Website buyer's glossary

Every term you are likely to meet while buying a website, in plain English — and why each one matters before you pay rather than after.

Buying and owning

Domain name: The address people type to reach your website, such as example.co.uk.You rent a domain yearly from a registrar and it stays yours regardless of who builds the site. Buy it in your own name, never a supplier's.Domain name ideas
Hosting: The service that keeps your website online and serves it to visitors.Hosting is a small monthly cost, separate from the website itself. A finished build can move to any host you choose.What you get
Source code: The files the website is made of.If you have the source code, any developer can work on your site later. Without it you are tied to one supplier forever.
Licence: The written permission setting out how you may use the website you bought.It says how many web addresses the build may run on and whether you can resell it. Read it before you buy, not after.Licences explained
Handover: The point where the finished site, its files and its logins become yours.A proper handover includes the code, the admin logins, the licence certificate and written instructions — not just a live web address.How it works

Payment gateway: The service that takes card details and moves the money to your bank.The gateway account is yours, so customer payments land in your bank without passing through anybody else.Websites that take payments
Recurring billing: Charging a customer automatically on a repeating schedule.It is what turns one-off customers into predictable monthly income, and it needs sign-up, renewal and cancellation handled properly.Membership websites
Total cost of ownership: Everything a website costs over its life, not just the build price.Add hosting, domain, email, changes and support. A cheap build with expensive monthly fees often costs more in three years.Cost calculator

SEO: The work that helps search engines understand and rank your pages.The technical half — speed, structure, page data — should already be done when you buy. The writing half is ongoing and yours.Buyer guides
Structured data: Hidden labels on a page that tell search engines what it contains.It is why prices, reviews and questions sometimes appear directly in search results. It costs nothing to include and helps clicks.
Core Web Vitals: Google's measurements of how quickly and smoothly a page loads.Slow pages lose both visitors and rankings. Ask for the scores before you buy any website.
Canonical address: The one official web address for a page when several could show the same thing.It stops search engines splitting your ranking across duplicate addresses — important whenever a site changes its addresses.

CMS: The admin area where you edit pages, prices and images without code.If you cannot change a price or add a page yourself, every small edit becomes a bill.Websites with an admin area
Staging site: A private copy of your website used to try changes before they go live.It is how changes get tested without your customers seeing anything broken.
SSL certificate: The thing that puts the padlock in the address bar and encrypts the connection.Browsers warn visitors away from sites without one, and payments cannot be taken safely. It should be included, not an extra.
Backup: A stored copy of your site and its data that can be restored.Ask how often backups run and how quickly a site can be put back. A backup nobody has ever restored is not a backup.
Accessibility (WCAG): Building pages so people using keyboards, screen readers or magnification can use them.It widens your audience, it is a legal expectation in many sectors, and retro-fitting it later is far more expensive.
GDPR: UK and EU rules covering how you collect and keep personal data.Your site needs a privacy notice, a lawful reason for marketing emails and a way to delete someone's data on request.Privacy notice