Terms explained

Website terms, in plain English

The words agencies use, and what each one actually tells you about your money. Every term answers one simple question.

Are people staying?Are people acting?Can people and AI find and trust you?

Are people staying?

Bounce rate

The share of visitors who land on a page and leave without doing anything else.

Answers: Did people stick around, or leave right away?

Engagement rate

GA4

Google Analytics 4's flip side of bounce rate: the share of visits that lasted 10+ seconds, viewed 2+ pages or completed an action. Higher is better.

Answers: Of everyone who came, how many actually paid attention?

Average engagement time

How long people actually spend with the page open and in front of them.

Answers: Did they read it, or glance and go?

Exit rate

The share of visits that end on a specific page. A high exit rate on a booking or checkout page is a red flag.

Answers: Which page is the last one people see before they leave?

Scroll depth

How far down a page people scroll. If most never reach your button, they never see the ask.

Answers: Did they get far enough to see the offer?

Engagement analysis

In your Fix Plan

Putting the numbers above together for your key pages: who leaves, how fast, and whether phones do worse than computers.

Answers: Where are people losing interest?

Heatmaps and session recordings

e.g. Microsoft Clarity (free)

Visual maps of where people click and scroll, plus anonymous replays of real visits. Flags rage clicks (clicking the same spot in frustration), dead clicks (clicking something that isn't a link) and quick backs (leaving right after arriving).

Answers: What are people actually doing on the page?

Page speed and Core Web Vitals

Google's measures of how fast a page loads, how quickly it responds to a tap, and whether it jumps around while loading. Slow pages lose people before they see anything.

Answers: Is the page fast enough that people wait for it?

Landing page

The page a visitor arrives on from an ad, email, post or search result. It has one job: get that visitor to take the next step.

Answers: Where do people first land, and does it work?

Are people acting?

Conversion

Any action you want a visitor to take: a sale, a booking, a quote request, a booking, a sign-up.

Answers: Did the visit turn into something?

Conversion rate

Conversions divided by visitors. 30 bookings from 1,000 visitors is a 3% conversion rate.

Answers: Out of everyone who came, how many acted?

Conversion tracking audit

In your Fix Plan

Checking that your analytics actually records sales, bookings, quote requests or bookings, not just visits. We submit a test form to prove it works.

Answers: Can we even prove what's working?

Funnel drop-off analysis

In your Fix Plan

Mapping each step from landing to thank-you page and counting how many people make it to each one. The biggest drop is where to fix first.

Answers: At which step do people quit?

Form abandonment analysis

In your Fix Plan

Comparing how many people start your form with how many finish it, sometimes field by field.

Answers: Which question on the form makes people give up?

Checkout or booking abandonment

People who start paying or giving and stop before the end. Usually caused by surprise fees, forced accounts, long forms or errors.

Answers: Who almost paid, and why didn't they?

Call to action (CTA)

The button or link that asks for the next step: Buy, Book, Get a quote, Donate.

Answers: Is it obvious what to do next?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

The ongoing work of finding why visitors don't act and fixing it, one tested change at a time.

Answers: How do we get more of the same visitors to act?

A/B testing

Also called split testing

Showing two versions of a page or button to different visitors to prove which one gets more results.

Answers: Which version actually works better?

Message match

Whether the page someone lands on matches the ad or link they clicked. A "20% off" ad should open a page about the 20% off, not your homepage.

Answers: Did we deliver what the ad promised?

Can people and AI find and trust you?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Google's free tool that records visits and actions on your site. Most of the analyses above come from it.

Answers: What happened on my site, and where did visitors come from?

Viewer access

Read-only access you grant from inside Google Analytics or Search Console. We can see reports; we can't change anything, and you never share a password.

Answers: How do we see your data safely?

Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

Free tools from Google and Microsoft that show which of your pages are listed in search, which aren't, and why.

Answers: Can search engines actually show my pages?

XML sitemap

A file that lists every page on your site so search engines and AI tools can find them all.

Answers: Do they know all my pages exist?

robots.txt and crawlers

Crawlers are the programs Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity use to read websites. robots.txt is a small file that tells them what they may read.

Answers: Are AI tools allowed to read my site?

Meta description

The one- or two-sentence summary that often appears under your link in Google. Without one, Google or AI writes its own.

Answers: What do people read about us before they click?

Structured data (schema)

Hidden labels in your page's code that tell machines your exact name, address, phone, prices and reviews, so they don't have to guess.

Answers: Can AI tell exactly who we are?

Open Graph (link previews)

Settings that control the title, description and picture shown when someone shares your link in a text or social post.

Answers: Does our link look good when shared?

Alt text (image descriptions)

Short descriptions of images for screen readers and AI tools, which can't see pictures.

Answers: Do our photos tell our story to everyone?

Accessibility and WCAG

Making sure people using keyboards, screen readers or larger text can use your site. WCAG is the standard checklist.

Answers: Can every customer or customer complete the form?

AI Overviews and AI answers

The answers Google, ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity write at the top of a search, often naming a few businesses or organizations. Being named there is the new first page.

Answers: Are we the one AI recommends?

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