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Accessibility Testing
Designing a website to ensure the website can be used by anyone with a disability, e.g. visual, auditory or cognitive. Effects over 10% of web users.
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Attributes
Attributes may be fields, tags or meta-tags within a website.

Banner Ad
A graphical advertisement placed on a Web page, which acts as a hyperlink to the advertiser's Web site.

Benchmark
A point of reference by which something can be measured and compared. For example in our website testing reports, many benchmarks are used to measure the effectiveness of a website.

Bookmark
A list of favourite website stored in a user's browser. Also called a 'Favourite'.

Browsing
Process used by a web user to find information within a website.

Browser
A viewer of the World Wide Web. The two most popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.

Cache
A feature of Web Browsers, which stores copies of Web pages on your computer's hard disk.

Card sorting
Categorisation method where users sort cards into categories. This can help in building a more intuitive navigational hierarchy.

CGI
Common Gateway Interface. A programming language that allows communications between a web browser and a web server.

Click-through
The action of following a link from one Web page to another, or clicking on a banner ad. The percentage of visitors who click-through is measured as a click-through rate (CTR).

Cognitive walkthrough
Evaluation of the usability of a design, through tasks and role-play.

Content object
A manageable and usable piece of content.

Cookie
A small file that a website leaves on a visitor's computer so that it can personalise itself for the next time they visit.

CPC
Cost Per Click. A pricing model used in banner advertising where the advertiser only pays for the number of click-throughs to their site.

CPM
Cost Per Thousand. The most common pricing model for banner advertising where the advertiser pays a fee for every 1000 times their banner ad is seen - but not necessarily clicked on.

Crawlers (also known as robots or spiders)
The term used for the tools that search engines automatically send out to find websites, record them and index them within their databases. Also known as robots or spiders. Some crawlers will only visit the home page of a website while others may 'deep crawl' and index many sub-pages.

Cross-compatibility
Ability to ensure a website can be accessible to a wide variety of platforms and browsers.

CTR
Click-Through Rate. The number of visitors who clicked on a banner ad as a percentage of the total number of people who saw it.

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Directories
A web search tool compiled manually by human editors. Once websites are submitted with information such as a title and description, they are assessed by an editor and, if deemed suitable for addition, will be listed under one or more subject categories. Users can search across a directory using keywords or phrases, or browse through the subject hierarchy. Best examples of a directory are Yahoo and the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)

Discussion Forum
A Web-based discussion group where participants with common interests can exchange open messages.

Domain Name
The name that the web uses to identify sites more easily (such as elementalcreative.co.uk). Domain Name Servers then translate this name into an IP address to reach the correct web server.

Dynamic Content
Web page content that changes or is changed automatically based on database content or user information. You can usually spot dynamic sites when the URL ends with .asp, .cfm, .cgi or .shtml, but it's also possible to serve dynamic content with standard static pages (.htm or .html). Many search engines index dynamic content, but some don't if there's a "?" character in the URL

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Evaluation
Evaluation is a procedure in which information about the usability of a system is collected with the intention of refining the system through modification.

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FFA sites
Free For All sites are often included within the lists used by some companies or software, offering submission of your website to 'thousands of sites'.

Flash
An animation technology from Macromedia used to present 'bandwidth-friendly' animations on Web pages.

Frames
This is the HTML technique that creates a fixed element to a web page, usually containing navigation buttons for the website that will be constantly visible. Frames were popular several years ago but can cause problems for search engine optimisation as they restrict the ability of some crawlers to index the website

FTP
File Transfer Protocol. A method of transferring files from one computer to another.

GIF
Graphics Interchange Format. The most popular graphical format used on the Web.

Graceful degradation
Ensuring website is accessible and easily views through any type of browser.

Graphical user interface
Graphical (rather than purely textual) user interface to a computer. The term came into existence because the first interactive user interfaces to computers were not graphical; they were text-and-keyboard oriented and usually consisted of commands you had to remember and brief computer responses.

Guidelines checklist
Used extensively in website testing procedures to ensure that the principles of usability, accessibility and information architecture have been implemented with the design of the website.

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HCI
Human-Computer Interaction (sometimes also referred to as Computer - Human Interaction, CHI) is the study of how people interact with computers.

