Nico Kotsapanajotou
3. Juli 2021
14 min
There are numerous abbreviations in e-commerce, so it's easy to lose track of them all. If you think CTA is a computer game or 3P is a boy band, you should read this article.
The choice is yours!
1) Just keep scrolling and take a quick look at all the abbreviations,
2) or jump to our glossary and read the explanations,
3) or experience our interactive quiz and test your buzzword knowledge! (~10-12 min)
3P Third Party
AI Artificial Intelligence
AMP Accelerated Mobile Pages
AOV Average Order Value
API Application Programming Interface
AR Augmented Reality
ASO App Store Optimisation
AWS Amazon Web Service
B2B Business To Business
B2C Business To Consumer
B2E Business To Employee
BI Business Intelligence
BR Bounce Rate
CAC Customer Acquisition Cost
CAGR Compound Annual Growth Rate
CCR Customer Churn Rate
CDN Content Delivery Network
CDO Chief Digital Officer
CEO Chief Executive Officer
CFO Chief Financial Officer
CIO Chief Intelligence Office
CLV Customer Lifetime Value
CMO Chief Marketing Officer
CMS Content Management System
COD Cash On Delivery
COO Chief Operating Officer
CPA Cost Per Acquisition
CPC Cost Per Click
CPL Cost Per Lead
CPM Cost Per Mille
CR Conversion Rate
CRM Customer Relationship Mgmt.
CRO Conversion Rate Optimisation
CSS Cascading Style Sheets
CTA Call To Action
CTO Chief Technical Officer
CTR Click Through Rate
CX Customer Experience
D2C Direct To Consumer
DAM Data Asset Management
DNS Domain Name System
DOM Document Object Model
DWH Data Warhouse
EBIT Earnings Before Interes And Taxes
EDI Electronic Data Interchange
ERP Enterprise Resource Planning
FAQ Frequently Asked Questions
FCMG Fast Moving Consumer Goods
FTP File Transfer Protocol
FUD Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt
GCP Google Cloud Platform
GM General Manager
IPO Initial Public Offering
ISP Internet Service Provider
KPI Key Performance Indicator
LPO Landing Page Optimisation
LOI Letter Of Intent
M&A Mergers And Acquisitions
MACH Microservice API Cloud Headless
MAM Media Asset Management
MD Managing Director
MOM Month Over Month
MVP Minimum Viable Product
NDA None Disclosure Agreement
NPS Net Promoter Score
OKR Objectives And Key Results
OMS Order Management System
OS Operating System
P&L Profit And Loss
PAAS Platform As A Service
PCI Payment Card Industry
PDP Product Detail Page
PIM Product Information Management
PLP Product Landing Page
POC Proof Of Concept
POS Point Of Sale
PSD2 Payment Services Directive 2
QOQ Quarter Over Quarter
RFI Request For Information
RFID Radio Frequency Identification
RFP Request For Proposal
ROAS Return On Ad Spend
ROI Return On Investment
RPU Revenue Per User
RTB Real Time Bidding
SAAS Software As A Service
SEA Search Engine Advertisement
SEM Search Engine Marketing
SEO Search Engine Optimisation
SERP Search Engine Result Page
SI System Integrator
SLA Service Level Agreement
SMB Small And Medium Sized Business
SMM Social Media Marketing
SSL Secure Sockets Layer
TCO Total Cost Of Ownership
TLD Top Level Domain
TOS Terms Of Service
UI User Interface
UGC User Generated Content
URL Uniform Resource Locator
USP Unique Selling Point
UX User Experience
VAT Value Added Tax
VP Vice President
VR Virtual Reality
WOW Week Over Week
YOY Year Over Year
YTD Year To Date
Got 'Em all? :) Then go for the quiz! (~10-12 min)
Our glossary includes the TOP 100 of the common English abbreviations in e-commerce. These include:
System terms - Terms for systems of an e-commerce architecture
Marketing terms - Terms from the field of online marketing
Business terms - Terms from the strategic e-commerce sector
Technical terms - Terms from the tech sector
Job titles - Terms for job titles in e-commerce
Business Intelligence refers to company department in which data from all business areas is brought together and processed into analyses and dashboards. BI-Tools supply managers with important information regarding strategical decisions.
