Affiliate program
Generally, it’s a program that you set up to pay others for sending you paying customers. As an affiliate of such a program you are paid when you send customers to another company. In short, it’s a system for reaching new online customers and increasing your revenues.

Angels
People who invest in start-up technology companies.

B2C
Abbreviation for “Business-to-Consumer.” It relates to sales and business models that focus on selling products and services to consumers.

B2B
Abbreviation for “Business-to-Business.” This relates to business offerings that focus on selling products and services to businesses.

Banner Ads
Advertisements on a Web page that link to the advertiser’s site.

Banner Network/Exchange
A program that allows you to trade online advertising on your site for advertising on other sites for free.

Clickstreams
The path an Internet user takes as he or she navigates a Web page or a series of Websites. Tracking this path is useful to marketers and advertisers in determining ad placements and offerings.

Clicks-through
The number of people who actually clicked on a banner in order to visit the advertiser’s site

Click-through rate
The number of clicks-through, compared with the number of times the banner ad was simply displayed. The click-through rate measures the effectiveness of the banner and its placement.

CPM
Abbreviation for “Cost Per Thousand.” Banner ads are typically sold and paid for based on how many thousands of times the banner will display on the site.

Content
The core material: information, goods, or services being presented on your Website.

Cookies
A small piece of computer code – as little as a single variable value – that a Website places on a client computer, allowing the operator of the Website to track and collect information about that computer user as he or she moves from one Web page to another.

Data Encryption
A security process that scrambles information into a secret code for secure transmission over the Internet.

Domain Name
A name registered by an individual, business or group used to identify a specific Internet location on a computer. The name, in words rather than a string of numbers, for the address of your Website.

e-tailing
Using the Internet to sell products and services.

e-commerce
Short for “electronic commerce,” referring to doing business online. The difference between e-commerce and e-tailing, is that e-tailing is typically limited to selling products online, where e-commerce includes everything from simply promoting your business, to providing online customer service and online stock trading, and may not necessarily involve transacting payments online.

Email marketing
Like direct mail online. This is the process of broadcasting commercial advertisements or solicitations to masses of people over the Internet.

Keyword listings
The process of using a search engine to purchase keywords or phrases which are relevant to your site in the course of reaching a certain quality or demographic of visitors.

Hit
Hits were used to determine how many visitors have accessed a Website, when it was thought that a “hit” represented one access by a visitor. Today, we understand better that when a page is accessed, a counter might determine that each graphic on the page is a hit. This makes hits a poor measure of a site’s true visitor count. Programs that track “unique visitors” offer more accurate visitor counts.

Homepage
The main, first or “front” page on a Website that serves as the starting point for navigating the site.

Impressions
Used in Internet advertising to describe the number of times a banner ad displays and presumably is seen by users.

Mall/Storefront
A virtual shopping mall where you can shop for and buy products and services on the Internet.

Page views
The number of times a server requests a Web page. More accurate than hits, this is the preferred measurement for counting traffic on a Website.

Privacy Statement
A posted policy about how you will use the personal information about visitors or purchasers that your site compiles.

RFQ/RFP
Request for quote, Request for proposal. Part of a reverse auction system where shoppers request quotes and sellers bid for the sale.

Scalability
How well a solution to some problem or a business plan continues to work, as the size of the problem or business grows.

Search Engine
A Website or program that allows you to find online resources by searching for keywords and phrases.

Search position/Search engine rankings
The order in which your site appears in a the listings of a specific search engine or directory. The goal is to be listed as close to the top of the category as possible to increase the possibility of generating traffic to your site.

Secure Server
A computer that uses special coding software to make sensitive information difficult to read by anyone not authorized to see it.

Shopping Cart
A program or a series of programs that let visitors to your site make selections from more than one page before sending in that order.

Site submission/Site announcement
The process of promoting a Website by registering the site with search engines and directories, so it can more easily be found.

Spam
Uninvited email messages or postings to newsgroups that are intended to promote a business or sell a product or service.

Traffic
The number of visitors to a Website.

Vertical Portal/Exchange
A narrowly focused Website, where the available services are confined to a specific category or industry.

Venture Capital
Money loaned to companies starting or building a high-risk business.

Web Address
The set of characters or numbers that identifies a computer location on the Internet.

Web Hosting
Services that provide connections to the Internet for the purpose of placing a Website online.

Website
A location on the World Wide Web.

Webmaster
Someone who keeps a Website running and available to its readers.

Go do it!

Glossaries of Internet Terms:

NetLingo
Internet 101
Glossary of Internet Terms

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