Glossary
Design, technology and marketing terms explained simply and concretely – so we speak one language in projects.
Design & branding
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Full-service (360) agency
A full-service (360) agency handles every area of brand communication in one place: from strategy and visual identity, through the website, to campaigns and printed materials.
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Atomic design
Atomic design is a methodology for building interfaces from the smallest elements (atoms – button, field, label), through their combinations (molecules, organisms), up to templates and finished pages.
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Brand book
A brand book is the document that sets out how to use a brand's visual identity: logo construction, colours, typography, clear space, and examples of correct and incorrect use.
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CMYK vs RGB
CMYK is the colour model for print (cyan, magenta, yellow and black, mixed as inks on paper); RGB is the model for screens (red, green and blue, mixed as light). The same design needs values in both.
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Creative brief
A creative brief is the document that defines a task for a design team: the business goal, the audience, the scope, the constraints and the criteria for success. The better the brief, the fewer rounds of revisions.
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Design system
A design system is a living library of interface components together with rules for their use – a shared source of truth from which designers and developers build consistent digital products faster and without guesswork.
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Design tokens
Design tokens are a project's core values stored as data rather than graphics: colours, type sizes, spacing, shadows, animation timing – a single source of truth shared by designers and developers.
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Grid
A grid is the invisible arrangement of columns, rows and margins that organises the placement of elements on a page, screen or spread – the foundation of coherent, readable composition.
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Key visual
A key visual is a campaign's or brand's leading graphic motif – a repeatable composition of image, typography and colour that ties all communication materials into one recognisable whole.
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Logo vs logotype
A logotype is the company name set in distinctive lettering; a brand mark (symbol) is the graphic element; "logo" is the everyday umbrella term for the whole sign – symbol, logotype or their combination.
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Moodboard
A moodboard is an inspiration board – a curated set of images, colours, typography and textures that establishes the aesthetic direction of a project before actual design work begins.
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Naming
Naming is the process of creating a name for a brand, product or service: from strategy and generating candidates, through linguistic and legal checks, to verifying domain and trademark availability.
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Bleed and prepress (preflight)
Bleed is the area of a design extending beyond the trim line (usually 3–5 mm) that prevents white slivers along the edges after cutting. Prepress checking (preflight) is the technical inspection of a file before it goes to the printer.
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Rebranding
Rebranding is a deliberate change to how a brand looks and communicates: from refreshing the logo and identity to a new name and strategy. Companies do it when the existing brand stops supporting their goals.
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Tone of voice
A tone of voice is a brand's defined way of speaking and writing: word choice, sentence rhythm, level of formality and emotion. It's what lets you recognise a brand's communication even without the logo.
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Typeface vs font
A typeface is the design of the letters (e.g. Helvetica); a font is the computer file containing that design in a specific style (e.g. Helvetica Bold as a .woff2 file). A typeface is designed; a font is installed.
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Typography
Typography is the craft of selecting and composing type: typefaces, sizes, spacing and hierarchy. In brand and product design, typography carries a brand's character more strongly than any other element.
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UI kit
A UI kit is a set of ready interface components (buttons, fields, cards, navigation) in a design tool – the visual library from which a designer assembles screens.
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Visual identity
A visual identity is a brand's coherent system of graphic elements – logo, colour palette, typography, iconography and the rules for using them – that makes a company recognisable at every customer touchpoint.
UX & product design
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Digital accessibility (WCAG)
Digital accessibility means designing products everyone can use – including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive disabilities. WCAG is the international standard of accessibility guidelines.
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AX (AI experience)
AX (AI experience) is the design of experiences in which users collaborate with artificial intelligence: in-app assistants, conversational interfaces, smart suggestions and automations.
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Customer journey map
A customer journey map is a visualisation of a customer's entire path with a brand – from first contact through purchase to support – with emotions, touchpoints and friction at every stage.
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Design sprint
A design sprint is an intensive, several-day process (classically 5 days) in which a team goes from problem to a user-tested prototype of a solution – without months of meetings and documents.
