SWOT: SWOT is a strategic planning tool that maps strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats around a business, project or decision.
SOSTAC: SOSTAC is a planning framework for marketing and business built around six steps: Situation, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Action and Control.
PESTILE: PESTLE analysis scans Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors to understand an organization’s external macro environment.
SMART: SMART is a goal-setting framework that makes objectives Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Roadmap: A roadmap is a high-level plan that outlines the key steps, milestones and timing needed to reach a strategic goal or vision.
Service Blueprint: A service blueprint is a diagram that maps customer actions, frontstage and backstage processes needed to deliver a service.
Marketing
USP: USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is the distinct benefit or feature that makes a product or service stand out from competitors.
STP: STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) is a marketing approach that segments the market, selects target groups and positions an offer for them.
ESP: An ESP (Email Service Provider) is a platform used to send, track and manage bulk email campaigns and subscriber lists.
UGC: UGC (User Generated Content) is any content about a brand that is created by users or customers rather than the brand itself.
7Ps: The 7Ps of marketing are Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical Evidence, used to plan and refine the marketing mix.
Segmentation: Segmentation is the process of dividing a market into groups of customers with similar needs, behaviors or characteristics.
A/B split testing: A/B split testing compares two versions of a page, email or ad to see which variation performs better on a chosen metric.
JTBD: JTBD (Jobs To Be Done) is a framework that studies what job customers hire a product to do, focusing on outcomes rather than demographics or features.
CTA: CTA (Call To Action) is a prompt such as a button or link that encourages users to take a specific action, like “Buy now” or “Sign up”.
SEO: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of improving a site’s visibility in organic search engine results to attract more relevant traffic.
Local SEO: Local SEO optimizes a business’s online presence so it appears prominently for searches from nearby users in maps and local search results.
NAP: NAP (Name, Address, Phone) is core business contact information that should be consistent across all online listings and profiles.
MER: MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio) compares total revenue to total marketing spend to show how efficiently marketing generates sales.
CAC: CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is the average cost of gaining one new customer, including all marketing and sales expenses.
LTV: LTV (Customer Lifetime Value) estimates the total revenue or profit a business can expect from a customer over the whole relationship.
AOV: AOV (Average Order Value) is the average amount spent each time a customer places an order over a given period.
ROAS: ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) measures how much revenue is generated for every unit of currency spent on advertising.
ROI: ROI (Return On Investment) compares the gain from an investment with its cost to show overall profitability.
RFM segmentation: RFM segmentation groups customers by Recency, Frequency and Monetary value of purchases to identify the most valuable segments.
ABM segmentation: ABM (Account-Based Marketing) targets specific high-value companies or accounts with tailored marketing and sales efforts.
TOFU: TOFU (Top of Funnel) is the awareness stage where users realize a problem or need but have not yet searched for a specific solution.
MOFU: MOFU (Middle of Funnel) is the evaluation stage where users research and compare different solutions and providers.
BOFU: BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) is the decision stage when users are ready to choose a solution or vendor.
UVP: UVP (Unique Value Proposition) is a concise statement that explains why your offer is uniquely valuable and better than competitors’ alternatives.
CRO: CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is the practice of improving pages and funnels so a higher share of visitors complete a desired action.
LIFT model: LIFT is a conversion optimization model that evaluates value, clarity, relevance, urgency, anxiety and distraction on a page.
Affiliate: Affiliate marketing lets partners promote a company’s offers and earn commission for the sales or actions they generate.
Remarketing: Remarketing shows ads to people who have already visited your site or app, reminding them to return and complete an action.
SERP: SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is the page of results a search engine shows after a user enters a query.
ICP: ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is a description of the type of company or customer that gets the most value from your product or service.
Buyer Persona: A Buyer Persona is a research-based, semi-fictional profile that represents a key segment of your ideal customers, their goals and challenges.
OKR: OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a planning model that sets ambitious objectives and measurable results to track progress.
BI: BI (Business Intelligence) is the practice of analyzing data to support better business decisions.
MQL: MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) is a lead that has shown enough interest or fit to be considered ready for sales follow-up.
SQL: SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) is a lead vetted by sales as likely to become a paying customer.
