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Your ecommerce glossary has arrived. Part 6: Terms Q-S

From nanotechnology to Zillenials, we’ve got you covered.

The world of ecommerce and online marketing is changing everyday – no one can blame you if you haven’t committed every acronym and each new platform to heart. But we’ve got you covered.

We have assembled one of the most comprehensive, exhaustive ecommerce glossaries you can find. If you’re looking to peruse new ideas, or simply find a quick cheat sheet for your next conference call, this glossary is just the thing, covering everything from Nanotechnology to Zillenials.

Quick links: 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z

Q

QR (Quick Response) code mobile payments
A contactless payment method where payment is facilitated by scanning a QR code from a mobile device, which can be read by a merchants optical scanner.

QR code
A two-dimensional bar code created by Japanese corporation Denso Wave in 1994 with the intention of allowing for high speed or “Quick response” decoding of its contents.

Quick service restaurants (QSR)
Better known as fast food restaurants, QSR’s serve food quickly and affordably with minimal table service.

Qualifying ratio
Used by lenders to determine creditworthiness and approve or reject credit requests, the qualifying ratio is the percentage of a credit applicant’s income that is consumed by paying existing debt obligations.

R

Radioactive data
Personal data plus intellectual data subject to regulation.

Real-time interaction management
Delivering contextually relevant experiences, utility, and value at the appropriate moment in the customer life cycle using enterprise marketing technology.

Reason code
A code that provides additional information regarding the specific nature of a chargeback, fee collection, subsequent presentment, funds disbursement, or request for a source document to the receiving clearing member.

Receipt
A document that acknowledges a transaction took place at the point-of-sale and typically contains the date, merchant name and location, primary account number, type of account accessed, and transaction amount.

Reconciliation
The process which compares the business undertaken at a merchant’s electronic data capture terminal with what’s been recorded by the acquirer and credited to his bank account.

Recovery readiness view
A dashboard that offers real-time visibility into the state of recovery and pinpoints the technology elements that are ready for recovery and those that are not, along with suggested remedies.

Recurring billing transaction
A scheduled charge to the cardholder that has been agreed upon to be processed on a periodic basis for recurring goods and services, typically for memberships and monthly bills.

Recurring payment
The automatic charge to a customer’s credit card, authorized by the customer, for regular delivery of products and services by an online store.

Redirects
The occurrence of being rerouted or redirected by a server to a different URL due to any number of reasons including maintenance, updated information, new domain, canonical URL’s, etc.

Referral website origin
A measure which indicates online visitors who arrived at your store from any website that is not already included in the other visit origins.

Referrer
The last web address accessed by a browser prior to loading a particular web page, used to
identify sources of traffic.

RegTech
A term combining regulatory and technology, RegTech refers to the use of technology in the financial services industry to more effectively meet regulatory compliance challenges.

Release management
The process of planning, scheduling, and controlling a software build through the release and testing of live environments to ensure that the integrity of the live environment is protected and that the correct components are released.

Reloadable card
A prepaid payment card that is not linked to a bank account and which the consumer has the ability to add additional funds to.

Remittance
A sum of money sent in payment for goods or services or as a gift.

Remittance processing
The processing and clearing of payments, typically associated with consumers paying their bills. Also known as receivable processing.

Reservations systems
Software designed specifically for businesses in the travel and leisure market (i.e. airlines, hotels, tour operators, and corporate travel departments) and characterized by features that handle booking, inventory, price control and overbooking management, etc.

Reserve account
For merchants considered high-risk, the acquiring bank requires an account that holds a reserve portion of funds to cover chargebacks, disputed charges, fees and other expenses.

Responsive web design
A website style and design approach that enables it to present effectively on a variety of devices, screen sizes, and resolutions.

Retail technologies
The numerous technologies involved in retail business including inventory and merchandise management, point-of-sale, digital signage, and loss prevention systems.

Retailer
A business or individual that sells goods or services to the public.

Retrieval request
A request from a credit-card issuer to a merchant in which the issuer seeks additional information regarding a transaction involving a cardholder. For instance, the issuer may request a transaction ticket or receipt when a charge is being disputed, resulting in the merchant being charged a fee.

Return on marketing investment
A metric used to determine the total return produced from marketing investment.

Return rate
In a given time period, the percentage of all items ordered that were returned again. These are returns from orders that happened only in the given time period, rather than only returns that happened in the time period.

