Glossary
Design and website terms, explained.
Plain-English meanings for the words you'll hear when building a brand or website. One or two sentences each.
Brand
- Brand identity
- The visible parts of a brand, such as logo, colours, fonts and images, that make a business recognisable.
- Brand guidelines
- A short document explaining how to use the logo, colours, fonts and tone of voice correctly.
- Tone of voice
- The personality in a brand's writing, for example friendly and plain, or formal and precise.
- Logo lockup
- A fixed arrangement of a logo's symbol and name, such as side by side or stacked.
Design
- UX (user experience)
- How easy and pleasant a website or app is to use, from first visit to finished task.
- UI (user interface)
- The screens, buttons, menus and forms a person sees and touches.
- Wireframe
- A simple sketch of a page that shows what goes where, without colours or images.
- Prototype
- A clickable model of a website or app used to test ideas before building.
- Responsive design
- A layout that rearranges itself to fit phones, tablets and computers.
- Accessibility
- Designing so people with disabilities, including those using screen readers or keyboards, can use a site.
Build
- CMS (content management system)
- Software such as WordPress that lets you edit website pages without writing code.
- Domain name
- Your website's address, for example yourcompany.com.
- Hosting
- The rented computer space where your website's files live so people can visit them.
- SSL certificate
- A security file that encrypts traffic and shows the padlock and https in the browser.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's measures of how fast a page loads, how quickly it responds and how stable it looks while loading.
- Redirect
- A rule that sends visitors and search engines from an old web address to a new one.
Search and measurement
- SEO (search engine optimisation)
- Work that helps search engines understand your pages and show them to the right people.
- AEO (answer engine optimisation)
- Writing and structuring content so answer boxes and voice assistants can quote it directly.
- GEO (generative engine optimisation)
- Making content easy for AI tools such as chat assistants to understand, trust and cite.
- Keyword
- A word or phrase people type into a search engine.
- Meta description
- A short summary of a page that search engines may show under the page title in results.
- Structured data
- Hidden labels in a page's code that tell search engines exactly what the page contains.
- Google Search Console
- A free Google tool that shows how your site appears in search and flags problems.
- Google Analytics (GA4)
- A free Google tool that shows how many people visit your site and what they do there.
Next step
Still have a question?
Ask us in a meeting. We're happy to explain anything in plain English.