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Ecommerce stack glossary

32 terms, written to answer the question directly — no padding, no vendor spin.

Abandoned cart recovery

Automated email or SMS sent to shoppers who added items but didn't check out.

AOV (average order value)

Total revenue divided by number of orders.

App ecosystem

The marketplace of third-party extensions around a platform — Shopify's App Store lists 16,000+.

Attribution

Assigning revenue credit to marketing channels.

Automation flow

A triggered email/SMS sequence that runs from customer behavior — welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back — rather than being sent as a one-off campaign.

CAC (customer acquisition cost)

Marketing spend divided by new customers acquired.

Checkout conversion

The share of shoppers who complete purchase after starting checkout.

Churn

The rate at which subscribers cancel.

Deliverability

Whether sent emails actually reach inboxes instead of spam folders.

Dunning

Automated recovery of failed subscription payments — retrying cards, updating expired ones, emailing customers.

ESP (email service provider)

The platform that sends a brand's marketing email — Klaviyo, Omnisend, Mailchimp.

First-party data

Customer data a brand collects directly — orders, email engagement, quiz answers — as opposed to third-party ad-platform data.

GEO (generative engine optimization)

Structuring content so AI systems (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) can extract and cite it: answer-first layout, clean tables, dated facts, disclosed methodology.

Google rich snippets

Star ratings and price information shown directly in Google search results, powered by structured data (schema.org markup) on the page.

Headless commerce

Separating the storefront front end from the commerce back end, connected by APIs — custom site in front, platform (Shopify, BigCommerce, Medusa) behind.

Loyalty program

Points, tiers, or store credit rewarding repeat purchase, run on apps like Smile.io or LoyaltyLion.

LTV (customer lifetime value)

Total profit expected from a customer across all their orders.

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

A loyalty metric from asking customers how likely they are to recommend the brand (0–10).

Payment processing fees

What the payment provider charges per transaction (typically ~2.5–2.9% + $0.30 online in the US).

Platform transaction fees

A percentage some platforms charge per sale on top of card processing when you use an outside payment provider — e.g.

Referral program

Rewarding existing customers for bringing new ones ('give $10, get $10').

Review widget

An embeddable component that displays star ratings and customer reviews on product pages.

Segmentation

Splitting an email/SMS audience into groups by behavior or attributes (repeat buyers, high AOV, lapsed 90 days) so each gets relevant messaging.

SMS marketing

Marketing via text message — campaigns and automations like cart recovery or shipping updates.

Social proof

Evidence that other customers bought and liked a product — reviews, ratings, UGC, testimonials — used on store pages to increase trust and conversion.

Stack detection

Identifying a site's tools from public signals: script tags, CDN hosts, cookies, DNS.

Storefront API

The API a platform exposes for building custom shopping experiences — product data, carts, checkout — used in headless builds and increasingly by AI shopping agents..

Subscription commerce

Selling on recurring schedules (replenishment, memberships, boxes).

TCPA compliance

US rules governing marketing text messages: explicit consent before texting, clear opt-out, quiet hours.

Tech stack (ecommerce)

The set of tools running a store: platform, email/SMS, reviews, subscriptions, analytics, support, shipping.

UGC (user-generated content)

Photos, videos, and posts created by customers rather than the brand, typically collected through review requests or social hashtags and displayed in galleries on product pages.

Upsell / cross-sell

Offering a bigger or complementary purchase at product, cart, or checkout stage ('add socks?', 'upgrade to the bundle').