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Information architecture
Information architecture is the design of a product's content structure: what lives where, what it is called and how users reach it. Good architecture makes everything feel like it is "exactly where it should be".
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Mockup
A mockup is a static, visually polished design of a screen – with final colours, typography and graphics but no working interactions. It shows what the product will look like before it is built.
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Persona
A persona is a synthetic portrait of a product's typical user – their goals, needs, frustrations and context – built from research and used by the team as a shared reference point for design decisions.
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Prototype
A prototype is a clickable simulation of a product – connected screens you can move through like a real application – used for user testing before programming begins.
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UI (user interface)
UI (user interface) is a digital product's visual layer: layout, typography, colour, components and their states. Good UI realises the structure designed in UX and gives it the brand's character.
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Usability testing
Usability testing is a study in which real users perform tasks in a product (or prototype) while a researcher observes where they get stuck and why. The fastest route from team opinion to facts.
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User flow
A user flow is the designed path a user takes to reach a goal in a product – the sequence of screens, decisions and actions, e.g. from cart to order confirmation.
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UX (user experience)
UX (user experience) is the whole of a user's experience with a product: whether it solves their problem, whether the path to the goal is logical, and whether using it takes no effort. UX is designed with research and testing, not opinion.
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UX research
UX research is the systematic study of users – their needs, behaviours and problems – through interviews, tests, surveys and data analysis, so that product decisions rest on evidence rather than guesses.
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Wireframe
A wireframe is a simplified sketch of a screen showing the layout and hierarchy of elements – without colours, photos or final typography. It is used to test structure quickly, before costly visual design begins.
Technology
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API
An API (application programming interface) is the standardised way programs talk to each other: a set of rules that lets one application fetch data from or delegate operations to another system.
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Backend
The backend is the part of a system invisible to users: the server, database and business logic that process requests, store data and enforce security.
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CDN (content delivery network)
A CDN (content delivery network) is a network of servers in many locations that stores copies of a site's files and serves them from the point nearest the user. The result: the site loads fast no matter which country the visitor is in.
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CMS & headless CMS
A CMS (content management system) lets you manage website content without writing code. A headless CMS separates the editing panel from the presentation layer: content travels via API to any frontend – a website, an app, an in-store screen.
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Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google's three metrics of perceived page quality: LCP (how fast the main content loads), INP (how fast the page responds to interactions) and CLS (visual layout stability). They influence search rankings.
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Domain, DNS & hosting
A domain is your site's address (yourcompany.com), hosting is the server where its files live, and DNS is the system that translates the domain into that server's address. Three separate services, often from three different providers – and it pays to know who controls which.
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Frontend
The frontend is the layer of a digital product the user sees and operates: the website or app interface running in the browser, built with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
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JAMstack
JAMstack is a web architecture in which ready, static HTML files are served from a fast CDN while dynamic features come from APIs. The result: sites that are lightning-fast, secure and resilient under load.
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MVP (minimum viable product)
An MVP is the smallest version of a product that genuinely solves users' problems and lets you verify the idea in the market – before you invest the full budget in features nobody may need.
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PWA (progressive web app)
A PWA is a website that behaves like a mobile app: it can be installed on the phone's home screen, works offline and sends notifications – without going through the App Store or Google Play.
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Responsive design & mobile-first
Responsive design means websites that automatically adapt their layout to the screen size – from phone to monitor. Mobile-first is the strategy of designing the mobile version first and expanding it to larger screens.
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SaaS
SaaS (software as a service) is a model in which software runs in the cloud and is paid for by subscription, with users accessing it through a browser – no installation, servers or maintenance of their own.
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SSL / HTTPS
HTTPS is the encrypted version of the protocol your browser uses to reach a site; the SSL/TLS certificate confirms the site's identity and protects transmitted data (passwords, forms, payments) from eavesdropping.
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Staging environment
Staging is a working copy of a website or application where changes are tested before going live – identical to production but invisible to customers and search engines.
