I decided to create a glossary to try and provide some clarity and meaning for some of the jargon or unfamiliar terms you may have found throughout this website or elsewhere.
Affiliate Marketing
In simple terms, affiliate marketing is where you promote a product or service for a company and, when a sale has been completed, you receive either a fixed value or a percentage of the product price as commission.
Click-through Rate (CTR)
CTR is how many times a link is clicked divided by how many times it has been displayed. So if your link has been shown 100 times and received 10 clicks, you have a CTR of 10%.
Commission
Commission is the term used for the payment you earn for successfully converting a sale from promoting a product or service for a third-party company.
Conversion
The outcome of the term conversion depends on context, but if we consider a simple example:
In affiliate marketing, your primary aim is to promote the sale of a product. Once a buyer successfully completes a purchase using your link, this is defined as a conversion.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
How frequently a target action is executed. In terms of an affiliate website, a conversion would be deemed as a completed sale. In order to improve your CRO you may need to analyse and strategically improve UX and your sales copy.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation – otherwise known as SEO – is the act of making changes to your website in order to improve your organic search engine website rankings for specific target keyword terms.
User Experience (UX)
How pleasant, and obstacle free a process or task is for a user.
In terms of wanting to improve CTR or CRO you will want to concentrate on improving UX.