THE DICTIONARY OF MARKETING JARGON


To help make sense of the endless abbreviations and made-up words, JDM wrote our own Marketing Jargon Dictionary.


Throughout our site, you'll find abbreviations and jargon with links like this. These will open this dictionary and turn to the right page—hopefully.


Marketing Jargon:

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Words We Made Up:

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Tech-Speak:

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Care to contribute? Comment on this blog post.

ROIm™ (Return on Marketing Investment)

Financially speaking, rate of return (ROR), also known as return on investment (ROI), rate of profit or sometimes just return, is the ratio of money gained or lost (realized or unrealized) from an investment relative to the amount of money invested in an opportunity.


At JDM, we look at marketing as an investment opportunity. We want to make sure that the marketing services we provide our clients will generate a profit.


Traditionally, marketing is viewed as an expense. With JDM's evolved approach to marketing, we're proving marketing can be an investment.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


SPOC™ (Suspect, Prospect, Opportunity, Customer)


SPOC


JDM looks at Marketing & Sales as having a shared pipeline. We segment this long and narrowing pipeline into four key areas: Suspects, Prospects, Opportunities, and Customers.


Affectionately nicknamed "SPOC" (pronounced "spock"), our approach is based on multivariate statistical models and hard data. Wow, that's a mouthful.


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Suspect (Zone in SPOC™)


SPOC


Members in this area (or Zone) are segmented out of the 'universe' (that's everybody on earth). This is a key step in successful B2B marketing. Identify qualified suspects and use marketing and sales tactics to move them down the pipeline to customers.


SPOC is segmented into four key areas:Suspects, Prospects, Opportunities, and Customers.


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Prospect (Zone in SPOC™)


SPOC


Just finding qualified suspects is only half the battle. The next, crucial, step is getting them to 'raise their hand.' By that we mean, take some action that shows that they are interested and, perhaps, ready to become customers.


SPOC is segmented into four key areas:Suspects, Prospects, Opportunities, and Customers.


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Opportunity (Zone in SPOC™)


SPOC


Funny how quickly marketing can hand off prospects to sales-team members, but marketing's role is not yet complete. Marketing still needs to nurture opportunities through the purchase decision. If the timing is not quite right, or the price a little too high, opportunity-level marketing can help turn cooling sales leads into hot new customers.


SPOC is segmented into four key areas:Suspects, Prospects, Opportunities, and Customers.


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Customer (Zone in SPOC™)


SPOC


Customers: A letter thanking customers for their decision to purchase is just a cop-out. Often, the easiest way to build a growing and stable business is through customer-retention, up-selling, and cross-selling current customers.


SPOC is segmented into four key areas:Suspects, Prospects, Opportunities, and Customers.


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RE-MARK™ (Repurposable Mark-Up)

Forget templates! What we've done is build website skeletons (in CSS and JavaScript) which we can manipulate easily and add custom creative design elements to reinforce your Brand and your brand value.


To put it another way, templated websites are like putting different clothes on the same person. There's little customization or differentiation possible. Our RE-MARK™ sites are more like the human skeletons. We all have similar ones, but what's attached to that structure makes you different than everybody else on Earth.


In addition to allowing us to quickly develop custom websites, our RE-MARK™ sites are built for maximum search engine visibility, compatibility, and user experience.


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Traffic Channels

"Traffic channels" in Internet marketing refer to inbound links to your website, blog or profile. The more inbound links from credible, contextually relevant sources the more ways website visitors (traffic) can get to your site.


In addition to building numerous ways for inbound visitors, many search engines look favorably on these links. So long as the credibility of the site linking to yours is high, the links will increase your search engine page rank. However, beware of people selling such inbound links. Their sites are often seen as 'link farms' and have such a low credibility rating that many search engines actually penalize sites to which they link.


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Integrate

Integration is the bringing together of component subsystems into one system and ensure that the whole functions even better than the sum of its parts—or so Wikipedia would say.


When JDM refers to marketing integration or integrated marketing services, what we mean is developing not just a single project or a number of discrete projects, but bringing all our marketing services, activities, strategies and tactics together so they work more effectively and efficiently than individually.


This is why JDM is a full-service marketing firm. We offer a large suite of services, but to fully realize each of their potential, you have to execute them together. This is what JDM does best.


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Snippet


Most search engines return a 'snippet' of content to help users find what they are looking for (see orange square in below graphic).

