) then you’re just wasting your money as you can’t utilise any data to create an ongoing strategy.

Images

Pixel Size – the actual size of your image.  An original image may be up to 6000 px in width but if it is being used on a website the image should be reduced considerably so as not to cause slow-loading of your site.

Pixellating – this is what happens to an image that is, say 200 px wide, and is increased to 500 px in width. The image becomes blurry.  If this happens you need to find the original image file and resize it correctly.

Cropping – this means removing unwanted areas from an image. This basic process is carried out in order to remove unwanted detail from a photo or to improve the overall composition.

Saturate – this means to increase the intensity of colour in a photograph.

Filters – by using specific software or an app, you can change the appearance of an image by altering its shade and colour.  Filters can be used to increase brightness and contrast as well as adding a  wide variety of tones, textures or special effects.

Digital Acronyms

B2B or B2C – Business to Business or Business to Customer – used in an advertising context.

CTA – This button used to grab your customers’ attention – to make them click, purchase or provide their email address. A CTA can be used on your website, in your email campaigns or in your social media advertisements.  It should be obvious.

ATC – Add to Cart – on an eCommerce store.

PPC – Pay Per Click – in relation to advertising.

ROAS – Return on Ad Spend – a metric used to show how effectively your money is being spent on digital advertising.

Is there anything digital you'd like to talk about?

If you’d like to dicuss anything further, then why not get in touch and we can have a chat.

Google Analytics – I’m confused. Where do I Start?

Google Analytics – I’m confused. Where do I Start?

Data – one of my favourite subjects (but not loved by all)!  I know many people shy away from data analysis but as I keep reiterating, there’s no point creating lots of amazing content and fantastic blogs if you don’t know if anyone is looking at them, what’s working, what’s not working and which are the popular pages on your site..

There is so much information in a Google Analytics account so I have picked five basic metrics to start which over time will provide an interesting overview of your website (and e-commerce business).  When you login to your account, the first thing to do is to decide the time period you’d like to cover and adjust that accordingly (top right hand side of the screen). If you are more confident in Google Analytics, then how about creating a customised dashboard to keep all the regular data streams that are important to you in one spot?  This can be shared with others so they are kept fully informed and up to date.  If you just want to keep it simple then choose the metrics that are important to your business and keep a simple spreadsheet regularly updated.

Desktop, Tablet or Mobile?

How are the majority of visitors to your website viewing it?  If many are looking via a mobile then what does your website look like on that platform?  Is it mobile-friendly and are the images optimised so they are not slowing the site speed by taking ages to download?  If you have an e-commerce business and the majority of your customers are trying to buy via mobile or tablet – what’s their user experience like?

Google Analytics Menu: Audience / Mobile / Overview

Landing & Popular Pages

Have a look to see where your visitors are arriving at your site.  Which products are they really interested in and which blogs are being read. Which are your most popular pages?  Equally, have a look to see what the bounce rate is for each page.  It may be the most viewed page but it may have the highest bounce rate.

Google Analytics Menu: Behaviour / Site Content / Landing Pages

Exit Pages

Whilst looking at the bounce rate, it’s also really worth seeing on which pages your visitors are leaving your site.  Why do you think this is?  Have they found what they were looking for, say contact details, or did they get bored of not finding what they wanted and disappeared off to another site?  Does your navigation menu need amending?  Have you lost sight of why people are visiting your site?

Google Analytics Menu: Behaviour / Site Content / Exit Pages

Where are your Visitors coming from?

Find out how visitors are discovering your business through the source/medium option on the menu. Then, if you scroll down a little bit further under Search Console you can then see which searches are sending visitors to your site.  Do these match your keywords? 

Google Analytics Menu: Aquisition / All Traffic / Source/Medium

Demographics

Where are the people from who are looking at your site?  If many of them live on the other side of the world and you are a very local business then something isn’t’ right. You can even see which city people looking at your site are from – fascinating!

If your business is in a particularly competitive field or you need to expand your brand awareness, then this might be the time to have a think about your SEO, trying Google or Facebook Ads and even updating your Google My Business page to try and stimulate your local, relevant customers.

Google Analytics Menu: Audience / Geo / Location


UPDATE: Universal Analytics (basically Google Analytics as we now know it) will no longer process new data from 1 July 2023. I would highly recommend setting up a Google Analytics 4 property immediately (and connect it to your website).

 

 

Would you like to find out more about what I do?

If you’d like to dicuss anything further, then why not get in touch and we can have a chat.