Common Web Design Terms

In our last installment of Internet marketing terms, we began a discussion of some web design terms. In this installment we’re going to pick up where we left off.

Linkrot – This is another slang term that is used to indicate a web page that is no longer accessible because of another page being deleted in the chain.

For example, let’s say that the web page dogs.html is only accessible from the page pets.html on a particular site. If pets.html is removed from the website, then there is no way to access pets.html, unless you just happen to know the URL, because the page linking to it is gone. This is why this is referred to as linkrot.

Navigation – This is the activity of going from one web page to another via the clicking of hyperlinks. If we didn’t have the ability to easily navigate from one page to the next, the only way to get to multiple pages in a website would be to enter in the individual URLs of each web page. And that would be quite a time consuming process with a website that has hundreds and even thousands of pages.

Shopping Cart – A shopping cart on the Internet is really pretty similar to a shopping cart in real life at your supermarket. You place items in the cart that you want to purchase, when visiting a website like Amazon.com for example, and then when you have all the items in your cart that you want, you go to checkout and pay for these items. Shopping cart technology is quite complex and takes some skilled programming to pull off.

Site Search – Site search is specifically a search function that only searches the contents of a specific website and not the entire Internet. Many sites such as Webmd.com have site search capability.

Splash Page – A splash page is a very short sales page written mostly for the purpose of getting a person to go to another page that is more detailed or to get that person to sign up to a list. Splash pages are very effective with Internet marketing.

Web Browser – A web browser is simply a piece of software that allows you to view pages on the Internet. Without web browsers, Internet marketing would pretty much grind to a halt. The most popular web browsers are Internet Explorer and Firefox, though there are quite a few more.

Web Design – This is the skill of putting together web pages. Web design is a very complex are that involves coding in several languages, such as HTML and PHP, as well as graphic design using things like Flash and Photoshop. Web Designers make an awful lot of money if they’re good, but it is a very technical and demanding skill.

Website Usability – This is actually a very subjective term, but it refers to how easily visitors are able to get around a website. Of course a lot of this is going to depend on the skill level of the viewer.

In our next installment, we’ll cover some more Internet marketing terms.

See you then.