Glossary

Glossary of marketing, sales and design terms

Clear definitions of the key concepts behind our tools — from SaaS metrics to web design.

Browse terms

SaaS metrics

MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)

MRR is Monthly Recurring Revenue: the predictable amount a subscription business bills each month.

ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)

ARR is Annual Recurring Revenue: the predictable amount a subscription business bills over 12 months.

Churn (Cancellation Rate)

Churn is the rate of customers (or revenue) a business loses in a period — the opposite of retention.

LTV (Lifetime Value)

LTV is the total revenue a customer generates over their entire relationship with the company.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

CAC is how much a company spends, on average, to acquire each new customer.

NRR (Net Revenue Retention)

NRR is the revenue retained from a cohort after cancellations, downgrades and expansions — it can exceed 100% when upgrades outpace churn.

GRR (Gross Revenue Retention)

GRR is the revenue retained from a cohort after cancellations and downgrades, with no expansions added — always ≤ 100%.

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

NPS is a 0–100 index calculated from the question "from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product to a friend?".

CES (Customer Effort Score)

CES is the effort a customer perceived to get something done in the product, typically rated on a 1–7 scale.

ACV (Annual Contract Value)

ACV is the average revenue each contract generates in 12 months — different from ARPU, which averages per active user, and ARR, which sums the whole base.

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)

ARPU is how much, on average, each active user pays per month or year — useful for products with many plans.

Payback Period

Payback Period is how many months a customer takes to repay what it cost to acquire them — the shorter, the faster cash returns to reinvest.

Burn Rate

Burn rate is how much the company spends in excess of revenue each month — the cash "burn" that defines remaining runway.

Runway

Runway is how many months the company can keep operating on current cash given the burn rate — the clock between you and the next round.

Magic Number

Magic Number measures how much new ARR each R$ spent on sales and marketing generates — the gauge for whether to accelerate or slow investment.

Sales & CRM

CRM ROI

CRM ROI is the return on investment in a CRM: how much it generates or saves versus the cost of running it.

Sales Pipeline

A sales pipeline is the view of opportunities at each stage of the sales process, from prospecting to closing.

Sales Forecast

A sales forecast is the prediction of future revenue based on the current pipeline and conversion rates.

SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)

SQL is a lead that sales qualified as ready to advance in the funnel — not the database SQL.

MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)

An MQL is a lead marketing flagged as ready for sales outreach, based on engagement and ICP fit.

ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

ICP is the firmographic description of the customer that gets the most value from the product and closes fastest — the filter for the entire funnel.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is the score each lead receives for ICP fit and demonstrated intent — the automated filter to prioritize whom sales contacts first.

Cold Outreach

Cold outreach is contact with prospects who do not know you yet — typically cold email, LinkedIn or cold call, targeted by ICP.

Sales Cycle

Sales cycle is the average time between first contact and closing — shorter cycles bring cash in faster and lower CAC.

Win Rate

Win rate is the percentage of opportunities that become customers, calculated from the stage the opportunity entered the pipeline.

BANT (Qualification Framework)

BANT is a qualification framework checking Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline.

MEDDIC (Enterprise Qualification)

MEDDIC is an enterprise qualification framework: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion.

Closed-Won and Closed-Lost

Closed-won is the deal closed successfully; closed-lost is the lost one — the two terminal states used to compute win rate.

Marketing

UTM (Campaign Parameters)

UTMs are tags added to a URL so Google Analytics can identify the source of traffic.

Open Graph (og:image)

Open Graph is the protocol that defines how a link appears (title, description and image) when shared on social media.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is the set of practices that improves a site's ranking in organic search results — non-paid traffic.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

SEM is paid acquisition on search engines (Google Ads, Bing Ads) via keyword auctions — complementing or replacing the organic traffic from SEO.

Marketing Funnel

A marketing funnel is the stage-based representation of the customer journey: from awareness to repurchase, with conversion rates between stages.

AARRR (Pirate Metrics)

AARRR is the growth framework with 5 stages: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue — the "arrr" pirate sound, coined by Dave McClure.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the strategy of attracting and converting customers via useful, rankable content (blog, video, podcast) instead of ads.

