Glossary

The Danish e-mark is the national trust certification for online stores, ensuring secure shopping, clear terms and buyer protection for consumers.

Dropshipping is a model where your store sells products a supplier stocks and ships directly to the customer — with no inventory of your own.

Double opt-in requires a new subscriber to confirm their signup via a link in an email before the address is added to your list.

DNS translates domain names into IP addresses via records like A and CNAME – the basis for pointing your domain at your Shopify store.

DMARC is a DNS policy built on SPF and DKIM that tells receiving servers what to do with unauthenticated email from your domain.

DKIM cryptographically signs your outgoing email so the recipient's mail server can confirm the message is genuine and unaltered in transit.

A data processing agreement is a GDPR-required contract governing how a processor handles personal data on behalf of a controller.

Contribution margin is the sales price minus variable costs and shows how much an order contributes toward fixed costs and profit.

D2C (direct-to-consumer) is a model where a brand sells directly to the end customer without wholesale or retail intermediaries.

A CTA (call to action) is the button or link that asks the user to take the next step, such as 'Add to cart' or 'Sign up'.

CSV is a text-based file format where each line is a row and fields are separated by a delimiter – Shopify's standard for importing and exporting data.

CPC (cost per click) is the price an advertiser pays per click on an ad. Average CPC = total spend divided by total clicks.

Core Web Vitals are Google's three user experience metrics: LCP for loading, INP for responsiveness, and CLS for visual stability.

Cookie consent is a visitor's active permission for a website to set or read non-essential cookies, such as analytics and marketing cookies.

A content gap is a topic, keyword, or customer question competitors cover or rank for that your store is missing or covers worse.

Consent mode is Google's signaling framework that adjusts how Google tags measure and set cookies based on a user's consent.

A CNAME is a DNS record that points a subdomain to another domain name instead of to an IP address.

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the total profit you can expect from a single customer over the entire relationship with your store.

A 404 error is an HTTP status code shown when a URL cannot be found — often a deleted product or a changed link in your store.

A 301 redirect is a permanent HTTP redirect that sends both users and search engines from an old URL to a new one.

Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant and model family that, via API, can write copy, analyze data, and power support in online stores.

Churn rate is the share of customers or subscribers who leave in a period, calculated as customers lost divided by customers at the start.

Checkout is the final steps where a customer moves from cart to completed order, entering contact, shipping, and payment details.

A chatbot is software that answers customer queries via chat — either rule-based or AI-driven — and on Shopify it is typically added as an app.

A chargeback fee is an administrative fee your payment provider charges when a customer disputes a card payment.

A CDN is a network of servers spread across the world that delivers images, CSS, and JavaScript from a location close to the user.

Cart abandonment rate is the share of started shopping carts that never turn into a purchase – a core metric for checkout friction.

A canonical URL tells search engines which page is the preferred one when the same content is reachable at several addresses.

A cache keeps copies of data, pages, or files so repeat requests are served faster without re-fetching or regenerating the content.

CAC is the customer acquisition cost: total sales and marketing spend divided by the number of new customers in the same period.

A usability test is a UX method where real users are observed completing specific tasks, so you find friction in your online store.

Bounce rate is the share of sessions with no further interaction. In GA4 it is simply the inverse of engagement rate.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) lets the customer get the item now and pay later, often in interest-free installments, while the provider carries the credit risk.

A payment window is the hosted payment page or iframe from your payment provider where the customer securely enters their card details.

A payment gateway encrypts and passes payment data from your checkout to the acquirer and processor so a card payment can be authorized.

A B2B online store sells to businesses with customer-specific pricing, quantity discounts, and payment terms such as Net 30.

Attribution assigns conversion credit across the channels and touchpoints that influenced a customer on the way to a purchase.

Average Order Value (AOV) is the average revenue per order — total revenue divided by the number of orders.

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link that signals to users and Google what the destination page is about.

A recommendation engine suggests relevant products from behavior and product data and powers personalized recommendations in an online store.

Alt text is the alt attribute on an image that screen readers read aloud and that Google uses to understand what the image shows.

AI in ecommerce means using artificial intelligence to personalize and automate functions like search, recommendations, text content, and customer service.

Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing where a partner earns commission for each tracked sale or lead, not for exposure.

Above the fold is what shoppers see without scrolling — it often decides whether visitors stay or leave your store.

Open rate is the share of delivered emails recorded as opened, usually measured via an invisible tracking pixel.

An A record is a DNS record that points a domain name to an IPv4 address so traffic to your domain reaches the correct server.

A 3PL is an external logistics partner that stores your inventory and handles picking, packing, shipping, and often returns for your store.

CLS measures how much visible elements unexpectedly shift while a page loads — one of Google's Core Web Vitals.

Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of impressions that result in a click, calculated as clicks divided by impressions and shown as a percentage.