eCommerce Glossary and A-to-Z Acronyms

With constant changes and new programs rolling out from key marketplaces, it can be hard to keep up with all that eCommerce sellers need to know. Go ahead and bookmark this page as your top eCommerce glossary, conveniently organized by functional areas.

Keep in mind that a lot of these key terms can fit into multiple categories. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, keep scrolling. 😉

Advertising

Advertising across eCommerce is constantly changing. While digital advertising as a whole has some consistent terminology, there are a few terms unique to different marketplaces. 

• Above the Fold: Describes the visible screen estate of an ecommerce website a user sees without scrolling. It is also often referred to as “above the scroll”.
• Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS): Metric measuring ad spend relative to attributed sales. Calculated as (Total Ad Spend / Total Attributed Sales) x 100
• Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC): Cloud-based analytics platform for unified marketing and advertising measurement.
• Amazon Media Group (AMG): Manages display and video advertising solutions
• Attribution Window: The period after an ad interaction (click or view) during which a conversion is credited to that ad. Amazon typically uses a 14-day attribution window for most ad types
• Audience Builder: Feature in Amazon DSP for creating custom audience segments
• Branded Search Rate: The percentage of impressions that come from searches including your brand name.
• Campaign: Organized set of ad groups in advertising
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The ratio of clicks to impressions. Calculated as (Clicks / Impressions) x 100.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of clicks that result in a sale. Calculated as (Orders / Clicks) x 100
• Conversion Value: The total monetary value of conversions attributed to your ads
• Cost Per Click (CPC): The average amount you pay for each click on your ad. Calculated as Total Ad Spend / Total Clicks.
• Cross-Device Tracking: Ability to track user interactions across multiple devices
• Data Clean Room: Secure environment in Amazon Marketing Cloud for analyzing first-party data
• Dayparting: Dayparting is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising tactic by which you schedule ads for certain times of day or certain days of the week in order to more effectively target audiences.
• Defensive Strategy: Advertising strategy to protect branded search terms
• Detail Page Views (DPV): The number of times shoppers viewed the details of your advertised products.
• DSP Audience Insights: Tool in Amazon DSP for understanding audience characteristics and behaviors
• Earned Media Rate: The ratio of earned (organic) impressions to paid impressions for Sponsored Brands campaigns
• Frequency Capping: Feature in Amazon DSP to limit the number of times an ad is shown to a user
• Impressions: The number of times your ads were displayed
• Lifecycle Stage Targeting: Feature in Amazon DSP to target users based on their position in the customer journey
• Lookalike Audiences: Feature in Amazon DSP to find new customers similar to existing ones
• New-to-Brand Metrics: Data on first-time customers acquired through advertising
• New-to-Brand Orders: The number of orders from customers who haven’t purchased from your brand in the past 12 months
• New-to-Brand Order Rate: The percentage of total orders that are New-to-Brand
• OTT (Over the Top): Video content delivered via the internet, used in Amazon advertising
• Placement Performance: Analysis of how ads perform in different placements (top of search, product pages, etc.).
• Pay-Per Click (PPC): Advertising model where advertisers pay for each click.
• Quality Score: Amazon’s assessment of an ad’s relevance and performance
• Real-Time Bidding: Feature in Amazon DSP allowing instantaneous auction-based ad buying.
• Return on Advertising Spend (RoAS): The ratio of attributed sales to ad spend. Calculated as Total Attributed Sales / Total Ad Spend.
• Search Impression Share: The percentage of available impressions that your ads received for a given search term
• Share of Voice: The percentage of all ad impressions within your product category that your ads receive
• Sponsored Brand Ads: Ads featuring a brand logo, custom headline, and multiple products; formerly known as Headline Search Ads
• Sponsored Display Ads: Ads targeting specific products or customer interests
• Sponsored Product Ads: Ads for individual product listings.
• Total Advertising Cost of Sales (TACoS): The ratio of ad spend to total sales (both organic and paid). Calculated as (Total Ad Spend / Total Sales) x 100.
• Unified Analytics: Feature in Amazon Marketing Cloud for holistic measurement across channels
• View-Through Conversion: Conversion attributed to an ad impression without a click (tracked in Amazon DSP)
• View-Through Rate: The percentage of ad impressions that result in a conversion without a click, typically measured for display and video ads
• Voice Search Optimization: Adapting content for voice-activated search queries.

Amazon

Amazon is the most well-known online marketplace. With its breadth in the industry comes its own glossary of key terms unique to the marketplace and overall seller (and shopper) experience.