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a free value offer (ebook, template, tool) delivered in exchange for the visitor's email — captures leads for the CRM.

A/B Test

A/B testing splits traffic between two versions (A and B) to measure which converts better, with statistical significance.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

CTR is the percentage of people who saw a link/ad and clicked it — a key metric in ads, email and SEO.

CTA (Call to Action)

A CTA is the explicit invitation to the next action ("Get started free", "Book a demo") — button, link or phrase moving the visitor forward.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound is the strategy of attracting the customer to you via content, SEO and free tools — instead of interrupting with ads (outbound).

Outbound Marketing

Outbound is the strategy of actively going to the prospect (cold email, calls, paid media) — you go to them, not wait to be found.

Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is the semi-fictional representation of the person who decides or uses the product — role, pains, goals, channels — used to guide copy and messaging.

Design & Accessibility

WCAG (Web Accessibility)

WCAG are the international web accessibility guidelines, including the AA and AAA color contrast levels.

Glassmorphism

Glassmorphism is a UI style that mimics frosted glass with transparency and background blur (backdrop-filter).

Mesh Gradient

A mesh gradient is a multi-point color gradient that creates smooth, organic transitions, widely used in UI backgrounds.

Design System

A design system is the living set of components, tokens and rules that standardizes a product's UI — a single source of visual truth.

Design Tokens

Design tokens are the base variables (colors, spacing, fonts) that feed a design system — the reusable "DNA" of the UI.

Atomic Design

Atomic Design is the methodology that organizes components into 5 levels: atoms, molecules, organisms, templates and pages — coined by Brad Frost.

Wireframe

A wireframe is the low-fidelity skeleton of a screen: structure, hierarchy and flow, without final color, font or imagery.

Interactive Prototype

A prototype is the clickable (but non-functional) version of a screen or flow — used for usability tests and stakeholder alignment.

Microinteractions

Microinteractions are small animations and feedbacks (hover, loading, confirmation) that bring an interface to life and improve perceived quality.

Mobile-first

Mobile-first is the principle of designing and coding for the small screen first, then adapting to tablet and desktop.

Dark Mode

Dark mode is the alternative dark UI theme, more pleasant in low light and saving battery on OLED screens.

Nielsen's Heuristics

Jakob Nielsen's 10 heuristics are universal usability principles to evaluate and improve interfaces (status visibility, user control, consistency, etc).

UX Writing

UX writing is the craft of writing interface texts (buttons, labels, error messages, empty states) — copy that guides the user, not sells.

Heatmap

A heatmap is a visualization showing where users click, scroll or look most on a page — used to optimize layout and CTAs.

Fitts's Law

Fitts's Law states that the time to click a target grows with distance and shrinks with size — large targets close to the cursor are faster.

Technical SEO

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are Google's metrics that measure a page's loading, interactivity and visual stability.

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

LCP is the time until the largest visible element (usually the hero image or H1) appears on screen — target: < 2.5s.

INP (Interaction to Next Paint)

INP is the time between a user interaction (click, tap) and the visible screen response — target: < 200ms. Replaced FID in 2024.

CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)

CLS measures how much elements shift unexpectedly during load — target: < 0.1. Penalizes "jumpy" UIs.

Schema.org (JSON-LD)

Schema.org is the standard vocabulary to structure data for Google — embedded as JSON-LD in <head>, feeds rich snippets and AI answers.

XML Sitemap

Sitemap.xml is the file that lists the site's public URLs so crawlers (Google, Bing) discover them fast, with priority and frequency hints.

robots.txt

robots.txt is the file at the site root telling crawlers what NOT to crawl (admin, internal search, private areas).

Canonical (Canonical URL)

Canonical is the meta tag (or header) telling Google which is the "official" URL when the same content exists at multiple URLs (parameters, www/non-www, http/https).

hreflang

hreflang is the tag telling Google which version of the content (pt-BR, en-US, es-ES) to serve for each user language/region.

GEO / AEO (Generative/Answer Engine Optimization)

GEO/AEO is the set of practices to be CITED by generative AIs (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) — the "new SEO" of the generative search era.

