Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the brand, web, and search terms we use across the site. Each one links on to the deeper writing in Notes.
Brand
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Brand guidelines
Brand guidelines are the rules for using a brand consistently — logo, colour, type, spacing, and voice — written down so anyone can apply the identity correctly. They're what keep a brand from drifting once more than one person touches it.
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Brand identity
Brand identity is the visible system a brand is recognised by — logo, wordmark, colour, and typography, designed as one direction that expresses the positioning. It's the face of the strategy, not decoration added on top.
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Brand positioning
Brand positioning is the single idea a company wants to own in a customer's mind — who it's for, what it does better, and why that matters. It's the decision the rest of the brand is built to express.
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Brand strategy
Brand strategy is the plan for what a company stands for, who it's for, and how it shows up, decided before any logo or website is designed. It's the thinking that makes every later design choice defensible.
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Brand voice
Brand voice is the consistent personality a brand writes and speaks in — the words it uses, the tone it takes, and the things it would never say. It's how a company sounds recognisable across a homepage, an email, and an error message.
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Copywriting
Copywriting is writing the words that carry a brand and move a reader to act — headlines, body, buttons — in a voice that sounds like a person, not a template. On a site it's half the design.
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Rebrand
A rebrand is changing how a company presents itself — its name, identity, positioning, or all three — to match what it has become. Done well it's driven by a strategic reason, not a taste for something new.
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Value proposition
A value proposition is a clear statement of the benefit a customer gets, for whom, and why it beats the alternative. It's the promise a homepage has to land in the first few seconds.
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Wordmark
A wordmark is a logo made from the company's name set in a distinctive typeface, rather than a separate symbol. Think Google or FedEx — the name itself is the mark.
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Design
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Accessibility (a11y)
Accessibility is designing a site so people with disabilities can use it — readable by screen readers, navigable by keyboard, legible at any contrast. It also happens to make a site clearer, faster, and better ranked for everyone.
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Design system
A design system is a reusable set of components, tokens, and rules a website or product is built from, instead of designing each page as a one-off. It keeps a growing site consistent and fast to extend.
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Design tokens
Design tokens are named values for the small decisions in a design — a colour, a spacing step, a font size — stored once and reused everywhere. They're what let a brand change in one place and update across a whole product.
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Responsive design
Responsive design is building a website so one codebase adapts to any screen — phone, tablet, or desktop — rather than shipping separate versions. Since most traffic is mobile, it usually means designing the small screen first.
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Typography
Typography is the craft of choosing and arranging type — typeface, size, spacing, and line length — so text is easy to read and carries the right tone. On most sites it's the majority of the design.
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UX and UI
UX (user experience) is how something works and feels to use; UI (user interface) is what it looks like — the screens, buttons, and controls. Good UI on bad UX is a beautiful product nobody can figure out.
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Wireframe
A wireframe is a low-detail layout of a page that shows structure and hierarchy — what goes where and in what order — before any visual design. It settles the plan cheaply, before colour and type raise the cost of change.
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Web
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Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization is the practice of increasing the share of visitors who take the action you want — buy, sign up, enquire — by improving the page rather than buying more traffic. It's making the traffic you already have worth more.
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Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google's three measurements of real-world page experience: loading speed (LCP), responsiveness to input (INP), and visual stability (CLS). They're a ranking signal, so they affect both how a site feels and how it's found.
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Headless CMS
A headless CMS is a content system that stores your text and images and hands them to any front-end through an API, instead of being tied to one built-in theme. It lets non-developers edit content while developers keep full control of the site.
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Landing page
A landing page is a focused page built around a single action — sign up, book a call, buy — usually where an ad or campaign sends traffic. Its whole job is to make one decision easy.
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Page speed
Page speed is how quickly a web page loads and becomes usable. It's one of the highest-leverage things on a site: faster pages keep more visitors, convert better, and rank higher.
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Static site generator (SSG)
A static site generator builds a website into plain HTML files ahead of time, so pages are served instantly instead of assembled on every request. It's why a well-built marketing site feels fast and rarely goes down.
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Search
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Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring a site so it gets quoted as the answer inside AI assistants and search summaries, not just ranked as a blue link. The goal is to be the sentence the answer engine lifts.
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Backlink
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines read them as votes of confidence, so a few links from trusted, relevant sites do more for ranking than a pile of low-quality ones.