Return visitor
A visitor who returns for another visit to the same website after at least 30 minutes of inactivity.

Revenue
Total dollar amount that a retailer has received from orders over a given time period.

Revenue per visit (RPV)
Revenue per visit for a given visit for a given time period. The revenue is divided by the number of visits.

Request for further information (RFI)
When either a card issuer or cardholder requests to obtain further information about a particular transaction.

Risk appetite
A term to describe how much risk an organization will take on in pursuit of its objectives, influenced by the capacity of an organization to absorb loss and its propensity for taking risks.

Risk tolerance
The amount of variability in investment returns that a firm will accept in a specific situation.

Robo-advice
Automated financial advice powered by software solutions that deliver a range of customized services, from asset allocation to regulated financial advice and retirement strategy.

Robotic process automation services
Services such as consulting, solution design, implementation, bot management, and automation framework development skills that complement the functionality of robotic process automation products.

Robotics quotient
A measurement of the ability of individuals and organizations to learn from, collaborate with, and generate business results from automated entities such as AI, physical robotics, and related systems.

Routing number
Series of numbers that identify the financial institution assigned to specific checking accounts, savings accounts, or other accounts.

RQ for blockchain
Measures the capacity of individuals and organizations to collaborate with each other, and with other companies in their ecosystems and value chains, to create and operate shared systems and processes.

Rugged DevOps
A technique that seeks to increase speed, cybersecurity, and quality of releases beyond what DevOps practice can yield alone by emphasizing security practices as early in the continuous delivery pipeline as possible.

S

SaaS marketplaces
SaaS applications, components and services that exist online for SaaS buyers to discover. These marketplaces provide the ability to purchase, negotiate contract terms, manage, trial, expand, and renew subscriptions.

Sales coaching
Using relevant, developmental, and motivational conversations that are part of an iterative and collaborative process to inspire salesperson performance.

Sales draft
The paper documentation of a transaction.

Sales enablement

The ongoing process and strategy of preparing all client-facing employees to be able to consistently and methodically have valuable conversations with customer stakeholders in order to optimize the return on investment of the selling system.

Sales enablement automation
Automated solutions, including rich analytics, data visualizations, and comprehensive workflows, that enable sellers to efficiently access and share personalized content with buyers to increase marketing and sales collaboration.

Sales force automation
The streamlining and automation of core sales processes through an integrated suite of customer relationship management tools that help with activity tracking, opportunity and lead management, territory and quota management, sales forecasting, and performance monitoring.

Sales performance management solutions
Automated solutions that help direct and indirect sellers optimize incentive compensation territory coverage, and quota assignment, providing businesses with a systematic way to operationalize their company’s sales strategies.

Scalability
The ability of a system, network, or process to change in size or scale due to demand.

Scenario design
Using an understanding of customers, their goals, and their behaviors to create seamless cross-channel experiences.

Search engine crawling
A particular method of retrieving and storing a websites data (including website URl, titles, meta tags, content and hyperlinks) by a search engine bot or spider. Typically it involves the search engine crawler visiting a list of website URLs then following the indexed hyperlinks.

Search engine optimization (SEO)
A marketing process that makes it easier for search engine bots to index and enhance a website’s ranking in search engine results by improving an online store’s website content.

Search engine results page (SERP)
The search engine page that lists all the results from a search query. To provide the best match search engines list relevant terms by analyzing the query and the site.

Search origin
Indicates which search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing, that a visitor clicked on to arrive at your store.

Sectors
A specific business or merchant grouped together for reference.

Secure payment page
A web page designed to accommodate the safe transfer of sensitive data for the purpose of ecommerce transactions, secured with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 128-bit encryption.

Security analytics platform

A platform built on big data infrastructure to aid in the process of using data collection, aggregation, and analysis tools for security monitoring and threat detection. It also uses machine learning to monitor and facilitate rapid incident detection, analysis, and responses in real-time.

Security architect
The technical authority on information security architecture within an organization, and the person responsible for ensuring that the organization can fulfill the functional requirements of business initiatives in a secure fashion.

Security automation and orchestration
Technology products that make security operations faster, less error-prone, and more efficient by providing automated, coordinated, and policy-based action of security processes across multiple technologies.

Security awareness and training market
Online security education solutions that aim to promote basic security habits, build a positive security culture, and protect organizations from cyber attacks by properly educating and preparing the workforce. Trainings can provide education on a range of security topics, including personal cyber safety, social engineering, and phishing.

