The essential vocabulary

The average amount spent per order. An often underrated lever: raising average order value through bundles, cross-sell or upsell costs less than acquiring new customers.

A set of several products sold together at a discounted price. A great way to increase average order value and move inventory.

A tool for managing a website's content without coding. Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Webflow, Wix, Next.js + headless CMS… every CMS comes with its own constraints and freedoms.

The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action (purchase, sign-up, quote request). In e-commerce, it's usually the ratio between the number of orders and the number of unique visitors.

Selling complementary products alongside the main purchase. «Buying a shirt? Here's the tie that goes with it»

A brand born digital, controlling its value chain from design to distribution. Le Slip Français, Sézane, Tediber… classic examples of the French DTC model.

A model where the brand sells directly to the end consumer, with no middleman. Full control over margin, customer data and experience — but full responsibility for acquisition too.

The share of customers who come back to buy again. A key loyalty indicator. A loyal customer costs 5 to 25 times less than acquiring a new one.

The time between an idea and its launch. A key indicator of operational agility — the shorter it is, the more you can test, learn and iterate.

Upgrading: offering the customer a higher-tier or more complete version of what they're about to buy.

The attrition rate — the share of customers who never come back. Watch it like a hawk: high churn wipes out the gains from acquisition.

An advertising environment without third-party cookies. It forces brands to rely on their own (first-party) data to target and retarget effectively.

The cost to display an ad 1,000 times. A media-buying metric used on Meta, Google and TikTok to compare campaign pressure and reach.

How much you spend, on average, to acquire a new customer. Spend €10,000 on marketing and land 200 new customers, and your CAC is €50. A critical metric for managing acquisition profitability.

The total value a customer generates for your business over time. Set against CAC, it reveals the real profitability of each customer. The LTV/CAC ratio is one of the most powerful health indicators for an e-commerce business.

For every €1 spent on advertising, how many euros of revenue it generates. A short-term measure of ad efficiency — to be weighed against actual margin.

Advertising within search engines (Google Ads, Bing Ads). You pay to appear at the top. Quick to launch, but cost-per-click only keeps climbing.

Organic search — the art of ranking your pages in Google results without paying for it. In 2025, conversational SEO and voice search are overtaking classic SEO.

Content created by customers themselves: reviews, product photos, TikTok videos, Instagram posts. Authentic, scalable, and powerful for both SEO and conversion.

An automatic sequence of emails sent to a new subscriber or customer. A critical first touchpoint for anchoring the brand and triggering the first (or second) purchase.

A method of comparing two versions (A and B) of a page, email or ad to see which performs better. The foundation of continuous optimization.

A platform that centralizes customer data from every channel (site, CRM, point of sale, app, support) to build a unified customer view. A foundational building block of a successful omnichannel strategy.

A tool for managing customer relationships: centralizing contacts, purchase history, segmentation, email automation. The Swiss Army knife of retention.

An integrated management system that orchestrates inventory, orders, accounting, and HR. In e-commerce, it's often the centerpiece that keeps online and offline in sync.

Data you collect directly from your customers (site, app, CRM, loyalty program). More valuable than ever in a cookieless world.

A language model trained on massive volumes of text. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — LLMs are the engines behind today's generative AI.

An instruction given to a generative AI. A good prompt follows the RTCOF method: Role, Task, Context, Objective, Format. Prompt quality accounts for 80% of the result.

An architecture that combines an LLM with your own company's documents, to produce accurate, context-aware answers.

Everything that happens after the purchase: support, returns, complaints. Too often neglected — yet one of the most powerful levers for retention and word of mouth.

Buy online, pick up in store. A powerful omnichannel lever: zero shipping cost for the customer, foot traffic for the store, and cross-sell opportunities at pickup.

A presence across several channels — but without integration. Each channel runs on its own. Not to be confused with omnichannel, which relies on unified data and logic.

An approach where every touchpoint (site, store, app, social media, marketplace, customer service) is integrated to deliver a smooth, continuous experience. Customers move between channels without any friction.