GLOSSARY · OPERATOR'S DICTIONARY
What we mean when we say it
Short, opinionated definitions for the terms that come up on every discovery call. If something isn't here, ask on the call and it'll get added.
MARKETING
AOV
Average Order Value, total revenue divided by total number of orders in a period.
CAC
Customer Acquisition Cost, the total cost of acquiring one new paying customer, calculated by dividing all sales and marketing spend in a period by the number of customers acquired in that period.
CAPI
Meta Conversion API, Meta's server-side tracking channel that lets you send conversion events directly from your server to Facebook's ad system, bypassing the browser-side tracking gaps caused by iOS ATT and ad blockers.
CRO
Conversion Rate Optimisation, the practice of improving the percentage of site visitors who complete the desired action (purchase, signup, enquiry), typically through testing and iteration.
Klaviyo flows
Automated email and SMS sequences in Klaviyo that fire in response to customer events, welcome series after a first signup, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, post-purchase, win-back, and so on.
LTV
Lifetime Value, the total gross profit a customer generates across all their orders, before subtracting acquisition cost.
Performance Max
Google Ads' automated, AI-driven campaign type that places ads across all Google inventory, Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail, from a single asset group plus a goal.
ROAS
Return On Ad Spend, the revenue generated per pound of ad spend, expressed as a multiple (e.g., 7.69x ROAS means £7.69 of revenue per £1 spent).
Server-side tracking
A tracking architecture where conversion events are sent to ad platforms (Meta, Google) from your server instead of from the visitor's browser, restoring the data lost to iOS ATT, ad blockers, and intelligent tracking prevention.
PRICING
Fixed-price build
A web build with a single agreed price for a fully scoped deliverable, where the agency carries the risk of estimate overruns rather than the client.
Retainer
A recurring monthly fee paid to an agency for an agreed scope of ongoing work, typically across design, development, and marketing.
SHOPIFY
Liquid
Shopify's open-source templating language, used to add dynamic logic to theme files, loops, conditionals, variable rendering, and access to shop data like products and customers.
Shopify 2.0
The current architecture for Shopify themes (released 2021) which introduced sections everywhere, JSON templates, app blocks, and a more flexible content model than the legacy theme system.
Subscription commerce
An ecommerce model where customers pay on a recurring schedule (monthly, quarterly) to receive products, instead of paying per order.
WORDPRESS
ACF
Advanced Custom Fields, a WordPress plugin that adds structured, typed custom fields to posts, pages, and custom post types, plus a clean PHP API for reading them in the theme.
Block theme
A WordPress theme built around Gutenberg blocks and the Full Site Editor, where layouts and content are composed in the block editor rather than coded directly in PHP templates.
Headless WordPress
A WordPress setup where the front-end is a separate framework (typically Next.js) pulling content via WordPress's REST or GraphQL API, while editors still work in the WordPress admin.
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