A glossary of the core terms every eCommerce and sales team should understand for managing digital shelf performance, visibility, and growth.

Coverage & Availability

Assortment

The range of SKUs a brand chooses to sell across platforms, retailers, and geographies.

It is often confused with inventory.

However, Assortment is not about how much stock you have, it is about whether the right products are listed in the right places.

Distribution

The extent to which products are listed, live, and sellable across marketplaces, retailers, and regions.

In eCommerce, it also means digital presence, if the listing doesn’t exist, distribution is incomplete.

Availability

Whether a product can be purchased at a given time on a given platform. It answers the most commonly asked question in eCommerce, can the customer actually buy the product right now?

Out of Stock (OOS)

A state where the product listing exists, but the item cannot be purchased because inventory is unavailable for that specific delivery postcode at the time of purchase.

In Stock Rate

The percentage of time a product remains available for purchase across a defined period.

Fill Rate

The percentage of customer demand successfully fulfilled without stockouts or supply issues.

Lost Sales

Lost Sales refers to revenue missed when a customer intends to buy a product, but the purchase cannot happen because the product is unavailable, not listed, not visible enough, or not purchasable. 

Some common examples of Lost Sales:

• The product is out of stock
• The SKU is missing on a key platform
• The product is unavailable in a specific postcode
• The listing is mapped incorrectly
• Poor discoverability prevents the customer from finding it

Purchasability

The ability of a customer to successfully find, access, and buy a product without friction.

Distribution Gap

A missing listing or platform presence where demand exists but the product is unavailable for the specific customer geography.

Discoverability & Content

Digital Shelf

Everything a shopper sees online before buying - images, descriptions, ratings, reviews, pricing, availability, promotions, and search placement.

It is often misunderstood as just the PDP. In reality, it includes the full discovery journey before checkout. 

PDP (Product Detail Page)

The page where a shopper evaluates a specific product before making a purchase. It is the core unit of conversion, where trust, comparison, and purchase decisions happen. 

Content Compliance

Whether product content follows brand guidelines and includes correct titles, bullets, images, and attributes.

Content Completeness

The percentage of required product fields that are present and usable on a retailer platform. A listing with missing attributes or weak descriptions may still be live, but it performs poorly in search and conversion. 

Content Coverage

The percentage of SKUs with complete and optimized content across retailers.

Content Refresh

The process of updating product content to improve relevance, freshness, and performance.

Syndication

The process of distributing product content from a source system to marketplaces and retailer platforms.

Taxonomy

The category and attribute structure used by retailers to organize products.

Hero Image

The Hero Image is the primary product image shown first on search pages and Product Detail Pages (PDPs). It is the first visual interaction a shopper has with the product.

It plays a critical role in both discoverability and conversion, as it directly influences click-through rates, trust, and purchase decisions.

Rich Content

Enhanced PDP content such as videos, comparison charts, infographics, and A+ content.

A+ Content

Enhanced branded product content used on marketplaces like Amazon to improve conversion.

Share of Search

The proportion of relevant search visibility your brand captures compared to competitors.

It is often mistaken for traffic. Traffic tells you who visited. Share of Search tells you whether customers saw you in the first place. 

Organic Share of Search

Visibility earned naturally without paid advertising.

Search Rank

The position at which your product appears in platform search results for a target keyword.

Keyword Mapping

The process of aligning product content with the actual words customers use to search.

AI Visibility

How easily a product is surfaced inside AI-led recommendations and conversational commerce platforms.

Shopper Intent

Shopper intent refers to the reason behind a customer’s search and what they are actually trying to achieve when looking for a product online.

For example:
“Soap” may indicate broad discovery.
“Anti-bacterial hand wash for kids” shows a much stronger and more specific buying intent.

AI Intent

AI intent refers to how AI systems interpret product information and decide whether your product is relevant enough to recommend in AI-led discovery experiences.

Competitiveness

Buy Box

The default seller placement on a marketplace PDP that captures most conversions when multiple sellers exist.

Featured Offer

Another term for the Buy Box on certain marketplaces.

Price Parity

Maintaining consistent pricing for the same SKU across platforms and retailers.

Competitive Pricing

It refers to how your product is priced in comparison to similar products within the same category across marketplaces and retail platforms.

