What the FAQ do these E-com terms mean?

Unique internal identifier for a product/variant used for inventory and reporting.

AKA Options — Selectable product characteristic (size, colour); attributes describe items for filters and feeds.

A purchasable option of a Master Product (e.g., size M, colour Black).

Global product identifiers required by many marketplaces and shopping feeds.

System of record for product data, specs, and media.

Real-time price adjustments based on inventory, demand, or audience.

Metafields & Metaobjects — Extra product data beyond standard fields set in your product profiles, used for UX, feeds, or logic.

AKA Collection Page — Key template for browse intent; displays a collection of products for browsing.

Key template for buy intent; provides in-depth information and is where the purchase decision is made for a single product

Visual flags (New, Best-seller, Limited) on a product card to guide attention and promote USPs.

Unique benefits that a product (or service) offers to customers that are not easily replicated by competitors, providing a compelling reason to buy that specific product.

AKA Anchor Pricing — Showing the original product price next to the current sale price to convey value.

A grouped set of products sold together, sometimes with unique inventory rules or “Buy One Get One”/multi-buy pricing rules to lift AOV.

Experiment different versions of a PDP to compare designs, copy, or pricing and pick the winner (the one that gets the highest conversions).

A digital tool that centralises order routing, splitting, and status; it track sales, orders, inventory, and fulfilment. Shopify is an OMS.

Warehouse steps to fulfil an order:
Picking — Retrieving items for an order.
Packing — Preparing & packaging items for shipment.
Shipping — Sending the package to its destination.

Partial Fulfilment — Shipping part of an order when some items are backordered.
Split Shipment — Sending an order in multiple packages/warehouses.

Backorder — Allowing purchase of out-of-stock items to ship later.
Pre-order — Purchase before stock arrives, with future ship date.

Approval/tracking workflow for order returns/exchanges.

Fulfilment model where the supplier of the product ships directly to the customer on the merchant’s behalf instead of via the merchants own warehouse.

E-commerce Business Model where the business (merchant) sells its own products, or curates its products to sell to its customers who are individual people.

Total revenue divided by number of orders over a period. Useful for tracking upsell/cross-sell impact.

Outsourced warehouse, pick-pack-ship, and returns services.

Harmonized System code added to Master Products for customs classification (International Shipping).

Regions where orders are shipped to that have their own rates/shipping methods.

Shipment billing weight based on package size, not just mass. Shipping companies use this to ensure that large, lightweight packages are charged fairly for the space they take up on transport.
Calculated by dividing your package volume (L X W X H = V) by the carrier's DIM divisor.

Total delivered cost incl. product, freight, duties, and taxes.

Shipping agreements between buyers and sellers to determine who pays duties/taxes and assumes the risks in cross-border transfers. Two most common:
Delivery Duty Paid (DDP) — Seller assumes responsibility for transporting goods.
Delivered At Place (DAP) — Seller retains liability for a shipment until final delivery, when the buyer pays import duties, taxes, and customs clearance fees.

Average cost to acquire a new customer; calculation of the cost of sales (software used, salaries, overhead costs), advertising, and any other costs directly related to attract and convert a customer, divided by the number of new customers acquired in a given period.

Encouraging customers to purchase a higher-end/higher priced product than what they are currently considering.

Recommending related, complementary products that enhance the original purchase and increase AOV.

The process of optimising your website and its content to gain more visibility online and rank higher in the organic (unpaid) Search Engine Results Page (SERP) of search engines like Google.

A digital marketing strategy that uses both paid (E.g. PPC) and unpaid (E.g. SEO) methods to increase a website's visibility and ranking on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) of popular search engines like Google & Microsoft.

Paid search ads; bidding on keywords to increase your website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and paying a fee each time your ad is clicked.

Feed-driven ads with image/price (e.g., Google Shopping).

URL tags used to attribute traffic and revenue to a conversion; identifying where the lead came from (Meta Ad, Google Ad, Affiliate etc) by adding a unique code to the landing page URL.

Partner-driven acquisition and social proof.

A customer's journey from first impression to purchase (conversion) typically involves multiple interactions (touchpoints) with a brand, such as seeing an ad or reading a blog. An attribution model is a set of rules used to allocate credit for the final conversion to one or more of these touchpoints, allowing marketers to understand the campaigns that are performing the best.

Ads targeting users who previously visited or engaged with your website.

Points/tiers/rewards added to a customer account to drive repeat purchase.

Rewards to incentivise existing customers to bring in new customers for a brand.

Recurring orders for replenishable products, often incentivised by a fixed, discounted price or free shipping.

Customer attrition rate (or subscription cancellations).

Re-engagement campaigns for lapsed customers.