Jargon of Website Design

How many of these jargons used in website design do you know?

If you have approach any web design company or agencies, you may have heard thousands of jargon used by their sales staff. But do you really understand all of them?

As a web design company, we do have our own sets of jargons we used daily internally and with our client. To make it easier for our client, we listed out some terms that we have used. We will update this list regularly, so do come back often to check this list when you need.

Web Page

According to Google’s quality guideline, a web page can be viewed by any browsers or phone. A webpage usually contains features and many forms for media (e.g. images, video and content).

Website

According to Google’s quality guideline, a website usually contains links to other sites and made by companies or individual.

Landing Page

According to Unbounced, a landing page is a stand-alone webpage that speaks about a specified service/product. It is created to market the particular service/product and is often tracked by analysis tools such as Google Analytics. Many digital marketers use a landing page for their ads.

Home Page

A home page is the first page of your website. A home should consist of content that you want your customers to know about. You can see common features like the overview of services, testimonial and portfolio commonly found in a home page. You should check out an article by Leadpages that compare a landing page and a home page.

Web Hosting

Web hosting is essential for web design and development.  It is the home for your website. Your website will be placed in a web hosting for the public to access. There are different types of web hosting ( shared hosting, VPS, Dedicated web host and cloud hosting) Some reputable web hosting companies are Godaddy, Vodien, Namecheap and Siteground

Domain Names

A domain name is your address to your website. There are different types of domain names extension like .com, .sg, .com.sg. For .com domain, it is typically $15 to $20 per year. A .com.sg and .sg will cost from $60- $150 per year. A .com.sg and .sg domain will require a ROC number. We recommended Cybersite and Namecheap for domain name purchase.

CMS (Content Management System)

A Content Management System (CMS) lets you create a website with ease. The system allows a web administrator to update a website without much content knowledge. A famous CMS used on many websites is WordPress.

Open Source CMS

The difference between an open source CMS and closed source CMS is that an Open Source CMS allow free downloads and can be used for any purposes. A closed source CMS is own by a company and you may not have the rights to the codes. You should check out this article to learn more about Open Source CMS and Closed source CMS and which should you use.

Leads Generation Form

A leads generation form generally require your customers to leave their contact details before download or access to another page or article. Having a leads generation forms can help you to gather more leads as users are more likely to leave their contact details with you to download your resource in return. You can see some good examples of leads generation forms here.

Page Builder

A page builder is an add-on or plugin of a CMS. It helps a user to build a website easily by dragging and dropping modules to the different location of the website. The common page builder for WordPress now is Divi Builder and WPBakery (F.K.A Visual Composer). Check out some comparison of divi and visual composer here.

Cpanel

A cpanel is a control panel for your server and hosting. You can access it manage your servers like uploading your files, create an email account and more. In some server, Plesk is used instead of Cpanel. Plesk Vs Cpanel.

Parallax Website Design

A parallax web design is when the background image and the foreground image moves in a different speed, causing an animation effect, usually as you scroll down the page. It is a common trend in website designing as it makes a website feel lively. See some great works of parallax design here or see some new trend of web design in 2018

Minimalist Web Design

A minimalist web design is a website design that focuses on the use of monotone colours. Colours like black and white are commonly used. This is to allow the website’s image to stand out. Commonly used on e-commerce website and website that has a lot of articles. See some best minimalist web design.

Full-Width Website

A full-width website is that has a banner stretch from side to the other side of the screen. It is usually used for a website that has large images. Because of its size, these banners are usually not used for promotional purposes. See some beautiful full-width websites here.

Contact Form

A contact form is used in many websites. A user of the website will usually look for the contact form to get in touch with the company or organisation. Many website themes come with a standard contact form, At Lemonade, we use Gravity Forms to create customised contact forms.

Hero Section

According to SitePoint, a hero section is the prominent part of the website. It is usually the first section of the website. A here section should focus on your service.

Web Navigation

A Web Navigation is the menu found in the header of the website. It allows your users to navigate around your website easily. You should read up more about things you need to know before starting your web design project.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

A Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a document file that contains the scripts of your website’s styling. It acts as a global setting for designs. According to Wikipedia, The name cascading comes from the specified priority scheme to determine which style rule applies if more than one rule matches a particular element. This cascading priority scheme is predictable.

HTML5

HTML5 is a markup language. It is one of the major upgrades from HTML. It is used to create layout and website structures. According to Wikipedia, HTML 5 was first released in public-facing form on 22 January 2008.

Below the fold

Below the fold is a term used by web designers. It refers to the portion of a website that users have to scroll down to read of view. See why Is Below the Fold Important?

Above the fold

Above the fold is a term used by web designers. It refers to the portion of a website that users see upon entering the page. See why Is Above the Fold Important?

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a term used in Google Analytics. It refers to the number of visitors who leaves your website without any interaction on the site. Read More about Bounce Rate from Google Support site.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are used on the top of pages to show the user the path they took to reach a certain page. It is useful to allow the users to go back to a certain page when needed. See some good practices of Breadcrumb, you can use on a website. 

Domain Name Server (DNS)

Domain Name Server is the address to the server of your website. It is used to point your domain to your server. A DNS can usually be found in the welcome email upon your server purchase. See how a DNS works. 

E-commerce

E-commerce is a website functionality that creates an online cart and payment gateway to allow customers to purchase products or services from the company’s website. Woocommerce is the most commonly used e-commerce plugin for WordPress.

Page view

A page view is the number of visitors you have on your website. If the visitors reloads the site again, it is counted as a new page view. Page view should not be the only statistics you look out for to create a successful website. 

Plugin

A plugin is an “app” that improves your website functionality. WordPress offers free and premium plugins, see what is the difference here.