Snippet

The link text is taken directly from the TITLE tag of the web page HTML. The 2-line description below that is the snippet and is usually taken directly from the Description META tag.

In cases where a suitable Description Meta tag is not provided, or it does not include the keywords searched for in the query, search engines may use snippets of text from within the main content on the page.


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Director (JDM Title)


Titles are meaningless.


At JDM, we use the title of Director (or Managing Director for the Owner) to denote this person's responsibilities and expertise in a given area. JDM Directors answer exclusively to our Managing Director (the Owner) and run their own teams of Managers and Associates. Additionally, Directors are typically the highly trained experts in their fields so they can do the work, manage the work and work with clients.


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Manager (JDM Title)


Managers are full or part-time W2s working at JDM. They are typically generalists working under a number of Directors. These roaming 'jack-of-all-trades' help fill in the gaps, bring fresh perspective and often manage a number of Associates.


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Associate (JDM Title)


Associates are 1099s who have proven themselves and their work to JDM. They are our specialists and our talent pool. All employees of JDM must prove themselves as associates before being promoted to full or part-time employees. Then, they work to become Directors.


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W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium)

The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization. The consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff working towards developing standards for the Web. This is no easy task.


W3C


You see, the problem is, website developers can't agree on a way to build websites, blogs, etc. and software designers who build the web browsers can't agree on how to display the websites and, finally, search engines can't agree on how to search and index sites people want to see.


The solution? The W3C came out with specific guidelines (down to capitalization!) for building and displaying websites. Search engines then decided that they could build spiders that can index sites that follow the rules better than others.


Does your website use valid W3C code (or 'mark-up')? Find out at: http://validator.w3.org/


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iAnalytics (Interpretive Analytics)


JDM's trademarked interpretive analytics, or iAnalytics™, take the guess work out of measuring campaign success over varied mediums.


JDM determines the key performance indicators (KPIs) for the campaign, amalgamates, interprets, and displays the data in a custom dashboard.


Depending on the campaign, our iAnalytics can be made available weekly, monthly or quarterly.


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Web 2.0


Remember when websites only told you things? Remember when the web was pretty static? This is often referred to as 'web 1.0' When someone refers to 'web 2.0', they are referring to modern, interactive uses for the web. Blogs, forums, polling, Twitter, social networking all are web 2.0.


The term was coined by Darcy DiNucci in her (rather long) 1999 article "Fragmented Future," she writes:


The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens.


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Flat Flash™


Flat Flash™ is JDM's flash animation process that uses minimal server or client-side processing, is easily updated, but must utilize minimum layering.


This kind of Flash animation is best used for:


  • Simple Online Image Transitions
  • Flash Navigation
  • Animated Page Loader
  • eCommerce Promotional Headers
  • Corporate Website Home Page Headers

If you have any questions regarding Flat Flash™, contact Andy Boyd at 972-257-3612.


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CFR (Customer Fit Review form)

A Customer Fit Review (CFR) form is usually an online form that asks certain qualification questions. Respondents are qualified based on things like:


  • Budget
  • Title/Role
  • Industry
  • Geographic Location
  • Etc.

Unqualified and qualified respondents can then be segmented, prioritized and followed up separately if at all.


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Boutique

Boutique firms generally specialized in a specific service or industry. For example, SEO firms are boutique marketing firms that specialize in SEO/SEM and website development.


The trouble with boutique firms is that they can't readily service clients with varied needs.


At JDM, we are a full-service firm. Our expertise and recommendations are not hindered by over-specialization nor are our services standalone. Our services are integrated so their effectiveness is greater than the sum of their parts.


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Marketing Mix (and The Four Ps)

Generally, marketers refer to the marketing mix as a set of controllable, tactical marketing tools that work together to achieve the campaign's and the company's objectives.


We like this term. Marketing Mix is, indeed, a mix of marketing activities. However, the genius is in choosing the right ingredients and the right proportions. That's where professionals like JDM come in.


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SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Search Engine Optimization or "SEO", is the practice of fine-tuning the website to be indexed correctly and quickly by leading search engines. SEO will get your site listed on a multitude of search engines for the "key words" you choose.


