26 Online Business Terms Defined
The world of online business is filled with insider lingo and complicated terms you may not have heard before. But rather than feeling lost or out of the loop, this article explains 26 of the most commonly used (and most confusing) terms used in online business defined in simple terms so you can confidently keep up!
Analytics
While it sounds technical (and it can be!), analytics are simply the numbers and stats in your business. From your website traffic to opt-in rates and conversion rates - these are crucial measures of how well your efforts are paying off and are definitely worth evaluating when making key decisions in your business.
Typically you’ll track analytics in your website or a dedicated website analytics software like Fathom or Google Analytics, as well as your email marketing system, funnel software if you use it and your cart or checkout software.
Bump Offer
Bump offers are a special, often low-cost, additional offer available for purchase during checkout. You can simply add this bonus offer to your transaction - which “bumps” the overall purchase total. Bump offers are usually something related or complementary to the main offer you’re purchasing and may be offered at a slight or significant discount to add an extra incentive to add this bonus offer to your order.
Conversions
When someone signs up for your email list or purchases your paid offer, they have “converted” from being someone brand new to your business to now a subscriber or a paid customer. Conversions are very important metrics to track since it can indicate how well your lead magnet (or opt-in) is performing and how well your offer is selling.
Domain
This is the “address” for your website and often your email as well. You’ll need to purchase a domain, such as michellepontvert.com, in order to publish your website. Having a clear, easy-to-remember domain name is a great way to indicate your business is legitimate and trustworthy.
Email Marketing
One of the most effective ways of marketing your business is by sending emails. But not just any emails, like those you’d send in Gmail, but specifically Marketing Emails that you’ll need Email Marketing Software (like my preferred ESP ConvertKit) in order to send legally. Email Marketing is great since people have to actively subscribe or opt-in to your email list in order to receive your emails, and are thus much more likely to be receptive to hearing about your offers and promotions,
Funnel
Funnels are simply a process in which you guide people from not knowing about your paid offer, learning about your paid offer and then (hopefully!) purchasing your paid offer. Typically, sales funnels start with a free opt-in lead magnet like a free PDF or a webinar. Then after signing up for the free opt-in, your new subscriber will be added to an email sequence in your email marketing software where you’ll promote your paid offer over a set number of days, often with a special incentive for them to buy now such as a discount or special bonus.
Want to see a funnel in action? Sign up for one of my freebies and keep your eye on your inbox!
GDPR
GDRP or General Data Protection Regulation is the legal requirement for many countries in order for you to legally collect email subscribers and send marketing emails. It’s a necessary but complicated part of email marketing, but worth educating yourself on if you want to stay legal.
Here’s a good article outlining the European GDPR requirements, which are some of the most rigorous.
Hero Section
The “Hero Section” (also called “Above The Fold”) is the very top part of a website page that’s visible before scrolling. This is the most important and impactful part of your website since it’s the first impression most visitors will have of your brand and can play a factor in how well your website converts visitors into email subscribers or paying customers.
Learn more about Hero Sections right here.
Integrations
Integrations how one tool “talks to” another. For example, if you want to connect your email marketing software with your website so when someone signs up for your opt-in lead magnet on your website they are added to your email list, you’ll need to integrate your email marketing system with your website. Many tools have native integrations, meaning you can make the tools “talk” without having to set up a third-party connection like Zapier which is always something worth considering when picking your tools.
Check out my favorite tools, most of which integrate seamlessly with each other, right here!
JV Webinar
Joint Venture Webinars (aka JV Webinars) are a great way to introduce your offer to a collaborator’s audience, or vice versa. Just like a regular webinar, you’d present a free training with a pitch for your paid offer, but instead of you promoting the event to your audience with a JV Webinar it’s your collaborator who will promote the event to their audience. Often your JV partner will also be an affiliate and you may opt to share a higher commission with them for any sales made from the JV Webinar.
KPIs
Key Performance Indicators (aka KPIs) are the core metrics that are used to measure success in your business. Often your KPIs will be things like your Email Open Rate, Click-Through Rate, Conversion Rate, Page Visits, Traffic etc… You can also set more personal KPIs such as hours worked, stress levels, products launched or any other measurable element you consider important in your business.
Personally, the main KPIs I track in my business are my email list growth, email open rates & click through rates, conversion rate and also hours worked, holiday days taken, stress levels and enjoyment!
Launch
Launching your paid offer is really just promoting your offer for a set period of time, often with an added incentive to buy now such as a special price, limited quantity, special bonuses or simply because the offer is only available to buy during a certain period (often called “open cart”)/
You can add lots of bells & whistles to a launch such as adding a free launch event to capture people’s attention or you can keep your launch strategically simple if you prefer a simpler way to sell.
Marketing
While you may already know what Marketing means, it often gets confusing once you actually start trying to do it in your business. Marketing is really about getting the word out there about your business, getting attention on your content and working on converting those people into potential buyers, often by encouraging them to join your email list where you can continue to market & sell to them.
Marketing, however, isn’t quite the same thing as sales. Sales is just the actual “transactional” conversation or process where you are highlighting what, why and how people can buy from you.
Not-So-Live Event
This is one of my home-spun terms I created to describe events - such as challenges, workshops, webinars etc… - that you prepare ahead of time so you don’t have to show up live to deliver the content. Your event will still be “live” for the participants, starting on a specific day possibly with new content dropping at specific times.
