Glossary
Clear, jargon-free definitions of the terms that come up when you're planning a website, app or online store. Each one answers a single question — skim, or click through for the detail.
An API is a defined way for two pieces of software to talk to each other. It lets one application request data or actions from another, like a website fetching live prices, or an app sending a payment to a gateway, without needing to know how the other system works internally.
A CDN is a network of servers spread across the world that store copies of your website's files and serve each visitor from the location nearest them. This cuts loading time, handles traffic spikes, and reduces load on your main server, so pages feel fast no matter where users are.
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics Google uses to measure real-world page experience: loading speed (Largest Contentful Paint), responsiveness to input (Interaction to Next Paint), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift). They are part of how Google ranks pages, so good scores help both users and SEO.
A headless CMS is a content system that stores your content and serves it through an API, with no built-in front end. Your website or app pulls that content and controls exactly how it looks — so the same content can power a site, an app, and more.
Jamstack is a web architecture where the site is pre-built into static files served from a CDN, and dynamic features are added through JavaScript and APIs. The name comes from JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. It decouples the front end from back-end services for speed, security, and scalability.
A Progressive Web App is a website built to behave like a mobile app — it loads fast, works offline, and can be installed on a phone's home screen — without needing the App Store or Play Store. It runs in the browser but feels native.
Responsive design is an approach to building websites so the layout automatically adapts to any screen size, whether phone, tablet, or desktop, using flexible grids, scalable images, and CSS rules that respond to the device width. One site works and looks good everywhere, instead of needing a separate mobile version.
Server-side rendering is when a web page's HTML is generated on the server for each request and sent to the browser ready to display, rather than being built in the browser with JavaScript. This gives faster first paint and content that search engines and AI crawlers can read immediately.
A single-page application is a website that loads a single HTML page once, then updates content dynamically with JavaScript as you navigate, instead of requesting a fresh page from the server each time. This makes interactions feel fast and app-like, the way Gmail or Trello do.
Static site generation builds every page into ready-made HTML files at build time, before anyone visits. Those files are then served directly from a CDN, so pages load extremely fast and are cheap and secure to host. The content updates when you rebuild the site, not on each request.
Web accessibility means building websites so that people with disabilities can use them, including those who rely on screen readers, keyboard navigation, captions, or high contrast. It follows standards like the WCAG guidelines, covering things like readable text, descriptive labels, and content that works without a mouse.
A web development agency is a company that designs, builds, and maintains websites and web applications for clients. Unlike a solo freelancer, an agency brings a full team — designers, developers, SEO specialists, and project managers — so it can handle larger, more complex projects end to end, from strategy and design through launch and ongoing support.
A cross-platform app is a mobile app built from a single codebase that runs on both iOS and Android, using a framework like React Native or Flutter. You write it once and ship to both app stores, which usually cuts development time and cost compared with building two separate native apps.
Flutter is an open-source UI toolkit from Google for building apps from a single codebase using the Dart language. It draws its own widgets instead of relying on platform components, giving pixel-consistent designs across iOS, Android, web, and desktop, along with fast performance and a quick hot-reload development workflow.
An MVP is the smallest version of your product that still solves the core problem for real users. You launch it quickly with only the essential features, learn from actual usage, and then build the rest based on evidence rather than guesses.
A mobile app development company builds smartphone apps for iOS and Android — handling design, coding, testing, launch, and maintenance. A full-service firm covers native and cross-platform development plus the backend, APIs, and databases that power the app. Unlike a single freelancer, it offers a complete team and continuity, which matters for apps that need ongoing updates.
A native app is a mobile application built specifically for one platform — iOS using Swift or Android using Kotlin — with that platform's own tools. It installs from the App Store or Play Store and delivers the best performance and the fullest access to device features like camera, GPS, biometrics, and push notifications.
React Native is an open-source framework from Meta for building mobile apps with JavaScript and React. It renders real native UI components, so a single codebase produces genuine iOS and Android apps. It's a popular choice for teams that already know React and want to share logic between web and mobile.
Conversion rate optimization is the practice of increasing the percentage of visitors who take a desired action — buying, signing up, or enquiring — without needing more traffic. It uses analytics, user testing, and experiments like A/B tests to find what's stopping people and fix it, so your existing traffic earns more.
Headless commerce separates an online store's front end — what shoppers see — from the commerce engine that handles products, carts, and checkout, connecting them through an API. This lets you build a fast, fully custom storefront while a platform like Shopify or a dedicated backend manages the commerce logic behind it.
A payment gateway is the service that securely authorizes and processes online payments between a customer, your store, and the banks. When a shopper pays, it encrypts the card or UPI details, checks for funds and fraud, and confirms the transaction. In India, common gateways include Razorpay, PayU, and Cashfree.
Shopify is a hosted e-commerce platform that lets businesses build and run an online store without managing servers. It handles hosting, security, payments, and inventory for a monthly fee plus transaction costs, and supports themes and apps to extend features. It's one of the fastest ways to start selling online.
The main types of e-commerce are defined by who sells to whom: B2C (business to consumer), B2B (business to business), C2C (consumer to consumer), C2B (consumer to business), D2C (direct to consumer), and B2G (business to government). Most online stores are B2C or D2C, but the same platform technology can support any of these models.
Answer engine optimization is the practice of structuring content so AI answer engines — like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity — cite it when they generate direct answers. It focuses on clear, factual, well-structured content that answers specific questions, so your brand appears in AI responses, not just the blue links.
Schema markup is structured data code added to a web page that describes its content to search engines using a shared vocabulary (Schema.org). It helps engines understand things like products, reviews, FAQs, and events, and can produce rich results — such as star ratings or FAQ dropdowns — in search listings.
SEO is the practice of improving a website so it ranks higher in search engines like Google for the terms your customers search. It combines relevant content, a technically sound site, and credible links, with the goal of earning steady, unpaid (organic) traffic rather than paying for each click.
Technical SEO is the part of SEO that helps search engines crawl, render, and index a site correctly. It covers site speed, mobile-friendliness, clean URLs, XML sitemaps, structured data, and fixing errors like broken links or duplicate pages. Even great content struggles to rank if the technical foundation is weak.
Topical authority is the depth and breadth of expertise a website shows on a subject by covering it thoroughly across many related, interlinked pages. Search engines tend to favour sites seen as authoritative on a topic, so building comprehensive content around a theme can lift rankings across the whole cluster.
A design system is a shared library of reusable components, styles, and rules, including colours, typography, buttons, spacing, and usage guidelines, that keeps a product consistent and faster to build. It is the single source of truth that designers and developers both work from, so every screen looks and behaves the same way.
Graphic design covers several specialisations. The main types are brand and visual identity design (logos, brand systems), marketing and advertising design, user interface (UI) design, packaging design, publication and editorial design, environmental and signage design, and motion graphics. Most designers focus on one or two of these rather than all, since each needs different skills and tools.
UI (user interface) is how a product looks and the elements you interact with, such as buttons, colours, typography, and layout. UX (user experience) is how the product feels to use overall, whether it is easy, logical, and gets you to your goal. UI is part of UX; good design needs both.
A wireframe is a simple, low-detail layout of a page or screen that shows where content and features go, like a blueprint. It focuses on structure and hierarchy using boxes, lines, and placeholder text, deliberately leaving out colour and final visuals so everyone agrees on the layout first.