Alphabet Soup: Moving Beyond Acronyms Pt. 2

If you’ve never worked with a web design company before, on first meeting them you may hear a dizzying array of terminology and acronyms. The designer isn’t trying to impress you with jargon, they’re just speaking the language of the industry. It is extremely helpful if the client has some idea of what the designer is talking about, as both can communicate more clearly. Here are some frequently used terms in web design.

bounce rate
A website’s bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit one page of the site, usually via a search engine, and exit the site without clicking through to any other pages. This can be because the user was looking for something else. However, a high bounce rate can be an indicator of bad navigation, site design, or content.

landing page
A landing page is one a visitor sees when they first enter your site. The homepage of your site is one example of a landing page. If a website is very large, each main section of the site may have its own landing page. The function of a landing page is to describe what is contained in the content pages behind it.

new visitor
A new visitor to a site is one who has never come to a website before. This type of information can be gleaned from your website’s analytics. A high number of new visitors is always great, but only if those new visitors become repeat visitors and/or customers.

organic search
Organic search results are those search results for specific terms that are not paid advertisements or paid search results. Organic search is often seen by users as more trustworthy than paid. You should engage in good search engine optimization practices in order to increase your organic search ranking.

repeat visitor
A repeat visitor to a website is one who comes back to the same website regularly or even frequently. If your site has a good number of repeat visitors, it means your site has value for those people.