E-commerce & analytics
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A/B testing
An A/B test is an experiment in which site traffic is split randomly between two versions (A and B) differing in one element, to determine on data which performs the goal better.
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Conversion & conversion rate
A conversion is a user completing a desired action – a purchase, an enquiry, a newsletter signup. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete that action.
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CRO (conversion rate optimization)
CRO is the systematic process of raising conversion: diagnosing where users drop off, forming hypotheses, testing changes on data and shipping the variants that win.
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CTA (call to action)
A CTA (call to action) is the element of a page that directly invites the user to act: an "Add to basket" button, a "Book a call" link or a sign-up form. A good CTA says exactly what will happen after the click.
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B2B & B2C e-commerce
B2C e-commerce sells online to consumers; B2B sells to companies. They differ more deeply than they look: B2B needs individual price lists, recurring orders, purchase approvals and integrations with the customer's systems.
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Heatmap
A heatmap is a visualisation of user behaviour on a page: colours show where people click, how far they scroll and where the cursor lingers. Red areas are hot spots of attention; blue ones are ignored.
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Landing page
A landing page is a page designed for one goal and one audience – e.g. a webinar signup or a service enquiry. It removes distractions and leads to a single call to action.
SEO & AI
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AEO (answer engine optimization)
AEO is the optimisation of content for engines that answer questions directly – Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, voice assistants – so that your page becomes the source of the displayed answer.
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Crawlers & AI bots
A crawler is a program that automatically visits websites and fetches their content. Alongside classic search-engine bots (Googlebot), AI bots now operate – GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot – gathering content for language models.
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AI hallucinations
An AI hallucination is a language model stating false information with full confidence: an invented number, a non-existent source, a wrong fact. It isn't a defect of one particular product but a natural consequence of how the models work.
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Canonical URL
A canonical URL is the "main" address of a piece of content, declared in the page code. It tells search engines which version to index when the same content is available under several addresses – with campaign parameters, with and without a trailing slash, in a print version.
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Chatbot vs AI agent
A chatbot is a program that holds a conversation: it answers questions from a script or with the help of a language model. An AI agent goes further: it understands a goal, plans steps and takes actions in other systems – checking a database, creating a ticket, sending an email.
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E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) is the set of criteria Google uses to judge how credible content and its authors are. It isn't a single ranking factor but a quality framework that genuinely affects visibility.
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LLM (large language model)
An LLM (large language model) is an AI model trained on vast amounts of text that processes and generates natural language: it answers questions, summarises documents, writes and analyses text. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all run on LLMs.
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llms.txt
llms.txt is a text file in a site's root directory that concisely describes, in a form readable by AI models, what the site is and where to find its most important content – a signpost for AI systems.
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Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are longer, specific queries with low search volume but clear intent – e.g. "ux audit online store cost". Individually they bring little traffic; added together they often bring more than generic phrases, and they convert far better.
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Meta title & meta description
The meta title is the page title shown in search results and on the browser tab; the meta description is the short snippet displayed beneath it. The title is a ranking factor; the description mainly determines whether people click.
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Prompt & prompt engineering
A prompt is the instruction you give an AI model: a question, a task, a set of rules. Prompt engineering is the craft of writing those instructions so the model returns predictable, useful results rather than a lottery.
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RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) is a technique in which a language model, before answering, retrieves information from a connected knowledge base – documents, a price list, a database – and answers based on those sources rather than its training memory alone.
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SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is the set of practices that increase a site's visibility in unpaid search results: from technology (speed, indexability), through content matching real queries, to authority built with links.
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Website migration & SEO
A website migration is any major change to a site: a new domain, new technology, a rebuilt URL structure. For SEO it's a moment of elevated risk: without a redirect plan you can lose hard-won visibility; with a good plan you usually keep it – and often improve it.
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Structured data (schema.org)
Structured data are markup tags in a page's code, invisible to humans, that describe its content in the schema.org standard – telling machines explicitly: this is a company, this is a product with a price, this is a question and its answer.
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