Security user behavior analytics (SUBA)
Functionality that helps construct a unified view of users’ actions across the network, and the ability for those actions to be investigated if there is deemed to be a risk of anomalous behavior based on information collected and correlated on user activity.

Sensors

Data collecting devices that require no explicit action or input from a human and detect or measure one or more physical properties of a person, place, or thing.

Sentiment analysis
Understanding an author’s feelings and attitudes about a topic via the automated classification of online commentary as positive, neutral, or negative.

Serverless computing
An approach to software development in which the cloud provider runs the server, which supports event-driven communication, automatically scales on demand, and supports the deployment of arbitrary business logic.

Service design
The design method that helps in the planning and organizing of people, infrastructure, communication, and the material components of a service in order to improve its quality along with enhancing the interaction between the service provider and its customers.

Service orchestration

Creating the best user experience through the automation and provisioning of network services.

Services market for next-generation Oracle applications
Focused on increased business agility and improved customer experience, these applications align with Oracle’s cloud products and include services that go beyond application maintenance and support, to include experience design, consulting, and implementation of newer Oracle Cloud products.

Settlement

The completion of a payment transaction, occurring when the acquiring bank and the issuer exchange data or funds.

Settlement error
A transaction status that prevents settlement of the transaction due to an error that occurred during processing.

Settlement statement
A document indicating the sales and credit activity, billing information, discount fee, and chargebacks (if any) occurring during a particular time frame and issued to the merchant.

Shipping

Physically transporting a product to a customer’s delivery address from the seller’s warehouse.

Shopped (in purchase funnel)
Once a visitor has viewed a product in a merchant’s store, they are considered “shopped” in the purchase funnel.

Shopping cart
The contents of what a user has added to their online order is an eCommerce shopping cart. All the products “in the cart” appear as a mass order on the page.

Shopping cart software
The software that allows an online shopping cart to be utilized by a customer, a process that includes the selection and placement of items from an ecommerce store into a virtual shopping cart where they can then be processed for sale.

Shopping feeds
Lists of product information, usually including a product title, image, description and marketing message, provided to shopping channels to properly display the products.

Standard industrial classification (SIC) codes
A four digit code used for classifying industries and identifying the nature of a business and assigned by the United States government.

Signature moments
Delivering value to customers in subtle yet definitively recognizable ways through memorably crafted and branded micro-interactions.

Site Architecture
The content, design and functionality of a website, or more simply its blueprint. A good site architecture will allow the users and search engines to easily navigate the website with sound categories, subcategories and links.

Smart card
Containing a computer microprocessor chip capable of storing significantly more information than a magnetic strip, a smart card otherwise resembles a traditional credit or debit card.

Smart city
When the critical infrastructure components and services of a city — administration, education, healthcare, public safety, real estate, transportation, and utilities — are made more aware, interactive, and efficient through the use of information and communication technologies.

Smart computing
Helping people make more intelligent decisions and create alternatives and actions that will optimize business processes and business balance sheet results is a new generation of hardware, software, and network technologies that provide IT systems with real-time awareness of the real world and advanced analytics, mobile reach, and collaboration platforms.

Smart grid
An electricity supply network that uses digital communication technology and spans utilities and consumers, it encompasses everything from bulk generation to transmission, distribution, customers, operations, markets, and service providers.

Social business
An organization that makes it easy for people to find and engage others who can help them solve customer and business problems by removing barriers between individuals and information.

Social co-creation
Involving consumers directly and repeatedly in the product development process via social media and social technologies.

Social CRM
How a company implements strategy, technology, business rules, workflows, processes and social characteristics in response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.

Social customer care
Identifying opportunities to surprise and delight customers within social media including by proactively responding to brand mentions and beyond.

Social depth platforms
When branded websites use technologies that add social content and interactions (e.g., blogs, ratings and reviews, user-generated content, forums, online communities) to drive exploration of products and services.

Social engagement
Interacting with consumers, with the intent of answering questions, addressing problems, activating influencers, and gathering insights by responding to their social media postings.

Social innovation network
An ecosystem that furthers a firm’s ability to meet its goals in response to empowered customers by using social technologies to enable employees to innovate and collaborate.

Social intelligence
Activating, measuring, and recalibrating marketing and business programs via the management and analysis of customer data from social sources.

Social investing
Investing that is community-based and socially-influenced, allowing investors to discuss investing ideas and strategies in forums with fellow investors and follow or copy the strategies of other investors.