It is a common misconception that the goal of SEO is top placement. This is inaccurate. SEO's overarching goal is to make a site more "findable." At JDM, we call it "Search Engine Visibility". On average, website's only receive 6% to 7% of their traffic from commercial search engines. A site that has undergone Search Engine Optimization should shoot for that number to increase to 10% to 30%--at best. It's important to note that SEO is based on visibility and relevancy. That is, how well a search engine spider can read the site and index it as well as targeting search queries (keywords) that are of maximum relevancy to the site.


In other words, if the site doesn't receive the top placement you want, don't just blame SEO—blame the content.


Learn more "SEO Lies, Myths, and Misconceptions" on JDM's blog.


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SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

SEM

Not to be confused with SEO, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the marketing activity where your paid ad is displayed alongside free (or organic) search engine results.


It's a common misconception that Search Engine Marketing guarantees permanent top placement in search engines. Well, this is partly true. Search Engine Advertising, such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC), guarantees top placement of relevant ads, but not permanently and certainly not for free.


Fact is, no one can guarantee permanent, top placement.


Learn more "SEO Lies, Myths, and Misconceptions" on JDM's blog.


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Short Codes

Using a normal telephone, touchtone numbers (following the E.164 standard) form a code but there is no way for these combination of numbers to contain an "end of line" (EOL). In other words, conventional land-line phones have no mechanism to say "this is the end of the number. Now connect me." Thus, land lines cannot use "short codes" or a 5-digit number assigned to your Text2Lead campaign. Of course, land lines are not able to send SMS messages (like text message) either.


On modern digital mobile phones, numbers are sent all at once, so the network knows the end of the dialed number, and thus one can use short numbers without clashing with longer numbers. Additionally, more and more service providers are offering ever affordable unlimited texting plans.


As of May 31, 2006, the standard lengths for interoperable short codes are five and six digits. Carriers use short codes with fewer digits for carrier specific programs - e.g., "Text 611 to see how many minutes you have remaining on your plan." Common short codes in the U.S. are administered by NeuStar, under a deal with Common Short Code Administration - CTIA.


Short codes can be leased at the rate of $1000 a month for a selected code or $500 for a randomly selected code. These codes are also dedicated numbers which are not shared with other companies. They have to have approval by all carriers and a lot of paper work is involved taking up to 8 weeks or longer for all the applications to go through. A cheaper, easier alternative to dedicated short codes for a mobile text to lead campaign is "shared" short codes.


Shared short codes use a single number which many companies share. i.e. 47654 that is accompanied by a unique keyword i.e. 'JDM.' So the campaign call-to-action could be, "Text 'JDM' to 47654 and be entered to win a Caribbean island!"


Many companies have different pricing options for using these numbers. One of the ones we've found easiest to use and with the lowest up front investment is Mobivity.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


Branding


A product identity, or brand image are typically the attributes one associates with a brand, how the brand owner wants the consumer to perceive the brand - and by extension the branded company, organization, product or service.


Typically, sustainable brand names are easy to remember, transcend trends and have positive connotations. Brand identity is fundamental to consumer recognition and symbolizes the brand's differentiation from competitors.


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Brand Identity


Brand identity is what the owner wants to communicate to its potential consumers. However, over time, a products brand identity may acquire (evolve), gaining new attributes from consumer perspective but not necessarily from the marketing communications an owner percolates to targeted consumers. Therefore, brand associations become handy to check the consumer's perception of the brand.


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Rebranding


Rebranding is the exercise of changing your Brand identity. Trouble is, the Brand doesn't exist in the marketing department. It's in the hearts and minds of the public.


Before you attempt a rebranding, check out JDM's Ruin a Rebranding in 5 Easy Steps.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


Customer Genetics™


Demographics, psychographics and the like are the traditional way of understanding the campaign's target audience. JDM uses a more evolved approach. We call it "Customer Genetics™." We're after more than age, sex, race and geographic location.


Once you know your audience's fears and aspirations you can develop advertising tailored to those Genetics™.


Think "everyone" is a potential customer? Think again and niche thyself.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


eCommerce (Electronic Commerce)


eCommerce or "e-commerce", consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. Modern eCommerce exists online lowering the number of retail outlets and sales staff necessary to turn large profits.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


CMS (Content Management System)


A content management system (or CMS) such as a document management system (DMS) is a computer application used to manage work flow needed to collaboratively create, edit, review, index, search, publish and archive various kinds of digital media and electronic text.


CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The bottom line for these systems is managing content and publishing without the need to get into the code.


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SFA (Sales Force Automation)


While some businesses begin managing their sales team's efforts with Outlook and Excel, there comes a time to graduate to a more robust solution. There's three major steps needed to make that graduation.


Sales Force Automation is software as a service for formalizing and automating sales activities including:


  • Lead Acquisition from Marketing (XDC)
  • Lead Categorization
  • Contact Management and Follow up
  • Information Sharing
  • Sales Forecast Analysis
  • Employee Performance Evaluation

SFA tools can also cross-function as CRM tools which optimize and automate post-sale activities.


Leaders in robust SFA solutions include (from most expensive to least): Salesforce.com and ACT. JDM offers process management, SFA or CRM solution implementation and training services.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Customer Relationship Management is software as a service for formalizing and automating how your customer interact with your business including:


  • Sales Lead Acquisition from Marketing (XDC)
  • Sales Lead Categorization
  • Customer Contact Information Management and Follow up
  • Customer Support
  • Forecast Analysis
  • Employee Performance Evaluation

CRM tools can also automate post-sale activities like:


  • Order Processing
  • Order Tracking
  • Customer Management
  • Inventory Monitoring & Control
  • Trouble-Ticketing

 

Leaders in robust CRM solutions include (from most expensive to least): Microsoft CRM, Salesforce.com, ACT, and Sugar CRM. JDM offers process management, SFA or CRM solution implementation and training services.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


XDC (External Data Capture)


External Data Capture

External Data Capture or XDC is the process by which sales lead information can be captured online and automatically populated into a database for analysis and follow up.


Often an online XDC form populates into a sales force automation (SFA) tool like Salesforce.com or a CRM tool like Microsoft CRM, but you don't have to purchase one of these robust tools to utilize the power of capturing sales leads and automatically following up on them. Contact JDM to learn how to roll one out for free.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


B2B (Business-to-Business)


Business-to-Business marketing is the process of marketing businesses to one another. For example, Dell's Enterprise Servers are marketed to businesses not consumers as these hold little value to individuals.


B2B Marketing tends to be the least glamorous but makes the most impact (value of selling one additional soda or the value of selling one additional enterprise-level server rack).


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


C2C (Customer-to-Customer)


Customer to Customer is usually a term for affiliate marketing. That is, offering current customers incentives for bringing in new customers.


Bet you didn't know you were an "Affiliate Marketer."


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Flexible and Scalable Business Model


JDM's business model is flexible and scalable. Because we have no debt, no outside investors and are 100% cash-backed, we don't have relentless expectations for growth. We can work with our clients and their goals to determine pricing and timing that best suites them. It shouldn't be a novel idea to run a business that's responsible and profitable on a cash-basis, but it is.


JDM's business model is also scaleable. By keeping our overhead and full-time workforce down, we can offer our clients a price-point that allows for a positive ROIm. We also have the IT and HR infrastructure built that allows JDM to grow into large projects.


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iPhone Apps


Applications for the Apple iPhone are different than mobile-friendly websites. Mobile-friendly websites are built to be read on the small mobile screen and work with any mobile device with a web browser. iPhone apps, on the other hand, are actually software available for download and use exclusively on the iPhone. They cannot be used (so far) for other phone models.


As JDM does not currently offer software development, we do not build iPhone applications or applications for any other mobile device.


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myJDM™ (Online Client Portal)


JDM's client portal, myJDM, is designed to be the touch point between our clients and production staff.


MyJDM is located here: my.Marketinghasevolved.com


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JDMobile™


JDMobile™ is the trademarked name for JDM's mobile-friendly website. The site is designed to be viewed and navigated easily with any mobile device with a web browser. It also features information about JDM, our location and a mobile price estimator.


You can access JDMobile™ on your web-ready mobile phone at: http://mobile.Marketinghasevolved.com/.


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Blog


A blog (a contraction of the term "web log") is a type of website, usually containing regular entries of commentary, event descriptions and other materials such as graphics and video. Entries are usually displayed in reverse-chronological order.


Blogs should allow readers the ability to join the conversation via comments, polls, and other interactive elements.


Blogs can also serve as a keyword net. They can receive a lot of traffic for their unique and timely content and then drive traffic to the company site via linked key words.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


KPI (Key Performance Indicator)


A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a way to measure performance based on quantifiable data. KPIs can be identified by asking, "What is really important to stakeholders?".


In marketing, KPIs vary greatly between organizations, business goals and marketing strategies. However, they are important in measuring success, failure and opportunity. JDM's ROIm is an example of a KPI for capital-conscience businesses. Who isn't minding their wallet these days?