It helps brands understand whether their pricing is strong enough to drive conversion while still protecting profitability.

This is often confused with simply having the lowest price. Whereas, competitive pricing does not always mean being the cheapest, it means being priced appropriately based on category benchmarks, brand value, promotions, availability, and customer expectations. 

Promo Compliance

Whether planned promotions are live, correctly executed, and aligned with agreed mechanics and timing.

Promotional Uplift

The incremental sales generated directly through a promotion compared to expected baseline sales.

Discount Depth

The percentage reduction applied during a promotion. 

For example: If a product is originally priced at ₹500 and is offered at ₹400 during a sale, the discount depth is 20%. 

A very high discount may increase short-term conversion but reduce margin, affect price perception, or train customers to wait for promotions. 

Promo Leakage

Revenue loss caused by promotions not going live correctly or running inefficiently.

Ratings

The average star score customers give a product.

Reviews

Written customer feedback that influences trust and conversion.

Review Velocity

The speed at which a product gains new reviews over time.

Sentiment Analysis

Understanding customer opinion patterns by analyzing ratings, reviews, and written feedback across platforms.

It helps brands identify how customers actually feel about a product, not just whether they rated it 4 or 5 stars, but why they did so.

Performance & Growth

Retail Media

Paid advertising runs within retailer and marketplace platforms to improve visibility and conversion.

Sponsored Search

Paid placements inside retailer search results that improve product visibility.

Traffic

The number of visits or sessions reaching a product page or brand store.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of visits that result in a completed purchase.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

The percentage of people who click after seeing a product listing or advertisement.

AOV (Average Order Value)

The average basket value per completed order.

Basket Mix

The combination of products purchased together in a single order.

Margin

The profit remaining after accounting for pricing, promotions, media spend, fulfilment, and retailer costs.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

ROAS measures how much revenue is generated for every unit of advertising spend.

It helps brands understand whether their retail media, sponsored search, or paid campaigns are delivering profitable returns.

For example:
If you spend ₹10,000 on ads and generate ₹50,000 in sales, your ROAS is 5x.

TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales)

TACoS measures advertising spend as a percentage of total sales, not just attributed ad sales.

It helps brands understand how dependent total business growth is on paid advertising.

For example:
If total sales are ₹1,00,000 and ad spend is ₹10,000, TACoS is 10%.

TACoS is often confused with ROAS, but ROAS looks at direct return from ads.
TACoS looks at the bigger business picture.

Category Share

A brand’s share of sales, visibility, or assortment within a product category. It shows how much of the market your brand captures compared to competitors. 

Market Share

A brand’s percentage of total sales across the wider market.

Sell Through Rate

The percentage of inventory sold within a specific period.

Revenue at Risk

Estimated sales value likely to be lost due to stockouts, poor discoverability, or execution failures.

Pricing & Promotions

Price Monitoring

Tracking pricing across platforms to ensure competitiveness and consistency.

Dynamic Pricing

Adjusting prices automatically based on competition, demand, or stock levels.

Price Index

A comparison of your pricing against competitor benchmarks.

Buy Box Win Rate

The percentage of time your brand wins the Buy Box across platforms.

Price Change Recommendation

Suggested pricing actions to improve conversion or competitiveness.

Promotion Calendar

A schedule of planned campaigns, discounts, and trade activities.

Promo Effectiveness

Measurement of how well a promotion drives incremental growth.

Execution

Execution Gap

The difference between what was planned and what is actually live on-platform.

This is where most teams lose revenue.

Examples:

• Content created → not syndicated
• Promotions planned → not live
• SKU listed → but OOS
• Price set → but Buy Box lost

Revenue Recovery

The process of identifying and fixing execution gaps that directly impact lost sales.

Actionability

How easily data can be turned into practical next steps for teams.

Reporting & Benchmarking

Benchmarking

Comparing your product performance against competitors or category standards or platform best practices to understand where you stand and where improvement is needed. 

It helps answer an important question:

Is your performance actually good when compared to competitors, or does it only look good in isolation?

Content Score

A score used to measure overall PDP quality and completeness.

Availability Score

A score showing how consistently products remain purchasable.

Discoverability Score

A score showing how visible your products are across search and AI-led discovery.