• A+ Content: Enhanced product descriptions for brand-registered sellers on Amazon 
• A-to-Z Guarantee: The A-to-Z Guarantee is Amazon’s customer protection scheme that ensures the on-time delivery and stated condition of items sold by third-party sellers. If items arrive in a damaged state or are not delivered by the merchant in the first place, Amazon will refund the customer.
• Amazon Associates: Amazon’s affiliate marketing program, available to those who apply
• Amazon Attribution: Amazon Attribution is an advertising and analytics measurement solution that gives marketers insight into how their non-Amazon marketing channels perform on Amazon.
• Amazon Business: B2B marketplace on Amazon, offering discounts to applicable business buyers
• Amazon Choice Badge: Badge given to highly-rated, well-priced products
• Amazon DSP (Demand Side Platform): Programmatic ad buying platform for display, video, and audio ads across Amazon sites, apps, and third-party exchanges.
• Amazon Influencer Program: The Amazon Influencer Program is an extension of the Amazon Associates program, that brings product-related content from Influencers onto Amazon to help customers research and discover products they might be interested in.
• Amazon Prime: Subscription service offering free shipping and other benefits, like Prime Video, Prime Music, and more
• Amazon Vine: Amazon Vine is an invitation-only program which selects the most insightful reviewers in the Amazon store to serve as Vine Voices. Vine Voices have the unique opportunity to order items free of charge and share their product experiences with Amazon customers to help them make informed buying decisions.
• ASIN: Amazon’s Standard Identification Number; a unique 10-character alphanumeric identifier for a product on Amazon. It is linked to a unique SKU/EAN/ISBN code and is used as a reference to manage cataloge attributes, prices, and inventory of a product.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS): AWS provides servers, storage, networking, remote computing, email, mobile development, and security.
• Brand Registry: Brand Registry is a program designed to protect brands and their intellectual properties on Amazon. It enables merchants with registered trademarks to accurately represent their brands and to enroll for processes that address infringement on the Amazon marketplace.
• Buy Box: Featured offer on a product detail page
• Early Reviewer Program: Initiative to encourage reviews on new products
• Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA): Fulfillment by Amazon is an eCommerce service with which sellers can store their inventory in Amazon’s fulfillment centers. When customers purchase a product, Amazon picks, prepares, and ships the order directly to the customer.
• Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM): Sellers manage their own storage and shipping, whether through their own warehouse, 3PL, or combination.
• Feedback: Commentary coming from shoppers about the brand they purchased from. This is essentially a review of the company and customer experience. 
• Inventory Performance Index (IPI): Measures how efficient and productive you are in managing your FBA inventory. It ranges from 0 to 1,000 — the higher, the better.
• Lightning Deals: Time-limited discounts featured on Amazon. These are always available, but most prevalent during shopping events like Prime Day, Cyber 5, and more.
• MWS: Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) is an integrated web service API that helps Amazon sellers to programmatically exchange data on listings, orders, payments, reports, and more. Data integration with Amazon enables high levels of selling automation, which can help sellers grow their business. By using Amazon MWS, sellers can increase selling efficiency, reduce labor requirements, and improve response time to customers.
• Reviews: The evaluation of a product or service, published by a customer who experienced or used the product or service. Customer reviews usually evaluate and describe the functionality, ease of use and perceived value-for-money ratio of a product or service.
• Seller Central: Portal for third-party sellers to manage their accounts
• Storefront: Customizable multi-page shopping destination for individual brands on Amazon; Brand Registry is required
• Subscribe & Save: Shoppers can set up regularly scheduled deliveries and earn savings on recurring deliveries. Unlock extra savings on eligible subscriptions when you receive five or more products in one auto-delivery to one address. 
• Transparency: Available to Brand Registered sellers; Transparency uses secure, unique codes that identify individual units, stop counterfeits from reaching customers, improve customer engagement, and give brands valuable insights to help optimize supply chains.
• Vendor Central: Portal for first-party sellers (vendors) to manage their accounts

Walmart

Walmart may have gotten its start with brick-and-mortar stores, but its eCommerce entity is fast on the rise. As features continue to evolve and develop, this set of terms will only grow. 

• Buy Online, Pickup In Store (BOPIS): Customers visit a retailer’s website, purchase the items they want online, and then pick them up in the store.
• Everyday Low Price (EDLP): Sam Walton’s way to bring “Live Better for Less” into the lives of millions of people: Instead of having occasional sales, charge customers low prices all the time.
• Product ID: “Product ID” is Walmart’s name for its product categorization system
• Seller Center: The portal to locate your retail data
• Sponsored Search: Sponsored Search refers to the category of ads—Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Videos—that appear in search results and on product pages across Walmart.com. 
• The Trade Desk: The Trade Desk is Walmart Connect’s partner in its DSP program. The Trade Desk essentially facilitates automatic bidding in multiple auctions at once. Through the Trade Desk, advertisers can easily bid for ads across the web and across platforms—all while using Walmart Connect’s sophisticated targeting data. 
• Walmart+: (often shortened to W+) Walmart’s subscription service, which bundles together shipping discounts to shoppers willing to pay a monthly fee. 
• Walmart Ad Center: Brands and agencies manage their ads from the Walmart Ad Center. 
• Walmart Connect: Walmart Connect is the name for Walmart’s overall ad business. 
• Walmart DSP: The Walmart DSP allows experienced sellers to bid in multiple auctions at once across multiple sites. Select brands that have mastered Sponsored Search ads can use the Walmart DSP to reach shoppers on streaming TV, social platforms, and other non-Walmart sites. 
• Walmart Exclusives: Products with brand names that are sold exclusively at Walmart. This includes derivative brands of national brands.
• Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS): Want Walmart to ship and warehouse your products for you? Walmart has its own, in-house fulfillment option for sellers, called Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS). The equivalent on Amazon is Fulfillment by Amazon.