Examples for BI tools: Microsoft Power BI, Oracel BI, SAP BI, Yellowfin BI, Zoho Analytics, Tableau
A Content Delivery Network specialises in the hosting and fast delivery of data. The data (mostly image or video data) is hosted on a different server than the actual website and loaded in optimised formats for the user at the moment the page is called up.
Examples for CDN tools: Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai
A Content Management System manages data that is used for the content design of websites. These include, for example, blog functions or landing pages. Often, online shops are complemented by content management systems due to their limited content capacities.
Examples for CMS tools: Wordpress, Joomla!, Drupal, Typo3, Graph CMS
Customer Relationship Management is the term used to describe the management of data relating to a company's customers. The focus here is primarily on the areas of communication, automation and analysis.
Examples for CRM tools: Hubspot, Salesforce
Digital Asset Management Tools are about managing complex media data around products. This includes, for example, files, images or videos.
Examples for DAM tools: Kontainer, Canto, Pixx.io, Online Media Net
A Data Warehouse is a database used to store and manage large amounts of current and historical information from various source systems. It often serves as the basis for business intelligence applications.
Examples for DWH tools: Amazon Redshift, Microsoft Azure, Google Big Query, Snowflake
Enterprise Resource Planning refers to systems that combine many core processes of a company. These usually include order management including invoicing, supply chain management (production, disposition, logistics of goods or information), reporting etc. While the classic ERP systems still tried to unite all information and processes in a monolithic system, today the topic of ERP is increasingly being broken up and divided into subsystems.
Examples for ERP tools: Microsoft Dynamics, Sage 100, Oracle NetSuite, SAP S/4HANA, Odoo
The distinction between a Media Asset Management Systems and a DAM is rather thin. In the past, MAM systems were more focused on video, but today both abbreviations actually refer to the same systems that are used to manage digital media.
Examples for MAM tools: Kontainer, Canto, Pixx.io, Online Media Net
Order Management Systeme are an "emancipation" from ERP systems and mostly serve to manage orders and create documents around the processing of an order.
Examples for OMS tools: Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Odoo, SAP Hybris, Adobe Commerce Cloud
A Product Information Management is a tool for central data storage of all product-relevant information. Often the master data for PIM systems comes from an ERP and is then enriched in the PIM and distributed from there to an online shop and other channels. Many modern PIM systems take over partial functions of DAM and MAM.
Examples for PIM tools: Akeneo, ContentServ, PimCore
The Average-order-value describes the average shopping basket size in an online shop. It indicates how much a user spends on an average order. The AOV is one of the central elements in the analysis of web shops.
App-Store-Optimisation is the optimisation of entries in the popular app stores of Apple and Google.
The Bounce-Rate indicates how many users leave a website without having interacted with it. Not to be confused with the exit rate, which is measured individually for each sub-page and indicates the percentage of visitors who leave the website on which page. In contrast to the BR, a user can also have interacted with the page.
The Customer Churn Rate refers to the churn of customers. It is the opposite of customer acquisition and a natural process. The dissatisfaction with the products or services of a company is a factor that promotes customer churn. Therefore, nowadays, attempts are made to retain and reactivate customers in the long term in order to increase their lifetime value.
The Customer Lifetime Value refers to the total revenue that a customer will generate from all past and future orders. The determination of the customer lifetime value is a central element for the planning of marketing budgets.
The term Cost-per-acquisition comes from online marketing and refers to the average cost of acquiring a new customer through a marketing activity. CPA models are the most seller-friendly models, as costs are only charged if an order is placed.
The term Cost-per-click (also called PPC, "pay-per-click") also comes from online marketing and usually refers to the average cost of a click on an advertising asset such as a Google ad. CPC models are riskier than CPA models because the conversion is not yet certain and costs are still charged. Nevertheless, they are an important column of online marketing.