The big difference between a Not-So-Live Event and a traditional live one is that you don’t have to show up live at a specific time and day to deliver the content. Which is great for those of us who are introverts, have challenging time-zones and deal with unpredictable schedules & energy levels.
Opt-in
Opt-ins (also called Lead Magnets or Freebies) are valuable content that you provide for free in exchange for someone’s email address. Opt-ins can be anything that’s valuable, helpful and interesting to your ideal audience and can take the format of ebooks, checklists, mini-courses, private podcasts, quizzes, audits etc...
Want some inspiration? Check out all my Opt-ins right here!
Passive Income
The idea of “Passive Income” is very popular in the online business space, and for good reason. The idea is you create something once, that then requires no more time or input from you to deliver, and then you can sell that offer over and over again thus making income without having to do any more “work”.
I do think it’s a bit of a misnomer, however, as there’s always going to be work required no matter what it is you sell. I prefer the term “Leveraged Offers” or “Hands-Off Offers” because the offer - the thing someone is paying for - doesn’t require more of your time, but you will need to put in (often quite a lot) of time and effort in order to drive traffic to that offer and then convert them into buying customers.
Quarters
If you didn’t start in a corporate job before starting your business like me, you may be unfamiliar with the idea of breaking your year down into Quarters. Business owners particularly like to think in quarters as they plan content, launches, and financial decisions.
Quarter 1 (also called Q1) is January through March, Quarter 2 (Q2) is April through June, Quarter 3 (Q3) is July through September and Quarter 4 (Q4) is October through December.
Revenue
Revenue is the total amount of money your business earns or generates. Revenue is different from your income as your revenue is what must cover your taxes, profit, expenses, team members etc… While your income is just the take-home pay you pull from your business.
SOPs
Standard Operating Procedures (aka SOPs) are internal documents that outline common repeatable processes in your business. These records of your processes are incredibly helpful to avoid forgetting any steps and for training team members on your processes.
An easy way to create your SOPs is to record yourself doing the process using a screen recording software like Loom and make an effort to narrate each step as you go. That way you’ll have a video walking through your process AND a transcript with written instructions from your narration!
Tripwire
Tripwire offers are a special limited-time deal that’s presented to subscribers right after they sign up for a free opt-in. Often Triwpires are lower cost and relatively well aligned with the topic of the freebie that the subscriber just signed up to, but not so similar as to cause confusion about why they’d have to pay for this new offer!
I highly recommend my mentor Lizzy Goddard’s Tripwire Training if you want to learn more about how to set one up for yourself!
Upsell
An Upsell is an additional bonus offer presented to a customer after they have completed their purchase for your main offer. Often this is a complimentary offer that unlocks even better results, and is usually available for a very attractive price only available during the upsell offer.
Want some help coming up with strategic ideas for your upsell? Check out my friend Dama Jue’s free Upsell Offer Locker with 46 upsell ideas you can implement right away
Value
It’s common in online business circles for people to encourage you to “share value” in your free and paid content. In this context, value usually means sharing valuable information or resources that help your ideal client achieve the results they are looking for.
Value can also be used to describe the true worth of your offer, in comparison with the actual sale price, to illustrate what a great deal your customers are getting. For example, my Low-Energy Launching course is valued at €1923 but is available for purchase for a much lower price!
Waitlist
Waitlists are a great way to gather interested potential customers before you launch something new. Simply set up an opt-in page with some information about the offer that’s in the works, and when someone subscribes you can add them to a special tag or group in your email marketing software indicating they are on the waitlist for that offer - and perhaps you can offer them early access to the sale or a special offer when you are ready to launch.
X-Factor
X-Factor is a common way to describe that seemingly elusive characteristic that sets successful people apart from the rest. Often in online business circles, X-Factor is linked to fast growth, big launches, large audiences and desirable visibility opportunities or collaborations.
However, in my opinion, those X-Factor characteristics aren’t worth measuring yourself against. Often business owners who have those types of large, successful businesses have been around for decades, have large teams, may have huge ad-spend behind those flashy launches and almost always have very different life circumstances from the type of people I tend to attract.
So I’d like to introduce another type of X-Factor: the thing that sets you apart from all the other people doing & selling the same thing as you.
This could be your sense of style, your personality, your story, your perseverance, your excitement, your creativity… you get the idea! Whatever that special factor is that sets you apart from competitors is ultimately much more helpful to focus on since it will help you stand out and get found by your potential clients & customers.
YouTube
YouTube is a video content app powered by search engines. And while you may think of YouTube as a place to watch funny cat videos or tech tutorials, it can also be a very strategic place to publish your own marketing content to grow your audience.
I’m planning to start my own YouTube channel as part of my marketing strategy so if you want create searchable video content too, I recommend checking out Stephanie Kase’s fantastic YouTube for Business course that I’m following to get started.
Zoom Fatigue
Zoom is the industry standard for hosting video calls. While it is great that we can meet with people all around the world from our computers, over the past few years many people have sat in on so many videos calls that now there’s a strong resistance to having to “hop” on another call - which has been dubbed “Zoom Fatigue”.
A great way to combat this in your business is to be very intentional as you design your sales & delivery processes to reduce as many calls as possible. In fact, if you want you can cut calls out of your offers entirely with a strategically designed productized service!
