Shopify eCommerce A to Z: Your Glossary for Online Retail Success

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Abandoned Cart Recovery:: Abandoned cart recovery refers to the process of re-engaging shoppers who added items to their online shopping cart but left the store before completing their purchase. This is achieved through various marketing strategies like sending reminder emails or displaying retargeted ads. These strategies aim to prompt customers to return to the online store and complete their transactions. In Shopify, abandoned cart recovery is facilitated through customizable automated emails that remind customers about their unfinished purchases. When a customer adds items to their cart and starts the checkout process but leaves without completing the purchase, Shopify keeps track of this. After a period of time specified by the store owner, Shopify sends an automated email to the customer with a link to their abandoned cart, reminding them to complete the purchase.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): See Generative Engine Optimization (aka GEO).

Artificial Intelligence Optimization (AIO):: See Generative Engine Optimization (aka GEO).

Automatic Discount:: Automatic discounts are price reductions that are automatically applied to specific products in a shopping cart at checkout based on the rules set by the Shopify Merchant, ranging from free shipping offers to a percentage off. They are typically used as incentives for customers to complete purchases or as rewards for returning repeat customers.

Autoresponders:: Email autoresponders are software tools that send out an email or series of emails automatically when triggered based by rules and on time intervals defined by the owner of that list. In Shopify, autoresponders are routinely used for tasks like confirming orders, providing shipping notifications and sending welcome messages to new customers / subscribers.

Average Order Value (AOV):: Average Order Value’ (AOV) is a key performance metric in e-commerce. It represents the average total of every order placed with a Shopify merchant over a certain period. Increasing AOV is a common strategy for maximizing revenue. AOV is considered one of the most important metrics in the world of online retail.

Blended Storefront:: A blended storefront allows retailers to set up and manage both DTC and B2B sides of their businesses from a single store, instead of having two separate stores. With Shopify’s latest Summer Editions B2B features, blended storefronts are becoming increasingly popular for B2B merchants.

Bundle:: Product bundles are groups of products sold together at a discounted price. Bundles can be created in Shopify by using a bundling app or by creating a custom product. Offering a bundle can increase average order value and encourage customers to buy more products.

Cart Abandonment:: e-Commerce Customers who have added items to their cart but have not yet checked out. To re-engage and convert lost customers, abandoned cart emails are the best way of bringing customers back to the store. This is a crucial metric for Shopify Merchants, since understanding the reasons behind cart abandonment can help improve the customer journey and increase sales.

Checkout Extensibility:: Shopify’s Checkout Extensibility is a set of tools and APIs that allows e-commerce retailers using Shopify Plus to customize the checkout experiences of their online stores in a flexible, app-based, and crucially upgrade-safe way, that enables custom branding, features such as custom fields and upsells and even a variety of integrations with external services. It replaced Shopify’s old checkout.liquid file with a system of Checkout UI extensions, Shopify Functions, and a Checkout Branding API to allow code-free and custom app-based modifications to the checkout flow.

Checkout:: The process an e-commerce customer goes through to complete a purchase on a Shopify store, including entering shipping and payment information. Shopify’s checkout can be customized with various options, such as guest checkout, express checkout, or custom fields.

Collection:: Collections are groupings of your products. Collections are used for categorising products to make it easier for shoppers to find what they’re looking for. “Tops” and “bottoms” would be an example of categories for a clothing store.

Cross-Sell:: Cross-Selling is a sales technique that encourages customers to purchase additional products or services that complement their initial purchase. This can be done by offering related or complementary items that align with the customer’s interests or needs. For example, when a customer is purchasing a smartphone, the retailer may cross-sell by suggesting compatible accessories like cases, screen protectors, or wireless chargers to enhance the functionality and protection of the device. If customers are offered a more expensive or premium version of the product they are interested in, it is referred to as Upselling.

Cyber Monday:: The Monday following Thanksgiving, a holiday in the United States, during which Shopify Merchants and other online retailers reduce their prices and run promotional offers. Cyber Monday is typically joined with Black Friday and abbreviated as BFCM.

Demonstration Commerce:: Product Demonstration Commerce, which is probably better known as just “Video Commerce” is showing products actually working instead of just describing them. The online equivalent of a good salesperson who picks up the product, demonstrates how it opens, fits, or functions, and answers your questions by showing rather than telling. Video happens to be the current best way to do this online, but the principle is older than retail itself. Show how it works, show it solving the problem, and sales follow. That’s it.

