Speak the Language of the Web
Talking with designers and developers is easier when you know the terms. Here are the most common ones, explained simply.
Structure and Navigation
- Header / Footer: the top area (logo, menu, search) and bottom area (contact details, terms, location) of each page. Best kept the same on every page.
- Home page: the main page of your site, where most visitors arrive.
- Menu / Navigation: the links that let visitors move around the site; a drop-down menu opens extra options under a main link.
- Breadcrumbs: a trail that shows where you are, such as Home > About > Our story.
- Anchor links: links that jump to sections further down a long page.
- Layout: the overall structure of a page: where content goes, fonts and sizes.
- Mock-up: a static image of how a page will look before it is built.
Content and Marketing
- Content: text, images, video, audio or animation, separate from design and navigation.
- Call to action: an element asking the visitor to act: call, buy, sign up.
- Banner / Slider: a promotional graphic, and a set of images that rotate.
- Metadata: "information about information", such as a page summary stored in the code. Essential for SEO.
- Open Graph: the metadata social networks show when someone shares your page.
- SEO: improving a site's position in search results.
- Tags / Categories: labels and groups that organise content and help navigation.
- Traffic: the visits your site receives.
Technology
- Browser: the program used to visit websites, such as Chrome, Firefox or Safari. The address bar shows the page's URL.
- URL / Domain / Subdomain: a page's address; the name that points to your site; and a sub-address like blog.example.com.
- Hosting: the server where your site's files live. FTP is one way to upload them.
- HTML, JavaScript, PHP: the languages that structure pages, add interactivity and power dynamic sites.
- HTTP / SSL: the protocol between browser and server, and the encryption behind "https".
- CMS and WYSIWYG: a system to manage your site without code, using an editor where what you see is what you get.
- Sitemap: a map of your site's structure that helps visitors and search engines.
- Favicon: the small icon next to your site's address in the browser.
- E-commerce: buying and selling online through an eshop.
Conclusion
Knowing the terms makes every website project smoother. If anything is unclear, Etherlogic is happy to explain.