Social listening
An ongoing, engaged process that intends to better understand consumer opinion on topics, engage with consumers, and uncover insights for the betterment of the business by tracking, identifying, and analyzing online conversations.

Social listening platforms
Social listening platforms manage and analyze customer data from social sources and use that data to activate, measure, and recalibrate marketing and business programs.

Social loyalty
Affinity to a brand based on the connection between customers and the brand itself as well as to other customers of the brand.

Social marketing
Marketing across all components of the marketing mix (product, price, promotion, and placement) through the use of social tactics, media, tools, and technologies.

Social media management solutions
Responding to customer posts on social media with solutions that help marketers publish, monitor, and respond to customer posts on social networks.

Social media monitoring
Seeking to better understand consumer opinion on topic through the passive observation of social data, including tracking, identifying, and analyzing online conversations.

Social origin
Indicated when a visitor to an online store arrived there by clicking on a link from a social network, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Social suites
The combining of at least two social point solutions into a unified suite offering on social platforms.

Social Technographics

A process of comparing consumers by their participation level in social computing behaviors.

Soft add-to-cart
A shopping feature that allows customers to add items to their virtual cart without having to leave the online shopping experience. A full summary or breakdown of the contents of the customer’s cart is available for viewing as each item is added.

Software composition analysis
Identifying vulnerabilities and conflicts in open source and third-party components by scanning (without executing) an application, and providing guidance on where and how to fix the flaws.

Software innovation
Delivering software that creates or improves a market offering, transforms or improves a business process, or enables or improves a business model in a way that boosts value and impact for the enterprise, customers, or partners.

Software quality
Software that provides a satisfying user experience, has fewer defects, and meets business requirements.

Software-as-a-service
Standardized software capability delivered in a pay-per-use, self-service way via internet-standard technologies

Software-defined data center (SDDC)
A marketing term that extends virtualization concepts such as pooling, automation, and abstraction, to all data center resources and services to achieve IT as a service. The SDDC also allows them to be managed across a physically distributed environment as required and composed into arbitrary user-defined services.

Software-defined storage
A storage architecture that allows developers and other business stakeholders to access them without administrator intervention via APIs or service catalogs by pooling new and existing storage resources.

Solution accelerator
A software resource used to automate a particular business or aspect of product development for clients by an IT services vendor. It can provide 30% to 90% of the solution that the client is looking for.

Solution governance
How an organization directs or controls aspects of its technology investments via mechanisms and processes.

Sourcing and vendor management office (SVMO)
Characterized by an amplified forward-looking, networked-business demand and business-value-led approach, SVMO is the next-generation organizational structure for SVM practices.

Specialty designer

A services firm that helps companies apply expert design practices to a specific technology or a narrow business goal.

Speed of the customer
The speed at which a business has to operate to satisfy customers’ need for service delivery, product, and immediate information.

SQL-for-Hadoop solutions
Software that makes it possible for applications and users to work with Hadoop data using structured query language (SQL) that is fully or nearly compliant with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Statement of work (SOW)

A contract that profiles the extent of a limited piece of project work, and includes payment schedule, the purpose of the project, the location of the work to be done, a schedule of deliverables, the work that must be done in detail and the hardware and software involved, and any special requirements.

Stock-keeping Unit (SKU)
The unique alphanumeric identification code for each product or service that can be bought at an online store.

Streaming analytics platform
Software that can aggregate, enrich, filter, and analyze a high throughput of data from multiple disparate live data sources and in any data format to identify simple and complex patterns to detect urgent situations, automate immediate actions, and visualize business in real time.

Strong authentication
Requiring multiple credentials or “factors” for verifying a person’s identity.

Submission
The process of electronically or by mail sending batch deposits to Merchant Services for processing.

Supplier performance management

Remediating and monitoring the performance of a supplier by making sure that the performance meets the expectations defined in the contract and by comparing the service quality to industry standards.

Support documentation
This refers to the forms necessary to support a chargeback-processing cycle, and any additional material to uphold a dispute. (Also see Chargebacks.)

Surveillance economy
A new form of information capitalism that aims to increase revenue and market control by predicingt and modify human behavior.

System of engagement
A system that empowers employees, partners, and customers with smart products and context-rich apps to help them decide and act immediately in moments of need.

System of insight

Consistently turning data into action by harnessing insights using business discipline and technology.

Systems availability
The ratio between mean time between failure (MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR).