- Above and below
- Hierarchy. What your eye hits first, second, third. You control this with size, weight, color and space.
- Above the fold
- Everything visible before scrolling. The phrase comes from newspapers, which were folded in half on the stand.
- Accent color
- The one bright color used for buttons and small marks. One. Not three.
- Accessibility
- Making the site usable by people with poor vision, no vision, or who cannot use a mouse. Often shortened to a11y.
- Alt text
- A written description attached to every image, for people using screen readers and for search engines. Never leave it empty.
- Assets
- The stuff you need from them. Logo file, photos, hours, prices, copy.
- Breakpoint
- The screen width where the layout changes. Usually one around 900 pixels and one around 600.
- Brief
- One page written back to the client summarizing what you heard, which they approve before you start.
- Browser
- Chrome, Safari, Firefox. It downloads those three kinds of file and draws the page on screen.
- Card
- A small rectangle holding one item: one service, one person, one product. Cards usually come in rows of two, three or four.
- Compression
- Shrinking image files so pages load fast. Photos should almost never be over about 300 kilobytes.
- Consistency
- The same thing looking the same way every time it appears. Buttons especially.
- Contrast
- The difference between two things. Dark text on a light background is high contrast. Grey text on a slightly lighter grey is a readability failure.
- Contrast ratio
- A measurement of how readable text is against its background. Light grey on white fails.
- Conversion
- A visitor doing the thing you wanted. Booking, calling, filling the form.
- Copy
- The words on the site. Somebody has to write them and it is usually you.
- CSS
- The file that holds every decision about how it looks. Colors, sizes, spacing, layout. Think of it as the skin and clothes.
- CTA
- Call to action. The thing you want them to do, written as a command. Book an appointment. Get a quote.
- Deploy
- Copying your folder onto the host so the world can see it. Also called shipping or publishing.
- Design system
- A small set of decisions written down once and reused everywhere. Colors, type sizes, spacing steps, button styles.
- DNS
- The phone book that connects the domain to the host. Changing DNS is how a domain starts pointing at a new site.
- Domain
- The name people type. picassossalonsouthhill.com. You rent it, usually about fifteen dollars a year. You never own it forever.
- Favicon
- The tiny icon in the browser tab. Missing one makes a site feel unfinished.
- Flow
- The order of sections, arranged so each one answers the question the last one raised.
- Footer
- The block at the very bottom. Address, phone, hours, links, copyright.
- Form handler
- The service that catches a form submission and emails it to somebody. A form without one sends nothing.
- Friction
- Anything that makes doing that thing harder. Extra clicks, extra fields, unclear wording.
- Generic copy
- Words that would be equally true for any competitor. Quality service, passionate team, customer focused. Delete on sight.
- Google Business Profile
- The free listing that appears in maps. For a local business this is often worth more than the website.
- Grid
- The invisible column structure everything lines up to. Good sites line up. Bad sites almost line up.
- Hallucination
- When AI confidently produces something false. A made up review, a wrong phone number, a fake statistic.
- Handoff
- Giving the client everything: the files, the logins, and a written list of what is real and what is not.
- Header
- The strip at the very top holding the logo and the nav. Sticky header means it stays put while you scroll.
- Headline
- The biggest sentence on the page. It should say something only this business could say.
- Hero
- The first full screen a visitor sees. Usually a big image or color, a headline, a sentence, and a button. It has one job: make somebody stay.
- Hex code
- How a color is written in code. Six characters after a hash mark. #FF2D00 is the Ricochet red.
- Hierarchy
- Making the important thing obviously bigger, bolder or higher than the less important thing.
- Horizontal scroll
- When a page can be dragged sideways on a phone. Always a bug. Always.
- Host
- The computer somewhere in the world that holds your files and hands them out when somebody asks. Netlify is a host.
- HTML
- The file that holds the words and the structure. Headings, paragraphs, images, links. Think of it as the skeleton.
- Intake
- The conversation where you collect everything before building anything.
- Iteration
- Going back and forth. Normal and expected. The goal is fewer, better rounds.
- JavaScript
- The file that makes things happen when you click. Menus opening, forms responding. Think of it as the muscles.
- Landing page
- A single page built for one purpose, usually one ad or one offer.
- Lazy loading
- Only downloading images when the visitor scrolls near them, so the page opens faster.
- Meta description
- The grey sentence under the blue link. You write it, or the search engine picks a random one.
- Mockup
- A visual of the finished design, not yet working.
- Nav
- Short for navigation. The row of links across the top that goes to the other pages.
- Page job
- The one thing a page exists to accomplish. Every page needs exactly one.
- Prompt
- What you ask for. The quality of the output is mostly set here.
- Prototype
- Something clickable that looks real but is not wired up.
- Redirect
- A rule sending anybody who visits one address to a different one.
- Reference
- An existing site you point at and say: like this, but for a plumber.
- Repo
- Short for repository. A folder of code with a full history of every change.
- Resolution
- How many pixels an image has. Too few looks blurry. Too many makes the page slow.
- Responsive
- A site that rearranges itself to fit whatever screen it is on.
- Restraint
- Choosing not to add the thing you could add. The hardest and most valuable skill in design.
- Review pass
- Reading the output critically before showing anybody. Never skip this.
- Revision round
- One pass of changes. Two rounds included is standard. Unlimited rounds is how people lose money.
- Sans serif
- Letters with no feet. Reads as modern, clean, plain.
- Scale
- A ladder of sizes that relate to each other. Not random numbers, a set.
- Scope
- What is included and what is not. Written down, or it grows for free.
- Scope creep
- The client adding things after the price is set. Normal, and handled by writing scope down early.
- Screen reader
- Software that reads a page out loud. It depends entirely on your headings and your alt text being right.
- Section
- One horizontal band of the page with one idea in it. A page is a stack of sections.
- SEO
- Search engine optimization. Everything you do so the site shows up when somebody searches.
- Serif
- Letters with little feet on the ends. Reads as traditional, established, expensive.
- Signature element
- One visual idea unique to this business that appears nowhere else on the internet.
- Sitemap
- The list of pages and how they connect. Usually drawn as a box for each page.
- Specificity
- The difference between 'make it nicer' and 'increase the space above the headline and make the headline about twice as big.'
- SSL and HTTPS
- The padlock in the address bar. Free on modern hosts, and browsers warn visitors without it.
- Staging
- A live URL used for showing and approving, before the real domain points at it.
- Stock photo
- A purchased generic photo of strangers. Instantly recognizable and instantly damaging to trust.
- Structured data
- Hidden code telling search engines the address, hours, phone and services in a format they read exactly. This is how a business shows up in the map box.
- Tap target
- Anything meant to be tapped. Needs to be big enough for a thumb, roughly 44 pixels.
- Title tag
- The sentence that shows up as the blue link in search results. Every page needs its own, with the town in it.
- Token
- One named decision. For example: ink means this exact dark color. Everything on the site uses the name, so changing the name changes it everywhere at once.
- Type pairing
- Using one typeface for headlines and a different one for body text. Two is right. Three is usually a mistake.
- Typeface
- The design of the letters. Also called a font, close enough.
- Version
- A saved state you can go back to. The reason a bad deploy is not a disaster.
- Viewport
- The visible area of the screen. Also the tag in your HTML that tells phones how to size the page.
- Whitespace
- Empty space. It is not wasted. It is the single biggest difference between an expensive looking site and a cheap one.
- Wireframe
- A rough grey box sketch of a layout, with no color or real content.