Jargonbuster

Another page for regular review. Here are some definitions to get started, more will be added in the course of time.

Domain name
Your domain name is your unique identifier on the World-wide Web. Many UK companies will want to register a UK domain name, for example mycompany.co.uk, others may prefer an international domain name, for example mycompany.com. Whichever you choose, once that domain name is registered to you it cannot be taken by anyone else unless they buy it from you, or until such time as registration lapses and is not renewed.

Web hosting
Once you have a domain name, the next step is to find a home for it. A domain name is like an address, but it does not have any physical location until it is associated with a web hosting package. Your web site will live on your host’s server, a special computer dedicated to housing web sites, and your domain name will be set to direct traffic to the location of your actual web site.

Email address
When you have your own domain name, you can have a number of email addresses or mailboxes set up through your hosting service, in the format of whatevernameyouwant@mydomain.co.uk. Your email program on your business computer can then be set up to receive mail to this address, if you wish. Alternatively you can collect your emails via the Webmail service.

Webmail
Webmail allows you to access your emails and respond to them using your web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer). You will be given a link to this online service and a password to log on to it. Webmail is very useful if you don’t want the bother of setting your emails up on your own computer, or if you travel a lot and need to access your email from other computers.

Web statistics packages
Web stats packages are special programs that analyse and display data, usually in graphical or tabular format, about the traffic visiting your site – which pages they visited, how long they stayed and the referring agent e.g. search engine are all examples of the kind of information you could expect to have at your fingertips. They can be a very useful tool for marketing purposes and can often indicate the way forward with future development of your web site.

Web enquiry form
An enquiry form allows your visitors to submit their enquiry directly to you via your Web site or respond to specific questions that you might wish to ask, e.g. for a survey or to further assess your site traffic for marketing purposes. The information submitted will be relayed to whichever email address you have supplied for this purpose. Many people prefer to use this method instead of placing a direct email link on their web site, which quickly attracts unwanted and often offensive spam.

Search engine optimisation (SEO)
A science in itself, and major companies pay huge sums of money to specialised marketing firms in an effort to get their web site to the top of the search list on Google and other search engines. SEO essentially is about choosing the best key words and phrases for your business and putting them in all the places that search engines like to see them. This goes beyond the obvious content of your site, as search engines do not look at the front end of your site, or what you, the visitor, see displayed in your browser window. Instead they ‘index’ or assess the ‘back end’ of the site, the raw code, where additional opportunities for supporting your key content can be brought into play.

Copy editing
Web sites are a very different medium to other forms of advertising, and it is important to write the content of your pages to take this into account. In addition to editing content in order to optimise it for search engines, other factors should be taken into account, for example the use of hyperlinks and the breaking down of lengthy text blocks into smaller and more readable chunks.