Cost-per-lead is a type of billing model between a company (in this case an advertiser) and an external service provider for the acquisition of new customers. In this model each lead, i.e. a customer who expresses a qualified interest (e.g. by subscribing to a newsletter), is billed.
Cost-per-Mille refers to the average cost of contacting 1000 customers within a marketing campaign. CPM models are very risky, as costs are already incurred even if no clicks are made. This already suggests a poor conversion rate. However, if the price is significantly lower, this can be used wisely, less for direct conversions but more for the topic of awareness or brand building, for example
The Conversion Rate indicates the percentage of visitors to a website who reach a predefined goal. Mostly, the ratio of visitors to buyers is measured, but it can also be the submission of a form on a landing page. In e-commerce, the conversion rate is very strongly dependent on traffic quality, usability, the product/service itself and the price.
Conversion Rate Optimization is a marketing discipline for optimising the rates of customers who reach a predefined goal (e.g. a sale). It involves identifying and eliminating all obstacles that revent users from reaching their goal. An important element of CRO is the optimisation of the usability of websites. To measure the efficiency, so-called A/B testing tools are often used.
A Call-to-action is nothing more than a request for an acitivty of a customer and is usually represented by a button. It is intended to make the next most obvious action on a website clear and visible to the customer.
The Click-through-rate refers to the ratio between users who have seen an element and those who have clicked on it. It can be seen as a conversion rate for e.g. the click on an advertisement. The CTR serves as an important measuring instrument for the quality of an advertisement or the environment in which it is embedded.
The Customer-Experience describes the experience of a customer with a company across the entire value chain. While the user experience looks at the usability of software or websites in a very technical way, the CX describes, for example, the entire shopping experience including support services.
KUR ist a German abbreviation (Kosten-Umsatz-Relation) and refers to the cost-turnover-ratio. It is used to measure the success of marketing activities and is calculated as the share of costs in turnover. A low KUR is desirable: KUR = costs / turnover (in percent).
Landing-Page-Optimization is the optimisation of target pages that usually present a very specific topic. So-called landing pages are usually very strongly conversion-optimised and serve a specific goal such as the registration for a newsletter for example.
The term Mergers-and-Acquisitions refers to a group of actions in which companies are merged or sold.
The Net-Promoter-Score is an indicator of the likelihood that a customer would recommend a product or service to others. It is a central element for customer-centric measurement of satisfaction in order to boost customer loyalty through feedback and to prevent churn.
ROAS refers to the Return-on-ad-spend. The ratio describes the relationship between marketing expenses and turnover. Unlike the KUR (cost-revenue-ratio), ROAS does not describe the share of marketing costs in turnover, but the multiple of turnover compared to marketing costs: ROAS = (turnover / marketing costs) * 100 in percent.
Revenue-per-User is the turnover per customer. RPU = total revenue / number of customers.
THe term Real-Time-Bidding describes the allocation of advertising space in real time. Advertisers use platforms such as Google Ads and bid on keywords to fill advertising spaces. In real time it is calculated who will win the auction and thus the best position when the respective page is called up.
The tern SEA means Search Engine Advertisement and refers to the use of marketing tools on search engines. The best-known tool for this is Google Ads (formerly "Google Adwords") and it is actually impossible to imagine any digital business model without it.
Search Engine Marketing is the use of all marketing opportunities related to search engines. SEM is a discipline of online marketing and the umbrella term for the sub-disciplines SEA and SEO.
The Search Enginge Optimization refers to the optimisation of the editorial, non-advertising part of a search engine. The disciplines are divided into on-page optimisation (technical factors, content), off-page (backlinks, social signals) and analysis. Tools for analysing SEO activities are Sistrix, Ahrefs or Ryte. The Google Search Console is also important in this context.
Social Media Marketing refers to the commercial and promotional use of social media. In the process, attempts are often made to place advertising content as subtly and naturally as possible in seemingly private postings by influencers with a wide reach. In recent years, however, the legislator has increasingly obliged influencers to label advertising content.