Heuristic
Heuristics are usability principles that are used as a bench march by which to assess the effectiveness of a website.

Hierarchical browsing
The process of users following the primary path through a site to access content objects.

Hit
The retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a Web server. Hits are not a good indication of Web site traffic.

Home Page
The first page of a Web site (also called the Index page)

HTML
Hyper-Text Mark-up Language is coding used to create websites that can be read by Internet browsers. Part of the HTML coding for a website should include the meta-tags required for search engine optimisation.

Hypertext
Clickable text which is 'linked' to another related document. Hypertext links form the basis of the World Wide Web.

Information architecture
Organisation of information that lays a structural blue print upon which a website can be built.

Information retrieval
The study of how easy it is to find information within a website.

Interstitial
A form of Pop-Up advertising, which appears when a page is being downloaded.


IP Address
An identifier for a computer or other device on a TCP/IP network. IP addresses consist of 4 groups of numbers between 0 and 255 separated by dots.

JPEG
Joint Photographic Experts Group. Another popular format for images used on the Web.

Keywords
To achieve a high search engine ranking for a relevant search, a website must contain the appropriate positioning and density of keywords or phrases related to the search terms used. This is a critical part of the search engine optimisation for any website.

Keyword Phrase
Two or more words that may be used to describe your business or a phrase that visitors may use to find your company's website in a search engine. "estate agents belfast" , "business information ireland' are examples of keyword phrases.

Labelling
Labelling is part of the process of organizing the navigation a website.

Likert scale
Users rank responses to a set number of issues, i.e. 1 is to agree, 4 is to disagree

Link popularity
Important factor, that in the case of some search engines, determines your ranking. Within this, a search engine will decipher your placement, by looking at what types of websites link to your website, the sites that your website links to and the interlinking of pages throughout your own website.

Log File
A file that records all the activity on a Web site, including the number of visitors, where they came from, what they looked at and how long they stayed.

Mailing List
A database of E-mail addresses and other personal information volunteered by visitors to a website.

Meta tags
An element of HTML coding on a website that is used by search engines to index a website. Most meta-tags are included within the 'header' code of a website and the most important tags are the title, description and keyword tags.

Metasearch engines
A type of search tool that will allow a user to conduct a search across two or more search engines and directories at once.

Mock-up
Model of website through paper illustrations, screenshots, or simple configurations of screens with limited interaction.

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Navigating
The process by which a website uses a websites navigation to effectively fulfil their information needs.

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Pluralistic walkthrough
Specialised usability inspection method whereby users are studied whilst using different areas of the website.

Pop-Up
A form of online advertising where an additional browser window containing the advert appears over the top of the Web site being viewed. Interstitials and Superstitials are types of Pop-Up.

Prototype
An experimental design of the whole or part of a product used for illustration or testing purposes.

Prototyping
Creation of sample websites for the purposes of testing and research.

Query
A word or group of words used to search for information within a search engine or directory.

Ranking
The position within a list of results that a web page achieves on a search engine for a given search term. Search Engine results are usually displayed 10 at a time.

Referrer
A Web site, which directs visitors to your site via links. Search Engines act as Referrers. When a user types a Web address into their Web browser directly, or returns to a site by using a Bookmark, a visit with 'No Referrer' is recorded.

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Search results
The ranked listing that appears once a search is submitted on a search engine or directory. Results are often displayed in groups of 10 and research has shown that websites appearing lower than 20-30 in the search results are less likely to be seen, or visited.

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Stemming
The action performed by a search engine where it takes the stem of a keyword and delivers similar results.

Sticky Content
Web site content or functionality, which encourages users to return to the site many times.

Storyboard
Illustrations, i.e. a paper prototype of a website, that represent a process, such as the steps of interacting with a computer or website.

Submission
The process of notifying search engines or directories about a website. Every search tool has a form to enable the submission of websites, varying from a simple URL address (for a search engine), to more detailed information (for a directory).

Task analysis
The assessment of a web user, through setting out tasks for the user to perform.

Usability Testing
Usability testing is the process by which a website is thoroughly tested, to ensure that any problems encountered by the user are ironed out

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