Discount Code:: Discounts on Shopify allow store owners to offer their products at reduced prices; they can include a percentage off, a fixed amount off or free shipping. A code that can be entered at checkout to apply a discount to a customer’s order. Discount codes can be created in Shopify and used for specific products or collections. Discount codes can be used to reward customers, promote sales, or offer exclusive discounts.

Down-Sell:: Down-Selling is a retail sales strategy where merchants offer consumers either a less expensive product or “simpler” alternative to a product after they’ve demonstrated hesitance to purchase whatever product or service they initially expressed interest in. Instead of losing a sale the lower-priced option keeps the consumer as a customer. The key difference from upselling is that down-selling prioritizes customer acquisition and relationship building over maximizing immediate revenue. The tactic can be particularly useful for e-commerce brands whose cart abandonment rates are high.

Dropshipping:: Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where a Shopify store does not keep inventory of products, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to a manufacturer or wholesaler who ships the products directly to the customer. Dropshipping can reduce the upfront costs and risks of starting an e-commerce store.

Flipping:: Flipping a Shopify store refers to the process of purchasing an existing online store built on the Shopify platform, making improvements and optimizations that enhance its value and performance and then reselling it for a higher price.

Fulfillment:: Fulfillment is the process of preparing and shipping customer orders on a Shopify store, including packaging, labeling, and tracking. Shopify’s fulfillment settings allow store owners to manage their own fulfillment, use third-party fulfillment and logistics services (3PLs) such as Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA), ShipBob and Red Stag Fulfillment or enable Shopify’s fulfillment network.

GDPR Compliance:: GDPR compliance involves implementing measures to protect customer data, obtaining explicit consent for collecting customer data and processing it, providing individuals with control over their data, and notifying authorities of data breaches. Making a Shopify store GDPR compliant typically involves use of a cookie consent banner that adequately captures consent before running cookies and providing legal notices regarding privacy policies, cookie use and data store.

General Data Protection Regulation:: GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation is a set of data-protection laws passed by the European Union imposed on Shopify Stores and other e-commerce merchants anywhere in the world as long as they’re targeting customers within the EU.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO):: GEO or Generative Engine Optimization like Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Artificial Intelligence Optimization (AIO) and Large Language Model Optimization (LLMO) is an offshoot of SEO that involves optimizing a brand’s content so that it is discoverable, extractable, and cited by AI Answer Engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude, CoPilot and Perplexity or in Google and Bing’s AI Overviews instead of just traditional search engines. For Shopify Retailers and e-commerce brands, GEO has quickly become an essential online visibility maintenance tactic.

Headless Commerce:: Headless commerce involves the front end of an online retail store (the customer-facing website) being decoupled from the back end (the e-commerce platform that manages inventory, checkout, etc.). For example, a Shopify store using headless commerce can get Shopify to handle transactions and inventory while delivering a custom-designed front end through a separate content management system like WordPress or a mobile app. This separation allows businesses to customize the user experience without being restricted by the limitations of an all-in-one platform.

Ideal Customer Profile:: Your IDP or ideal customer profile is a list of key traits and behaviours that describe your perfect customer. This doesn’t necessarily have to be your most common customer, but the one that would work best for you and your Shopify store long-term.

Inventory Management:: Inventory management involves overseeing and controlling the amount, location and status of the products stocked by e-commerce business. On Shopify Store’s, retailers can assign stock to particular locations; keep online and offline sales synced; and get alerts whenever inventory levels fall below a set threshold.

Klarna Integration:: Integrating the Klarna payment method into your Shopify store, allowing customers to choose Klarna’s “buy now, pay later” and financing options such as pay in 4, pay in 30 days, and pay over time.at checkout.

Klaviyo Integration:: Integrating Klaviyo, a popular email marketing platform, with your Shopify store to create targeted email campaigns, segment your audience, and automate email marketing efforts, ultimately driving sales and customer engagement.

Large Language Model Optimization (LLMO)”: See Generative Engine Optimization (aka GEO).

Lifetime Value:: LTV or Customer Lifetime Value is an estimate of the average revenue generated by a consumer throughout their time as your customer. It doesn’t just include one purchase, but multiple. It’s most commonly used in subscription models to understand how much money each subscriber will bring in, and therefore, how much can be safely spent to acquire them.