MQL to SQL process: The MQL to SQL process defines how marketing-qualified leads are handed off and converted into sales-qualified leads.
PPC: PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is an ad model where advertisers pay each time a user clicks their ad.
PLA: PLA (Product Listing Ads) are shopping ads that show product images, prices and details, usually charged per click.
Google Ads: Google Ads is Google’s online advertising platform for running search, display, video and shopping campaigns.
Meta Ads: Meta Ads are paid advertising campaigns run on Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to reach targeted audiences.
Microsoft Advertising: Microsoft Advertising is a pay-per-click platform that shows ads on Bing and partner networks, similar to Google Ads.
CRM: CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a system and strategy for managing interactions and data across the customer lifecycle.
CMS: CMS (Content Management System) is software for creating, managing and publishing digital content, often for websites.
CDP: CDP (Customer Data Platform) unifies customer data from many sources into a single profile for analysis and activation.
GSC: GSC (Google Search Console) is a Google tool for monitoring, maintaining and troubleshooting a site’s presence in search results.
GA4: GA4 (Google Analytics 4) is Google’s analytics platform for tracking users and events across websites and apps.
UTM: UTM parameters are tags added to URLs so analytics tools can track the source, medium, campaign and other details of incoming traffic.
CM: CM (Consent Mode) is a Google feature that adapts tags to respect users’ consent choices while modeling lost data.
CMP: A CMP (Consent Management Platform) helps websites collect, store and manage users’ consent preferences for cookies and tracking in a compliant way.
Ahrefs: Ahrefs is an SEO toolset for keyword research, backlink analysis, rank tracking and site audits.
Semrush: Semrush is an all-in-one digital marketing platform for SEO, paid search, content, social media and competitive research.
Hotjar heatmaps: Hotjar heatmaps visualize how users move, click and scroll on a page to reveal behavior patterns.
UGC: UGC (User Generated Content) is content about a brand created by customers or users, such as reviews, photos or posts.
GMB: GMB (Google Business Profile) is a free profile through which a business appears in Google Maps and local search results.
Hicks Law CRO: Hick’s Law in CRO reduces choices to make decisions faster and improve conversion rates.
Cialdini principles CRO: Cialdini principles CRO applies persuasion principles such as scarcity and social proof to increase conversions.
ICE: The ICE score prioritizes ideas by rating Impact, Confidence and Ease (or Effort) and multiplying the values to compare options.
ICE: ICE (Impact Cost Effectiveness) compares the expected impact of an initiative to the cost required to achieve it.
PXL: The PXL framework scores experiments by factors like potential impact, ease of execution and learning value to help prioritize tests.
PIE: The PIE framework prioritizes pages or tests by scoring Potential, Importance and Ease, then ranking by the combined score.
SRM: Sample Ratio Mismatch (SRM) is a warning in experiments that the traffic split between variants differs significantly from the planned ratio.
Google Lighthouse: Google Lighthouse is an automated tool that audits performance, accessibility, SEO and best practices for web pages.
CDN: A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of distributed servers that deliver web content to users from locations closer to them.
SLA: An SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a contract that defines the expected level of service, uptime and support between provider and client.
TCO: TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is the total cost of buying, operating and maintaining a product or system over its lifetime.
Crawl: Crawl refers to search engine bots visiting and indexing pages so they can appear in search results.
Project Management
GANTT diagram: A Gantt diagram is a project schedule chart showing tasks, their duration, timing and dependencies over time.
RACI matrix: A RACI matrix assigns who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed for each task or decision in a project.
Performance Management
KPI: KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are measurable metrics used to track how well an organization or activity meets its key objectives.
Web Design
UX: UX (User Experience) is the overall quality of a person’s interaction with a product or service, including ease of use, usefulness and satisfaction.
CWV: Core Web Vitals are Google’s key performance metrics for user experience on a page, focusing on loading, interactivity and visual stability.
Management of resources
ERP: ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is software that integrates core business processes like finance, inventory and operations.
Business models
B2B: Business-to-Business (B2B) is a model in which a company sells products or services to other companies.
SaaS: SaaS (Software as a Service) is a business model where software is delivered online as a subscription instead of installed locally.
Information Architecture
Tree-testing: Tree-testing evaluates a site’s navigation by asking users to find items in a text-only tree of categories and links.
