It’s a fantastic language. From bier and wienerschnitzel to fahrvergnügen and auf wiedersehen, Germany seems to have a word for everything. Achtung, baby!
They even have some great expressions without English equivalents, and this got me thinking about all of the terms I wish existed for web design and development, but don’t—yet.
I want in. The Germans shouldn’t be the only ones having fun with creative compound words to explain everyday experiences, and emojis can only get you so far.
The following list of digital marketing words includes some that I would love to see added to the web design and development lexicon. Do any of these sound familiar?
Interpretface
When an interface is so confusing that it only makes sense when the person who designed it takes the time to explain it to you.
404ohno
How you feel when you come to a 404 page that was never set-up and customized to be useful.
Mobileworst
That initial frustrated feeling you get when you run into an issue while testing with a mobile emulator, followed by the relief you feel when you realize that the issue isn’t actually happening (or isn’t reproducible) on a real smartphone.
Popservation
A term for any vague feedback about wanting something to “pop” more.
Stretchercise
Like exercise but with pixels, this is when you carefully scale an image past its resolution to make it work in a design because you don’t have a version of it at a higher resolution.
Pinterestflail
When someone sets up a business Pinterest account without a strategy, totally forgets about it, and then it gets hacked and used by a spammer.
Coffee<br>
When you need to take a break from coding, and you pause to caffeinate.
Metadecryption
What you have to do when you pull up search results and stumble upon a link with meta description so poorly written you have to struggle to figure out what the page is actually about.
Tabhunter
What you become when you have so many tabs open in your browser that you can’t find the page you’re looking for and have to click through them all to see what you need (not to be confused with the actor who played Mr. Stuart, the substitute teacher, in Grease 2).
SEOuch
How you feel when you check your SEO and find out you need to do some updating and optimizing because your company isn’t even ranking for its brand name.
Crumbytext
When you don’t have a professional writer and decide to start a web project with lorem ipsum copy and then regret it when you go to add the content later and realize it doesn’t work in the CMS template, requiring the layout and code to be reworked.
WWWFF
What you might call your bestie that you haven’t met IRL and only know from online interactions.
IEyeesh
That rumble you get in your gut when asked to make sure a website looks good and performs perfectly in really old and unsupported versions of IE.
Stockfauxtography
When you’re stuck using royalty-free imagery in your designs, and they don’t quite work, but there isn’t a budget—or time—for custom photography and illustration.
Dreadline
That panicky feeling you get after you’ve agreed to a project timeline then run into a problem that makes you worry you’ll miss it. (Pssst—If you need help with a web project and you’re not sure how to meet your goals and create a plan to avoid dreadlines, we can help. Schedule a consultation.)
_/¯(ツ)¯_
When you have been working such long hours to finish up work on a web project that you develop a hunch from staring into your monitor for too long.
The English language has over a million words, but sometimes there just isn’t the right one to express what you want when you need it.
That desperation you feel when your computer crashes and you thought your work was being autosaved (and it wasn’t)? A word doesn’t exist for that kind of stress.
The frustration you have when you’re on a big group call and folks keep talking over each other so you can’t understand anything? There’s no name for this sort of irritation either.
This list of proposed terms that should exist in the web design and development world is just a start. What did we miss? Tag us on LinkedIn or Twitter, and let us know what you think should be added to a hypothetical digital marketing dictionary.
