Website Development Glossary
Website Development
Content Management System (CMS)
A software system that is used to edit the content on your website. This allows you to log in to the “back end” of your website to edit the text and images. Some examples include WordPress and Drupal. A CMS is designed to simplify the publication of website content, without requiring technical knowledge of code.
Development Operations (DevOps)
Continuous Delivery
A software engineering approach in which continuous integration, automated testing, and automated deployment capabilities allow software to be developed and deployed rapidly, reliably, and repeatedly with minimal human intervention.
Agile Methodology
Continuous Deployment
Continuous deployment aims to reduce the time elapsed between writing a line of code and making that code available to users in production. To achieve continuous deployment, the team relies on infrastructure that automates and instruments the various steps leading up to deployment, so that after each integration successfully meeting these release criteria, the live […]
Development Operations (DevOps)
Continuous Deployment
A software development practice in which every code change goes through the entire pipeline and is put into production automatically, resulting in many production deployments every day. It does everything that Continuous Delivery does, but the process is fully automated, and there’s no human intervention at all.
Agile Methodology
Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration is the practice of merging code changes into a shared repository several times a day in order to release a product version at any moment. This requires an integration procedure which is reproducible and automated.
Development Operations (DevOps)
Continuous Integration
A software development process where a branch of source code is rebuilt every time code is committed to the source control system. The process is often extended to include deployment, installation, and testing of applications in production environments.
Development Operations (DevOps)
Continuous Quality
A principle that preaches the continuous quest for quality across the entire SDLC, starting from requirements definition, code development, testing, and operations. Another key area of focus for Continuous Quality is the application code pipeline orchestration. There are many opportunities to negatively impact the quality of an application when code is being manually moved across […]
Development Operations (DevOps)
Continuous Testing
The process of executing unattended automated tests as part of the software delivery pipeline across all environments to obtain immediate feedback on the quality of a code build.
eCommerce
Conversion
When you transform an online store visitor into a paying customer.
Website Development
Conversion
When a user takes a specific desired action related to online marketing and lead generation. This includes completing a web form, submitting a request for information, subscribing to a newsletter or making an e-commerce purchase.
eCommerce
Conversion funnel
A Google Analytics metric that details the events that your customers follow to conversion. It’s called a funnel because a percentage of visitors leave your website at each event along the journey. At conversion, there are fewer potential customers than there were at the start.
eCommerce
Conversion rate
Conversion rate looks at the percentage of online store visitors who become paying customers. More on improving your conversion rates here. Here’s how to calculate conversion rates: [Paying Customers] / [Unique Visitors to Your Site] = Conversion Rate
eCommerce
Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
CRO is a marketing effort to drive conversions by improving an ecommerce website’s layout, content and design, landing pages, and sponsored search ads.
eCommerce
Cookies
Cookies are small text files a website sends to a visitor’s browser to store data related to that visitor’s interactions with the website. These text files are sent back to the server each time the visitor accesses the website. Cookies are mainly used for ad and content targeting, and for saving shopping cart information.
Website Development
Cookies
A small text file that includes an anonymous unique identifier and visit information that is sent to a browser from a website and stored on a visitor’s computer hard drive. This data can provide information about who visits the website, how often they visit, what parts of the site they visit the most and their […]
Agile Methodology
CRC Cards
Class Responsibility Collaborator (CRC) Cards are an object oriented design technique teams can use to discuss what a class should know and do and what other classes it interacts with.
eCommerce
Cross-selling
When a seller offers additional products that complement, enhance, or relate to a product being sold is cross-selling. For example, mobile phone coverage plans with a mobile phone. More on cross-selling and upselling in this guide.
Web3
Cryptocurrency
a digital asset designed to be used as a medium of exchange. Cryptocurrencies are borderless, secure, and maintained by blockchains as opposed to centralized banks or governments.
Website Development
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the code that developers use to designate how a web page should be presented to visitors. It formats the look and feel of your website, and sets global styles for fonts, colors, buttons, hover states, images, menus, etc.
WordPress CMS
CSS, HTML, PHP, JavaScript and jQuery
CSS, HTML, PHP and Javascript are all common, popular programming languages. They’re what developers use to build and design websites.
Agile Methodology
Customer Development
Customer development is a four-step framework that provides a way to use a scientific approach to validate assumptions about your product and business. (learn more)