Glossary

A Hard Bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered to the recipient's inbox for permanent reasons. Common causes include invalid email addresses, non-existent domains, or the recipient's server rejecting the email. Unlike soft bounces, which may be temporary, hard bounces signify a permanent failure. Managing and potentially avoiding hard bounces is crucial in email marketing (e.g., newsletters or marketing automation), as high bounce rates can negatively affect your organization’s sender reputation and overall deliverability.

The Header refers to the section of a website typically located at the top. In HTML, it is defined using the <header> tag and usually contains navigation, a logo, and call-to-action buttons. Sticky headers remain visible as users scroll, allowing easy access to navigation at any time. On a fundraising website, the header should be lean and concise to guide donors through your organization's work, essential reports and support options.

A Headless CMS is a content management system without a built-in frontend for content display. It consists solely of the web application’s backend, where content is managed and delivered to various devices through APIs. By decoupling front and backend, content can be deployed across multiple platforms like web, apps, or smart TVs, making the solution highly flexible and scalable.

While web development with a headless CMS may initially incur higher costs due to its API architecture, it allows for later modernization of the user interface without the need to completely redevelop backend logic.

Heat Maps display a website’s engagement data as a graphical representation, helping organizations better understand user behavior. The intensity of activity on different sections is shown using color gradients—darker colors like blue represent areas with low engagement, while brighter colors like yellow or red indicate high activity. In digital fundraising, heat maps provide insights into how visitors interact with donation pages or key content, which in turn helps improve the overall user experience and maximize conversions.

A Hero Image refers to a large, prominent banner image placed at the top of a website’s homepage or landing page. It often includes key messaging, a headline, and sometimes a call-to-action (CTA) button. The hero image is designed to grab users’ attention immediately and convey the core value or purpose of the website in a visually engaging way.

In digital fundraising, a well-chosen hero image can highlight current campaigns or showcase a charity’s impact in an emotional and engaging way.

Hosting involves storing and managing the files and data necessary for a website to run smoothly. Web hosting providers supply the required servers and cloud infrastructure, which need to be managed either by a web agency or internal staff. Hosting prices vary significantly based on performance, cloud location and service level — as a general rule, you get what you pay for.

In the case of SaaS services like Soulclick, hosting costs are included in the platform’s subscription fee. Soulclick simplifies hosting for charities by offering built-in hosting services, making the deployment of websites and donation portals quicker and easier. Hosting performance depends on the service level agreement (SLA). For organizations with emergency campaigns and high donation volumes, we strongly recommend our SLA Pro variant.

A Hover State is a visual effect applied to elements like buttons and links when users hover over them with their mouse or trackpad. These effects—such as changing color, adding an underline, or triggering an animation—enhance the user experience by providing visual feedback and making the site feel more interactive. In digital fundraising, hover effects can however, draw additional attention to call-to-action buttons and help increase conversion rates. However, hover effects do not work as effectively on mobile devices, so their usage should be limited.

Hreflang is an attribute of a website’s HTML code used to inform search engines like Google or Bing which language version of the webpage should be displayed to users in different regions. In multilingual countries like Switzerland, correct language targeting is a key aspect of providing a good user experience. For international charities, Hreflang is also essential in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to ensure that the correct language version is indexed in different countries.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the foundational language used to structure content on web pages and emails. It consists of tags and attributes that define how text, images, links and other user interface elements are displayed in a browser, HTML is essential in web development to create and organize content in a structured way.

Basic knowledge of HTML is useful for anyone working with web content or email templates, as it allows for customization of elements like text formatting, images, and hyperlinks. Understanding HTML can also help troubleshoot display issues and improve the overall user experience in online donations.