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Featured snippet
A featured snippet is the boxed answer Google pulls to the top of results, above the normal links, to answer a question directly. Winning it means being quoted as the answer — the SEO forerunner of today's AI answers.
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Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of making a brand show up correctly inside AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. It's about being described accurately when a model talks about you, not just being cited.
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Local SEO
Local SEO is the practice of getting a business found for searches tied to a place — the map pack, 'near me' queries, and location pages. It's about winning the customer who's ready to walk in or call today.
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Meta description
A meta description is the short summary of a page that search engines often show under its title in results. It doesn't directly affect ranking, but a good one wins the click.
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On-page SEO
On-page SEO is everything on a page you control to help it rank and get understood: the content, headings, title, meta description, internal links, and structure. It's making each page unmistakably about one thing.
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Schema markup (structured data)
Schema markup is code you add to a page that labels its content for machines — this is a product, this is a price, this is an FAQ. It helps search and AI engines understand a page precisely, and can unlock rich results.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the practice of making a site more likely to be found in search results for the things it should rank for. It rests on three pillars: technical health, useful content, and trust from other sites.
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AI
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AI search
AI search is when a search tool answers your question directly with a generated summary instead of just listing links — Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT search. It changes the goal from ranking on a page to being part of the answer.
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Large language model (LLM)
A large language model is an AI system trained on vast amounts of text to predict and generate language, powering tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. For brands it matters because these models now answer questions people used to ask a search engine.
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llms.txt
llms.txt is a simple text file at the root of a website that gives AI models a clean, curated summary of the site and its key pages. It's an emerging convention for helping assistants understand a brand accurately.
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Business
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Brand naming
Brand naming is the work of choosing a company or product name that's distinctive, ownable, and legally clear. A good name is memorable and available as a domain and trademark — which is harder than it sounds.
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Go-to-market (GTM)
A go-to-market strategy is the plan for how a product reaches and wins its first customers — who it's for, the message, the channels, and the pricing. Brand and website are where most of that plan becomes real.
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Information architecture (IA)
Information architecture is how a site's content is organised and labelled so people can find what they need — the pages, the navigation, and the paths between them. Good IA is invisible; bad IA is why visitors give up.
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Minimum viable product (MVP)
An MVP is the smallest version of a product that delivers real value and lets you learn from actual users. The point is to test the riskiest assumption fast — not to ship something half-built.
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Pitch deck
A pitch deck is the short slide presentation founders use to raise money — the story of the problem, the solution, the market, and the team. It's judged on clarity and design as much as on the numbers.
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Product-market fit
Product-market fit is the point where a product satisfies a real market so well that demand pulls the business forward — customers stick, refer, and come back. It's less a milestone you announce than one you can feel.
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SaaS website
A SaaS website is the marketing site for a software product — its job is to explain the product clearly and turn visitors into trials, demos, or signups. Clarity converts; cleverness usually doesn't.
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Web design vs web development
Web design is deciding how a site looks and works; web development is building it in code. They're different skills — and the seams between separate design and dev teams are where most website problems come from.
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Studio
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Brand audit
A brand audit is a structured review of how a brand currently looks, sounds, and is perceived — against where the business wants to go. It tells you whether you need a refresh, a rebrand, or nothing at all.
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Creative agency
A creative agency is a larger firm that handles branding, design, and marketing across many clients, usually with account managers coordinating specialist teams. It scales well, but adds layers between the client and the people doing the work.
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Design brief
A design brief is the short document that sets a project's goal, audience, constraints, and what success looks like — before any design begins. A good brief is the difference between focused work and expensive guessing.
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Design partner
A design partner is a studio or team you work with continuously, not just for one project — someone who learns your business and improves it over time. It suits companies where design and the product keep evolving.
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Design retainer
A design retainer is a recurring arrangement where you reserve a studio's time each month for ongoing design and build work. It trades one-off project pricing for continuity, priority, and a predictable cost.
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Design studio
A design studio is a small, senior team that designs and builds the work itself, rather than routing it through account managers and juniors. You hire the people who actually do the work — which is why studios tend to be faster and more consistent than agencies.
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Scope of work (SOW)
A scope of work is the written agreement of exactly what a project includes — deliverables, timeline, and what's out of scope. A clear one is the single best defence against surprise costs and 'that wasn't included' fights.
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Website audit
A website audit is a review of a site's performance, SEO, design, and conversion — finding what's costing you visitors, rankings, or sales. It turns a vague sense that 'the site underperforms' into a specific, prioritised list.
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