User Generated Content is the use of media created by users to be displayed on company websites. Users are often encouraged to use certain hashtags in social media and special tools are used to identify, qualify and display this data on the web across different front ends. The pioneer for such technologies is the fashion industry.
The terms Week-over-week, Month-over-month, Quarter-over-quarter and Year-over-year come from analytics and are used to analyse certain data sets over comparable time periods.
Year-to-date is the period from the beginning of a year until today. This can also be a fiscal year, which does not necessarily begin on January 1st.
Third-Party means the outsourcing of business processes to third-party providers. The most common use of this concept is certainly 3PL ("third-party logistics"), where all logistics processes are outsourced to an external service provider.
The term Business-to-Business refers to a business model in which one company enters into a relationship with another company.
Business-to-Consumer is a business model in which a company sells to end customers.
The term Click-and-Collect refers to the digital ordering and physical collection of items. Consumers can buy and pay for their desired goods online and then pick them up on site.
The term Direct-to-Consumer refers to a business model in which a manufacturer or brand sells directly to end customers and does not use retailers.
Unter Earnings-before-interest-and-taxes is a key figure for measuring the profitability of a company. It describes the difference between revenue and costs before interest and taxes. EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) describes the profitability of a company and is EBIT supplemented by depreciation on tangible and intangible assets.
The term Fast-moving-consumer-goods refers to everyday consumer goods that are characterised by a high turnover rate and a low price point.
P&L is the profit-and-loss account of a company in which expenses and income are compared.
An Initial-Public-Offering refers to the initial listing of a company at a stock exchange. German companies that are listed on the stock exchange must have one of the following legal forms: AG, KGaA or SE.
The term Small-and-medium-sized-businesses is a description for the size of a company with less than 1000 employees. A distinction is made between small enterprises (under 100 employees) and medium-sized enterprises (under 1000 employees). The German equivalent is KMU ("Kleine-und-mittelständische-Unternehmen"), but here the size specifications vary (Tiny < 10 empl., Small < 50 empl., Medium < 250 empl.).
A Key-Performance-Indicator is an indicator that represents company figures from various areas and is used to measure the degree of achievement of strategic goals.
The term Objectives-and-key-results is a management system for staff leadership. It involves matching qualitative goals with measurable results.
Point-of-sale is the physical presence of a company where customers have direct contact with goods or services. The POS is the counterpart to online retail. Both sales strategies can have an extremely beneficial effect on each other if they interact seamlessly in wisely designed multichannel strategies.
A Request-for-Proposal is a document that describes an upcoming project of a company. It serves to communicate the framework conditions to service providers, who can then submit qualified offers. In highly complex e-commerce projects, this procedure is increasingly being replaced by agile methods such as MVPs (Minimum Viable Product) and rapid prototyping.
The Return-on-Investment describes the capital profitability of a company. Here, invested capital is set in relation to profit. ROI = return on sales * capital turnover.
Total-cost-of-ownership is a method from cost accounting in which capital goods (e.g. software or hardware) are assigned not only the acquisition costs, but also future costs over the entire life span. The TCO makes it possible to compare capital goods with different cost structures, e.g. high acquisition costs vs. rising running costs.
The Unique-Selling-Point (often also called Unique Value Proposition) is the main distinguishing feature of a company, a service or a product compared to its competitors. Especially in saturated markets, the USP gains in importance.
Accelerated-Mobile-Pages are pages of a website that are not hosted by the actual hosting provider of the website, but are cached by a Google server and delivered at high speed. This technology is mostly used for news portals or newspapers, as their content contains few dynamic elements.
An Application-Programming-Interface is an interface between two digital systems. It allows the two systems to communicate with each other and exchange data.
The term Amazon-Web-Services refers to Amazon's own cloud. Various hosting models and services related to cloud computing are offered on it.
Als Cascading-Style-Sheets is a programming language used primarily for the visual modification of web pages. Together with HTML and Java, CSS forms the basic framework for programming pages in the World Wide Web.
The Domain-Name-System translates the IP addresses of websites into names. Thus, readable page names assigned during registration (e.g. "www.Zalando.de") can be used by individuals to find websites.