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]


Micro-Blog


Micro, or Mini-Blogs, like Twitter, act in much the same way as the traditional blogs, but feature much shorter posts (sometimes just 140 characters, including spaces).


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Blogosphere


Usually refers to what the millions of blogs on the web are discussing. For a time, marketers were very concerned with how their actions would be discussed and play out through all these blogs. Technorati is a search engine geared exclusively to tracking the blogosphere.


To tell you the truth, if I hear the word "blogosphere" one more time, I'll strangle a giraffe!


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Up-Sell


Up-selling is a sales and marketing technique whereby the campaign attempts to have the customer purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons. Up-selling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, but up-selling can also be simply exposing the customer to other options he or she may not have considered previously. Up-selling implies selling something that is more profitable or otherwise preferable for the seller instead of the original sale.


A different technique is cross-selling.


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Cross-Sell


The approach to the process of cross-selling can be varied. Unlike the acquiring of new business, cross-selling involves an element of risk that existing relationships with the client could be disrupted. For this reason, it is important to ensure that the additional product or service being sold to the client(s) enhances the value the client(s) are already getting from the organization.


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Customer Retention


Customer Retention is the activity that a selling organization undertakes in order to reduce customer turnover. Successful customer retention starts with the first contact an organization has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of a relationship. A company's ability to attract and retain new customers, is not only related to its product or services, but strongly related to the way it services its existing customers and the reputation it creates within and across the marketplace.


It should be noted that for businesses selling a service, it is often much less expensive to keep customers than to acquire new ones. To maximize profitability, keep customer turnover to a minimum and maximize up-selling and cross-selling.


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DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth)


JDM is located in Irving, Texas just 3 miles from DFW airport (one of the largest airports in the world). Irving rests perfectly between Dallas and its sister city, Fort-Worth.


Click here to locate JDM HQ.


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Sprite Map (or Spritemap)


When you put an image in a web page, the browser downloads the image as a separate HTTP request. That means, every image is another HTTP request. For example, if the site's main navigation has six links, each with a rollover image, that’s 12 HTTP requests (not to mention the initial request for the page).


JDM's Spritemap

Each HTTP request for an image file is about 50 bytes is size. If you compile all your most used images into one big image file (also known as a "spritemap"), you condense those 12 HTTP requests down into 1 HTTP request. More importantly, you save all of the file size overhead for 12 different files. Then, instead of doing JavaScript image swaps, you just show an area of the one big image as the CSS background-image property, and it appears as a bunch of small images. Plus, the spritemap is cached by the browser, so after a user visits one page they have all of the images for all the navigation and logos on every page.


Learn more in our website development tip: "What's a Spritemap?"


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Favicon (short for "Favorites Icon")


A favicon (short for favorites icon), also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, url icon, or bookmark icon is a 16×16, 32×32 or 64×64 pixel square icon associated with a particular website or web page. A web designer can create such an icon and install it into a website (or web page) by several means, and most graphical web browsers will then make use of it. Browsers that provide favicon support typically display a page's favicon in the browser's address bar and next to the page's name in a list of bookmarks. Browsers that support a tabbed document interface typically show a page's favicon next to the page's title on the tab.


You can make your own Favicon at this nifty site: http://www.favicon.cc/


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Site Map (or Sitemap)


A site map is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.


XML Sitemaps have replaced the older method of "submitting to search engines" by filling out a form on the search engine's submission page. Now web developers submit a Sitemap directly, or wait for search engines to find it.


XML (extensible markup language) is much more precise that HTML coding. Errors are not tolerated, and so syntax must be exact. It is advised to use an XML syntax validator such as the Free one found at: http://www.w3schools.com


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Metrics-Based Approach


To successfully reach business goals, marketing and sales must work hand-in-hand. JDM's approach to marketing uses a sales and marketing pipeline process based on multivariate statistical models and hard data.


Wow, that's a mouthful. Confused? Contact JDM for a better explanation.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]





SLA (Service Level Agreement)


A service level agreement (frequently just abbreviated as SLA) is a part of a service contract where the level of service is formally defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service) or performance.


The trouble with SLAs for professional service is that the metrics that determine the level of the contract are often subjective and therefore open for interpretation. In the end, both parties fight and nothing gets done.


[ close help ]   [ glossary ]