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust)

E-E-A-T is Google's quality criterion: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust of the author — critical for YMYL content (health, finance).

Backlink (Inbound Link)

A backlink is a link from another site pointing to yours — the "vote of confidence" that weighs most for domain authority.

DA / DR (Domain Authority / Rating)

DA (Moz) and DR (Ahrefs) are 0-100 scores estimating a domain's "strength" based on backlinks — they are not official Google metrics.

Product & SaaS

PMF (Product-Market Fit)

PMF is the moment when the product delivers so much value that the market pulls it — you feel it because organic growth starts happening "on its own".

MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

MVP is the simplest version of the product that delivers core value and allows learning from real users — popularized by Eric Ries in Lean Startup.

Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)

JTBD is the theory that people "hire" a product to do a job — focus moves to the user's objective, not demographics or features.

North Star Metric

The North Star Metric is the single metric that best represents the value the product delivers — it guides the whole team, from product to sales.

Activation

Activation is the moment a newly signed-up user completes the key action that predicts they'll return — the "aha moment" operationalized.

Aha Moment

The aha moment is the instant when the user "gets" the product's value and decides to stay — usually measured as a concrete action + time.

Retention

Retention measures how many users return over time, usually by cohort (D1, D7, D30) — the metric most correlated with PMF.

Cohort

A cohort is a group of users who entered the product in the same period — the base for retention, churn and LTV analysis.

PLG (Product-Led Growth)

Product-Led Growth is the strategy where the product itself drives acquisition, activation and expansion — instead of relying on expensive sales reps.

Pivot

A pivot is a structural shift in direction (product, market or model) based on learning what DIDN'T work — not the same as a "tweak".

Technology & AI

LLM (Large Language Model)

An LLM is an AI model trained on massive text to predict the next word — the base of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and most generative AI products.

Multi-LLM (Model Routing)

Multi-LLM is the strategy of using multiple models (Claude, GPT, Gemini) in one product, routing each task to the best model for that type.

Tokens (LLM Text Units)

Tokens are the units in which LLMs process text — short words become 1 token, long words split into many. Billing and context limits are in tokens.

Context Window

Context window is the maximum tokens (input + output) an LLM can process in one call — ranges from 4k to 2M+ across models.

Prompt Engineering

Prompt engineering is the craft of writing instructions for LLMs that produce more consistent, accurate, well-formatted responses.

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

RAG is the technique of retrieving relevant information (from a DB, docs, web) before generating an LLM response — combines retrieval + generation.

Embedding (Semantic Vector)

An embedding is the numeric representation (vector of 768-3072 dimensions) capturing the meaning of a text chunk — the base of semantic search and RAG.

Vector Database

A vector DB is the database optimized to store and query embeddings fast — the technical heart of any RAG or semantic search application.

Hallucination (AI Hallucination)

Hallucination is when the LLM invents confident but false information — inherent to the model, not a bug; mitigated with RAG, prompt and validation.

AI Agent

An AI agent is an LLM that acts (executes tools, browses, writes code), in a loop, until completing an objective — not just answering text.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

MCP is Anthropic's open protocol for LLMs to access external tools and data in a standardized way — "USB-C for AI agents".

BR Payments

Pix (Brazilian Instant Payment)

Pix is the Brazilian instant payment system, launched by the Central Bank in 2020 — 24/7, free for individuals, very cheap for businesses.

Boleto (Brazilian Bank Slip)

Boleto is the Brazilian payment slip with barcode — usage dropped after Pix, but still relevant for B2B and high tickets.

Recurring Card (Subscription Billing)

Recurring card is automatic credit-card billing each cycle (monthly/annual) — base of most SaaS, with chargeback risk and dunning needs.

Mercado Pago (Brazilian Gateway)

Mercado Pago is the most-used payment gateway in Brazil — accepts Pix, card and boleto in a single integration, with LatAm coverage.

Stripe (Global Gateway)

Stripe is the leading global gateway in SaaS, known for exceptional DX, rich dashboard and advanced features (Connect, Billing, Tax).