Glossary
Web development glossary
Short definitions of the terms that come up in project discussions, proposals and our articles. No jargon, no attempt to impress.
Websites and development
- Landing page
- A single-page site built around one target action — an enquiry, a purchase or a sign-up. What separates it from a multi-page site isn't size but the fact that it has exactly one job.
- Multi-page website
- A site with sections: services, case studies, blog, contacts. Needed when a visitor has something to study before deciding, and when search traffic across several topics matters.
- CMS
- A content management system — the admin panel through which a site owner edits text, products and news without a developer.
- MVP
- Minimum viable product — a first version containing the set of features without which the product doesn't work. Everything else gets added based on real user behaviour.
- Turnkey website
- A project handed over ready to work: analysis, design, development, content, SEO preparation and launch. Promotion and advertising usually aren't included — worth confirming separately.
- Technical specification
- A document fixing goals, scope and acceptance criteria. Its job isn't to describe every pixel but to make sure client and developer are picturing the same result.
- Responsive layout
- A layout approach where the page renders correctly on any screen size, from a phone to a wide monitor. In 2026 this is the baseline, not an option.
Architecture and technology
- Frontend
- The part of a site that runs in the user's browser: interface, layout, interaction with page elements.
- Backend
- The server side: database, enquiry-handling logic, integrations. Users never see it, but whether an enquiry actually reaches a manager depends on it.
- API
- The interface through which one system passes data to another — a site sending an enquiry to a CRM, for example. “Setting up an integration” usually means working with an API.
- SSR
- Server-side rendering — the page is assembled on the server and arrives in the browser ready. It matters for search: without it a crawler may receive an empty page instead of content.
- PWA
- Progressive web app: a site that installs on a phone like an app, works offline and supports push notifications, without needing to be published in an app store.
- CRM
- A system for tracking client work: enquiries, deals, tasks, conversation history. It answers the question “what is happening with this client right now”.
- ERP
- A system for managing internal processes: inventory, finance, procurement, production. Unlike a CRM it looks inward at the business rather than outward at the client.
- Hosting
- The server the site physically lives on. A domain is the address, hosting is the premises; they are different services and often different providers.
- Domain
- A site's address. It isn't bought forever — it's leased for a term and needs renewing, otherwise it is released and anyone can take it.
SEO and search
- Indexing
- A page entering a search engine's database. A page can open in a browser and still be absent from the index — these are different things.
- Canonical
- A tag pointing at the primary version of a page among duplicates. A common mistake is a canonical to the homepage from every page: the site is then telling the search engine that nothing but the homepage is needed.
- hreflang
- Markup linking the language versions of one page. It only works reciprocally: if the Russian version points at the English one, the English one must point back.
- robots.txt
- A file of crawl rules for search robots. It controls crawling but does not remove already-indexed pages — that needs different tools.
- Sitemap (sitemap.xml)
- A list of URLs a search engine should crawl. Only canonical pages returning a 200 belong in it — a sitemap full of redirects gets partly ignored.
- Semantic core
- A list of target queries grouped by intent. The grouping matters more than the list itself: different intents need different pages.
- Keyword cannibalisation
- When several pages on a site compete for the same query and split the signals between them instead of reinforcing one.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's three metrics: LCP (when the main content appears), INP (how quickly the interface responds) and CLS (how much the page shifts while loading).
- GEO
- Optimisation for AI search: ChatGPT, Perplexity and similar. It differs from classic SEO in that the goal is being cited in an answer rather than placing in a list.
- Schema.org
- A structured-data standard describing page content in a machine-readable way. Only mark up what a user can actually see on the page.
- Backlink
- A link from someone else's site to yours. To a search engine it's a vote of trust; the number and quality of such links is one of the main ranking factors for competitive queries.
Analytics and conversion
- Conversion rate
- The share of visitors who complete a target action. It's measured from a specific step rather than “across the site” — otherwise the number means nothing.
- UTM tags
- Parameters in a page URL showing where a visitor came from. They let you separate paid traffic from organic and measure a channel's performance.
- End-to-end analytics
- Connecting the data from an ad click through to money received, via a chain of identifiers. Without it a dashboard is just adding up numbers that don't compare.
- CTR
- Clicks divided by impressions. In search, a low CTR at a good position usually means the title and description don't answer the query.
- Bounce
- A visit where the user left without taking any action. A high bounce rate isn't automatically bad — on a page that answers a question it's normal.
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