Term	Description
Accessibility	Basically, this is the ability of a website to be used by people with disabilities, including visually impaired visitors using screen readers, hearing impaired visitors using no sound, color blind people, or those with other disabilities. A website with low accessibility is basically going to be impossible for those with disabilities to use. Accessibility is particularly important for sites providing information to those with disabilities (healthcare sites, government sites, etc.), though it is an important aspect to consider when designing any site.
Affiliate	Individuals or business that, for a commission rate, generates sales, leads or clicks from a website by promoting products or services for a merchant using an affiliate program. Affiliate uses e.g. banner ads or text links to refer website traffic to merchant landing page.
Affiliate Program	A program through which a merchant pays a commission to an affiliate for generating clicks, leads, or sales. Also known as an associate, partner, referral, or revenue sharing program.
AJAX	Stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. AJAX is typically used for creating dynamic web applications and allows for asynchronous data retrieval without having to reload the page a visitor is on. The JavaScript on a given page handles most of the basic functions of the application, making it perform more like a desktop program instead of a web-based one.
Anchor Text	The text a link uses to refer to your site. This can make a big difference in your site’s search engine results. See also: Backlink.
Associate	Synonym for affiliate.
Back End	The back end of a website is the part hidden from view of regular website visitors. The back end generally includes the information structure, applications, and the CMS controlling content on the site.
Backlink	Backlinks are links from other sites back to your own. They’re sometimes also referred to as “trackbacks” (especially on blogs). Backlinks have a huge impact on your sites search rankings. Lots of backlinks from high-ranking sites can greatly improve your search engine results, especially if those links use keywords in their anchor text.
Bandwidth	Bandwidth can refer to two different things: the rate at which data can be transferred or the total amount of data allowed to be transferred from a web host during a given month (or other hosting service term) before overage charges are applied. It is generally referred to in term of bits-per-second (bps), kilobits per second (kbs), or other metric measurements. Lower bandwidth internet connections (such as dial-up) mean data loads slower than with high bandwidth connections (like cable or fiber).
Banner Ads	A typical Internet marketing tool allowing advertisement links to be shown as an image, movie or animation.
Below the Fold	This term is a carry-over from newspaper publishing days. In newspaper terms, “below the fold” means content was on the bottom half of the page (below the physical fold in the paper). In web design terms, “below the fold” refers to the content that is generally going to be below the point first viewable to the average website visitor in their browser (in other words, viewers would have to scroll down to see the content).
Blog	A popular type of website, often based on a CMS where publishers easily can post opinions, news, videos and pictures allowing its visitors to comment. With a very typical easy-to-read layout blogs are often described as online diaries when many use them for personal reflection. Blogging became vastly popular with blogging cooperative such as BlogSpot and WordPress.
Bounce Rate	A website’s bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave the site from the same page they entered the site, without clicking through to any other pages. This can be a good indicator of how good a website’s navigation is, as well as an indicator of the quality of the site’s content (a very high bounce rate doesn’t bode well for either of those things).
Breadcrumb	Breadcrumbs are the bit of navigation elements that generally appear near the top of a give web page that show you the pages and subpages the appear before the page you’re on. For examples, on a blog, the breadcrumbs might look something like: Home > Category > Year > Month > Post (or they might be a lot simpler that that). The breadcrumbs term comes from the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel.”
Browser	Browser refers to the program a website visitor is using to view the web site. Examples include Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and Internet Explorer.
Cache	Cached files are those that are saved or copied (downloaded) by a web browser so that the next time that user visits the site, the page loads faster.
Cascading Style Sheets	Also referred to simply as CSS, Cascading Style Sheets are used to define the look and feel of a web site outside of the actual HTML file(s) of the site. In recent years, CSS has replaced tables and other HTML-based methods for formatting and laying out websites. The benefits to using CSS are many, but some of the most important are the simplification of a site’s HTML files (which can actually increase search engine rankings) and the ability to completely change the style of a site by changing just one file, without having to make changes to content.
Client-Side	Client-side refers to scripts that are run in a viewer’s browser, instead of on a web server (as in server-side scripts). Client-side scripts are generally faster to interact with, though they can take longer to load initially.
Comment	In web design terms, a comment is a bit of information contained in a site’s HTML or XHTML files that is ignored by the browser. Comments are used to identify different parts of the file and as reference notes. Good commenting makes it much easier for a designer (whether the original designer or someone else) to make changes to the site, as it keeps it clear which parts of the code perform which functions. There are different comment formats for different programming and markup languages.
Commission	The income an online affiliate gets for generating a sale, lead or click-through based on the merchant''s settings.