A web design glossary - for non-techies
You know when you get talking to a web designer and halfway through the conversation you realise you are not speaking the same language? Most people are too embarrassed to say “What the f*** does that mean?” But I was taught in my early days as a newspaper reporter that if the news editor ever said WTFDTM, it was time for a rewrite.
My job as a cub reporter back then was to make sure that everyday folk would not have to struggle to understand the meaning of my carefully crafted words. My job was not to win literary prizes after all, it was simply to tell stories.
I still remember those early lessons and make it my mission to avoid tech jargon whenever I can (or at least to explain myself if there’s a need to use a jargon word). So, for all of you out there thinking about working with a web designer but afraid of looking silly, here’s my glossary of web design terms to help you out.
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A 404 page is the page you see on a website when you accidentally miss-typed a web address or followed a bad link. Here's my 404 page. I create custom 404 pages for all my bespoke websites.
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This is really an old-fashioned term from the days when people read broadsheet newspapers that were folded in half. Anything above the fold could be seen by people even without opening the paper which makes it the most valuable part of the paper for advertising. The same is true for websites - above the fold signifies what can be seen by a user before they have to scroll.
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This is the text description given to images or graphics on a screen to assist people who are visually impaired to understand what they are looking at. It also helps search engines find and classify content.
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This is just a fancy way of saying what pages exist on a website.
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A backlink is a link from any external site to your site. The more backlinks you have, the more search engines will trust that your site is legit. This is a term used in SEO.
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The word blog is derived from web log which just means a piece of writing stored on the internet but typically is part of a series of articles. Originally they were used like online journals. Vlogs are video blogs.
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The browser is the piece of software you use to look at the internet. Browsers include Chrome (Google), Safari (Apple), Firefox (Mozilla) and Edge (Microsoft).
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Stands for Content Management System. Squarespace includes a CMS. It's where you store pages, images, videos and other content for your website and organise them to make up your whole site.
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CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. You may hear designers talk about 'custom CSS'. This is when they use small snippets of code to alter the way something on a website looks (such as colour, typeface or effects).
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A CTA is a Call to Action and is usually a button. It has two elements: the text which is calling to the user to take action (such as 'click here') and a link which will take them somewhere or perform an action (such as submit a form).
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The domain is your web address and the foundation of your URLs.
My domain is caxtonwebsites.com
A URL for my domain is caxtonwebsites.com/marketing-advice
Domains are hosted in a different place than your website. They fetch data from your website when a user visits the domain.
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You will typically have two 'hosts' - a domain host (see domains) and a website host.
A host is another name for a server. A server is a large computer array that often handles millions of bits of data per second.
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Hyper Text Markup Language is the basis of the internet. Most websites are built using HTML.
HTML determines the placing of elements on a website and some of the actions and the way things look (combined with CSS and Javascript).
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An iFrame allows you to embed something from another site into your own site, making it look as if it is part of your site. It's achieved with a small snippet of code that a web designer can manipulate to make it look the way they want.
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A mobile app is different to a website. It's designed specifically for mobiles and has special features that you might not find in a 'full size' website.
Games are apps.
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Mobile first design means that you and your designer have determined that most of your users will visit your website via their phone rather than via a laptop, desktop or tablet.
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A mock-up is a flat design to show you how a website could look. Designers will often create two or three mock-ups for you to choose from before they begin to build the site for you.
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Most websites today are built as 'responsive'. It means that they look fine on all sizes of screen and will 'flex' to fit. Not all fit perfectly on all screens so in some cases it will be worth checking what types of screens your users most use and designing for that size.
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Search Engine Optimisation is covered extensively elsewhere on my blog but it is a process of working on a website to make it more visible to search engines with the aim of bringing more users to the site through search.
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A sitemap is created automatically for all Squarespace websites.
It's how the site architecture is created and helps search engines make sense of what is on the website.
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SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer and it is what puts the 's' into https:// at the beginning of websites.
It means the site has a certificate to prove it is secure. All Squarespace websites with domains from reputable sources have this as standard.
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A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a web address that goes to a specific place on the internet. It's what you see in the top bar of the browser window when you're looking at a page.
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A wireframe is the stage of web design in between creating the architecture and the mock-ups.
It is like a pencil drawing (but done digitally usually) of your site to show you the position of elements. It usually has no colour or real content in it.
Did I help you? Let me know in the comments or give me a like 👍