Card sorting: Card sorting is a research method where users group labeled cards into categories to reveal mental models and inform information architecture.
IA: Information Architecture (IA) is the practice of structuring and labeling content so users can easily find information and complete tasks.
Design sprint
Crazy-8s workshops: Crazy 8s is a fast sketching exercise where participants draw eight ideas in eight minutes to explore many design directions.
Sketch-storm workshops: Sketch-storm is a workshop format where participants quickly sketch and share many visual ideas to explore solutions before prototyping.
Methods for prioritization
RICE: RICE prioritization ranks ideas using Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort to estimate which initiatives deliver most value per effort.
Design
Edge cases: Edge cases are rare or unusual scenarios in which users interact with a product in ways that differ from typical usage.
Performance budget: A performance budget sets target limits for metrics like page weight or load time to keep a site fast and responsive.
Fogg Behavior Model: The Fogg Behavior Model states that behavior happens when motivation, ability and a prompt occur at the same moment.
Wireframes: Wireframes are simplified visual layouts that show the structure and key elements of a page without final design or graphics.
LCP: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) measures how long it takes for the main content of a page to become visible to the user.
INP: INP (Interaction to Next Paint) measures how quickly a page responds visually after a user interaction, such as a click or tap.
CLS: CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures how much page elements unexpectedly move during loading, indicating visual stability problems.
TTFB: TTFB (Time To First Byte) measures how long it takes for a browser to receive the first byte of data from the server.
SPA: SPA (Single Page Application) is a web app that loads a single HTML page and updates content dynamically without full reloads.
MPA: MPA (Multi Page Application) is a web app where each new page or view is loaded with a separate server request.
SSR: SSR (Server-Side Rendering) generates HTML for pages on the server for each request before sending it to the browser.
SSG: SSG (Static Site Generation) builds pages as static HTML at build time, so they can be served very quickly from a server or CDN.
ISR: ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration) updates static pages on demand or on a schedule so content stays fresh without full rebuilds.
Low-High-fidelity design: Low- and high-fidelity designs are prototypes with different levels of detail, from rough sketches to near-final designs.
Hi-Fi UI: Hi-Fi UI is a detailed user interface design that closely matches the final look and behavior of the product.
WCAG: WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) are international standards for making web content more accessible to people with disabilities.
ARIA: ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is a set of HTML attributes that improve accessibility of dynamic content and UI components.
Semantic HTML5: Semantic HTML5 uses meaningful elements like <header>, <article> or <nav> to describe content structure, improving accessibility and SEO.
Normani Nielsen rules: Norman–Nielsen rules are core UX principles from Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen for creating intuitive, usable interfaces and products.
User interface
NN/g 10 heuristics: The NN/g 10 usability heuristics are Jakob Nielsen’s general rules of thumb for designing and evaluating user interfaces.
Security
WAF: A WAF (Web Application Firewall) monitors and filters HTTP traffic to protect web applications from attacks such as SQL injection and XSS.
OAuth2: OAuth2 is an authorization framework that lets users grant limited access to their resources without sharing credentials.
OIDC: OIDC (OpenID Connect) is an identity layer on top of OAuth 2.0 that lets clients verify a user’s identity and obtain basic profile data.
JWT: JWT (JSON Web Token) is a compact, signed token format for securely transmitting claims as a JSON object.
OWASP: OWASP is a non-profit foundation that provides resources, tools and best practices for improving software and web application security.
CSP: CSP (Content Security Policy) is a security mechanism that helps prevent XSS, clickjacking and other code-injection attacks.
API
GraphQL: GraphQL is a query language and runtime for APIs that lets clients request exactly the data they need from a single endpoint.
Development
CI/CD: CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) automates testing and deployment so code can be shipped frequently and safely.
MVP: MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is the smallest version of a product that can be released to learn from real users.
REST: REST is an architectural style for web APIs that uses stateless requests, standard HTTP methods and resource-based URLs.
OpenAPI: OpenAPI is a standard, language-neutral specification format for describing RESTful APIs and their endpoints, inputs and outputs.
ISG: ISG (Incremental Static Generation) gradually generates or refreshes static pages as they are requested, instead of rebuilding the whole site.