The Document-Object-Model is an interface for HTML and XML documents. With the help of the DOM, documents are logically defined in a tree structure at the ends of which there are nodes that contain objects. The DOM loading time is a key element of website performance optimisation.
The Electronic-Data-Interchange procedure is a process in which data is exchanged between several companies. In the process, the exchange of paper documents becomes obsolete and various industry associations (e.g.: furniture industry) agree on uniform standards within the framework of EDI. The focus is on fully automatic communication that makes human intervention unnecessary.
The File-Transfer-Protocol is a standardised network protocol used for the transfer of files. Files are transferred from servers to clients or from clients to servers.
The Google-Cloud-Platform is Google's own cloud. Various hosting models and services related to cloud computing are offered on it.
MACH is a modern approach to the orchestration of different software systems. MACH means Microservices-APIs-Cloud-Headless and forms the antithesis to monolithic systems in e-commerce.
An operating system is a system that is required for the use of hardware. It is therefore the software that controls the hardware. The best-known operating systems are Windows (PC), Linux (PC), macOS (PC), iOS (mobile) and Android (mobile).
The term Platform-as-a-Service comes from the hosting sector. It describes the provision of an environment in which the hosting is taken over by a service provider, but the customer has access to the development environment. In contrast to an on-premise solution, the customer does not take on any Dev-Ops activities, therefor he has nothing to do with hosting, but can employ in-house developers.
In online retailing, the product detail page describes the detail page for a product or service. Usually descriptions, images, prices, ratings and potential configuration options can be found here.
A Product-Listing-Page is an overview page of products or services. The PLP usually results from a category selection or a search query. On the PLP, images, prices, titles and, if applicable, ratings and variants are usually presented very briefly. Often the results can be specified with filters or subcategories.
The term Software-as-a-Service describes a modern procedure for software hosting. The service provider not only takes over the hosting, but also the further development of the platform / software. SaaS solutions are always a good choice if you do not have any development know-how in the company.
Search-Engine-Results-Page refers to the results pages of search engines such as Google. They are the front end of the search engines. Nowadays, not only organic results are found in the SERPs, but also increasingly advertising content.
A Service-Level-Agreement describes an agreement between two contractual partners (B2C or B2B) in which the framework conditions for a service are defined. Typically SLAs are used in the field of hosting, where availability, response times and contractual penalties are usually specified.
The term Secure-Sockets-Layer describes a security protocol for authenticating websites. This signals to a consumer that a website uses a so-called SSL certificate and thus maintains a high security standard. Nowadays, SSL is indispensable; some browsers no longer call up websites without SSL.
A Top-Level-Domain is the last part of a web address. The best-known TLDs are .com, .net and in UK .co.uk - today there are many different top level domains.
A User Interface is the part of a software that is visible to the end user.
The User-Experience describes the experience of a user with a software or a website. A good user experience is usually supported by problem-free usability and clarity.
A Uniform-Resource-Locator identifies and locates web pages on the Internet. The URL is the entire part of a web address: https://beispiel.de - whereas the Uniform Resource Identifier describes only the last part: example.de. The difference between a domain and a URL is also quite simple. The domain describes the URL of the start page (https://beispiel.de) while the URL can also address deep links (https://beispiel.de/subpage).
The Chief Digital Officer is responsible for all digital presences and processes of a company.
The Chief Executive Officer is the main responsible director of a company.
The Chief Information Officer is responsible for all information and data in a company.
The Chief Financial Officer is responsible for all financial issues.
The Chief Marketing Officer is responsible for all marketing activities of a company.
The Chief Operating Officer is responsible for the operational business.
The Chief Technical Officer is responsible for all technologies used in the company.
The General Manager is responsible for a division of a company and reports to the MD..
The Managing Director is responsible for one or more divisions of a company and reports to the Vice President.
The Vice President is ususally located directly below the C-level of a company and reports to the CEO.
Wow, you came a long way! :) Then go for the quiz! (~10-12 min)