General eCommerce

If this isn’t enough, there are even more key terms online sellers need to know to keep up. These terms relate to general marketing, business optimization, and more!

• A/B Testing: The experiment of showing two variants of the same web page, marketing campaign, etc. to different segments of consumers at the same time to compare which variant drives more conversions.
• Affiliate Marketing: A marketing arrangement where a publisher and an advertiser join forces to market to the consumer. The publisher promotes a service or product on their website or social media channel. If the consumer buys the product, the publisher gets a commission fee from the advertiser.
• B2B: The term Business to Business eCommerce refers to the sale of goods between two businesses via an online shop or marketplace.
• B2C: The term Business to Consumer eCommerce refers to the sale of a product between a business and a consumer for personal use. The financial transaction takes place over the Internet.
• Best Seller Rank (BSR): Indicator of a product’s sales performance in its category
• Bundling: The process of pairing two or more products together and selling them to consumers as a combined package. This can be done as a pre-packaged bundle, or even a virtual bundle.
• Buyer Persona: A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer that you create from audience and market research. Personas include essential information about your target customer (like demographics, behavior, interests, challenges, etc.) and help you better reach them and meet their needs.
• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): Refers to the direct production costs of the goods sold by a company. In other words, it describes how much it costs to produce a product. COGS include direct raw material and labor expenses, but exclude indirect cost components, such as marketing and shipping.
• Dropshipping: A retail fulfillment method where a retailer or merchant transfers its customer’s orders to a third party to process and ship the products.
• DTC: Direct to consumer (DTC) is when a brand or manufacturer sells its own products to its end customers. The DTC retail model involves selling products without the help of third-party retailers or wholesalers. DTC brands can establish direct relationships with consumers, and gain valuable insights.
• Gross Merchandise Sales: Total value of merchandise sold through a marketplace
• Influencers: An influencer is anyone who has a meaningful social media following, often used as part of a robust marketing plan to promote products and grow a sellers’ overall reach. 
• Keywords: Words or phrases used to target ads or improve product discoverability.
• Key Performance Indicator (KPI): A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that allows businesses to track and analyze their performance over a certain period of time. 
• Landed Cost: Landed cost represents the total cost of a product on its journey from the factory floor to your buyer’s door. It includes the price of goods, shipment costs, insurance fees, customs duties, and any other charges incurred along the way.
• Lifetime Value (LTV or CLV): The predicted total revenue a customer will generate over their entire relationship with your brand
• Long-Tail Keywords: Specific, usually longer keyword phrases
• Marketplace: eCommerce site that offers many different products from many different sellers
• Minimum Order Quantity: Smallest number of units a seller will produce or ship
• Multi-Channel Fulfillment: Using Amazon’s fulfillment services for non-Amazon sales (or WFS)
• Omnichannel: A multichannel approach aiming to create a seamless customer experience across multiple touchpoints along the customer journey. An omnichannel approach ensures that messages, prices, and marketing offers are aligned across channels.
• Private Label: Refers to products that are sold by a retailer under its own brand but produced by a third-party manufacturer. These products are typically sold at a lower price point and as a direct alternative to products from national or international brands.
• Reseller: A reseller is a company or individual that purchases goods with the intention of selling them rather than consuming or using them.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The practice of improving the organic search rank of a website to drive visibility and traffic from search engine result pages.
• Social Commerce: Social commerce is the buying and selling of goods or services directly within a social media platform. It involves taking social media beyond its traditional role in the discovery process
• Social Proof: This phenomenon is also called informational social influence, and essentially it’s the idea that people copy the actions of others in an attempt to emulate behavior in certain situations.
• Return on Investment (ROI): A profitability metric that takes into account all costs, not just ad spend. Calculated as (Revenue – Costs) / Costs.
• Retail Readiness: A product’s preparedness for successful selling online
• UPC (Universal Product Code): Standard barcode for retail packaging 
• Voice Search: Voice search is a rapidly growing technology that allows users to perform a search or give commands to a smart device using speech rather than typing. These devices use a mix of speech recognition technology and search engine keyword queries to return a relevant answer to the user.
• Wholesale: Refers to the practice of buying products in bulk at low prices, with the intention to re-sell them to other retailers. A wholesaler sits as the ‘middlemen’ between the manufacturer and the seller.

Make Sense of the eCommerce Glossary

Honestly, this is a lot to keep up with, whether you’re new to eCommerce or you’re a seasoned seller on multiple marketplaces. Work with the experts to keep track of these key metrics, features, and more. Book a demo with Trellis today to save time (and sanity) as you scale your eCommerce business.