Marketplace Integration:: Marketplace integration connects a Shopify Store to third-party e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay or Etsy, thereby allowing online merchants to list and sell their products on multiple channels. This feature synchronizes inventory, pricing, and orders across all platforms involved, in the process streamlining operations and expanding the store’s reach.

Migration:: Migration (also known as Replatforming) simply refers to the successful move or transition from one e-commerce platform to another. For instance, migrating to Shopify or Shopify Plus, from Magento (Adobe Commerce) or WooCommerce or BigCommerce or Wix or OpenCart or any other competing online retail platform.

Multi-Channel Selling:: Multi-channel retail refers to the practice of selling your products in more than one marketplace or channel. These channels can include your Shopify store and a physical location, Shopify and a social marketplace such as Pinterest Shopping or Facebook Shops, or Shopify and a “competing” marketplace like Amazon, eBay or Etsy. Shopify gives merchants access to several sales channels by default, and retailers can add additional channels by using third-party marketplace integration apps.

Multi-Currency:: Is a feature that allows Shopify stores to display prices and process payments in multiple currencies. Multi-currency is available on Shopify Plus and can be enabled through a third-party app on other plans. Multi-currency can improve the shopping experience for international customers and increase conversion rates.

Omni-Channel Retail:: For Shopify Merchants Omni-Channel Selling is a retail strategy that incorporates more than two retail marketplaces or sales channels. Such as your e-commerce store, your brick-and-mortar retail outlet, a social media marketplace such as TikTok Shop, Facebook Shops or Instagram Shopping. So you can reach your target customers wherever and however they’re shopping.

Payment Gateway:: Payment gateways are services that process payments on Shopify stores. Popular payment services include Stripe, Square, WorldPay, Authorize dot Net, Apple Pay and PayPal. Payment gateways charge transaction fees and provide security measures to protect sensitive payment information. Payment gateways can be customized and added to Shopify using third-party apps. Shopify supports over 100 payment gateways; it also lets merchants use its own built-in payment gateway, Shopify Payments.

Print On Demand:: POD or Print on demand refers to a relatively low-risk e-commerce business model where products, ranging from clothing and accessories to printed art are created and fulfilled in response to individual consumer orders. In other words, with print on demand, products are not pre-produced or stocked, but are instead manufactured and shipped on demand, typically using a digital printing process. This approach eliminates the need for inventory management and allows Shopify Merchants to offer a wide variety of customizable products to their customers without assuming the risk of upfront costs.

Shipping:: Shipping is the process of delivering products to your customers after their order has been placed. Shopify’s shipping settings allow e-commerce merchants to set shipping rates and options, print labels, and track shipments. Shipping can be customized with various options, such as free shipping, flat rates, or carrier-specific rates.

Shopify API:: The Shopify API (Application Programming Interface), it is a kind of software that allows two or more computer programs to communicate with one another. An API acts as an intermediary layer to send information back and forth between a website or app and a user.

Shopify App Store:: The App Store is an e-commerce marketplace for Shopify Merchants that offers retailers a variety of plugins designed to integrate with and either enhance or extend the functionalities of their stores. Developed by both third-party developers and Shopify’s in-house technology team. The store currently features “over 8,000 plugins” with functionalities that range from marketing and analytics to customer service and checkout customization.

Shopify Apps:: A shopify app or plugin is software that can be integrated with a Shopify store to add functionality or customize the store’s features. On Shopify, plugins are better known as apps and a wide range of these for a wide range of use cases, including dropshipping, email marketing, blogging and more, are available on the Shopify’s App store.

Shopify Development:: Shopify store development is the process of building, customising, and optimising online stores using the Shopify platform. Whether that’s starting from scratch or revamping an existing store, hiring a Shopify development agency can ensure a seamless process. It includes designing user-friendly layouts, either integrating or customizing apps, setting up payment gateways, and tailoring the store to meet a business’s needs for selling products or services online.

Shopify Experts:: The Shopify Experts service is a closely curated network of experienced web developers, website designers and e-commerce marketing professionals (ranging from content strategists and influencer marketers to SEO specialists and SEM/PPC advertisers) who offer specialized services to help merchants with various aspects of their Shopify stores.

Shopify Flow:: Shopify Flow is a free-to-install app available from the Shopify app store that helps merchants create custom workflows and automate tasks, such as order fulfilment, inventory management, and customer segmentation. These workflows can streamline processes such as order fulfillment, inventory management, customer segmentation and marketing campaigns.

Shopify Markets:: Shopify’s Markets feature allows merchants to manage multiple international markets from a single store. It facilitates localized shopping experiences by supporting features like currency conversion, language translation, custom domains, and regional pricing. With Shopify Markets, online retailers can configure multiple languages, international pricing, market-specific domains and subfolders, and more. By creating such localized shopping experiences, Shopify merchants can better expand their brands internationally.

Shopify Payments:: Shopify Payments is Shopify’s built-in payment gateway that allows merchants to accept credit card payments from their customers. Shopify Payments charges transaction fees, but does not require a separate account with a third-party payment provider. Shopify Payments can simplify payment processing and reduce transaction fees.

Shopify Plus:: Shopify plus is the most advanced of all Shopify plans, Shopify Plus offers the most benefits and support and is therefore suited to the largest global Shopify merchants.

Shopify Plus:: Shopify plus is the highest end Shopify plan, Shopify Plus offers e-commerce retailers the most benefits and support and is therefore suited to enterprise Shopify merchants.

Social Commerce: Social Commerce is the marketing, buying and selling of products wholly within social media channels that have integrated various e-commerce functionalities and online shopping features such as storefronts, shoppable content and in-app checkout that allow users of such social media service to discover products, engage with them, and complete purchases without ever leaving the platforms. As such it differs from the social media features that paved the way for it like Pinterest Product Pins, that merely referred users to the retailer’s web store. Examples of active social commerce platforms include Instagram Shopping, Facebook Shops, TikTok Shops, WeChat Stores and WhatsApp Commerce.

Social Commerce Platform:: Social commerce platforms are online retail marketplace associated with a social media channel where a Shopify Retailer can market and sell their products to users of the social channel who never have to leave the social app to complete a purchase, such as Facebook Shops, YouTube Shopping, WeChat Stores, WhatsApp Commerce, and TikTok Shop. Shopify allows e-Commerce Merchants to manage sales across multiple channels from a single store’s dashboard. So social sales channels can dramatically increase visibility and reach of a store’s brand and its products.

Subscription:: Subscriptions are a recurring payment model where customers are charged automatically at regular intervals for a product or service. Subscription apps available from the Shopify App Store allow merchants to offer subscriptions to their store’s customers. Selling subscriptions or subscription boxes can be a tactic to increase customer loyalty and provide predictable revenue for the store.

Shoppable Video:: Shoppable videos are simply videos where you can click on products and buy them without leaving the video player. Like watching someone’s apartment tour and being able to tap their coffee table to purchase it right there. Or seeing an outfit in motion and clicking the jacket to add it to your cart while the model’s still wearing it. It’s basically QVC for the internet age, except customers control the experience instead of waiting for the host to mention the item number. The technology finally caught up to the obvious idea that people should be able to buy what they’re looking at the moment they want it.

Upselling:: Upsells are an e-commerce sales strategy designed to persuade shoppers to either upgrade to a higher-value product or add additional items to their shopping carts before checking out to increase a store’s average order value. This might involve showing a customer more expensive versions of products they’re viewing, suggesting add-ons or accessories that go well with the product or offering a discount if they spend over a certain amount. The goal is to increase the average order value and maximize revenue of each customer’s purchase. Upselling primarily benefits the seller through increased sales, but when done right, it can also enhance the customer’s experience by helping them discover better options or complementing their purchase in a way that adds value. However, if the retailer offers the customer additional accessories such as a laptop bag, wireless mouse, or external hard drive to complement their purchase, it would be an example of Cross-Selling.

User Experience:: UX, or User Experience, is the overall experience of using a website. It includes the information architecture, the consumer usability, general functionality, and overall satisfaction of the user. On e-commerce websites like Shopify Stores, the goal of UX design is to create a positive and seamless experience for users in order to boost their satisfaction, engagement, and conversion rates.

User Interface:: User interface or UI is the visual and aesthetic elements of a website. It includes the look and feel of the interface, the interactions (animations) as well as the layout and typography. On e-commerce websites like Shopify Stores, the goal of the UI design is to offer consumers an appealing, recognisable (branded) and memorable shopping experience.

Xero Integration:: Integrating Xero simply refers to the process of syncing the popular accounting software Xero, with a merchant’s Shopify store, thereby enabling streamlined financial management, expense, revenue and tax tracking