Insights
The PureNet glossary.
The terms you'll meet in ecommerce, customer portals, AI and security, explained in plain English, with what each one means for a business that sells to other businesses.
AI, in plain English.
Each page starts with a short definition, then explains it with an example and what it means for you.
AI agent
Software that uses AI to plan and carry out a task in steps, choosing which tools and systems to use, within limits set for it.
Agentic AI
AI that works towards a goal and takes action, from a single agent to several sharing the work.
Generative AI
AI that creates new text, images, code and more, rather than only analysing what already exists.
Large language model
The AI behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot, and most business assistants and agents.
RAG
Retrieval-augmented generation. How an AI answers from your own information instead of only what it learned in training.
Fine-tuning
Further training a model on your own examples, to change how it writes and behaves.
AI hallucination
When AI states something false with confidence, and how well-built systems guard against it.
MCP
Model Context Protocol. A standard way to connect AI to your systems and data.
Human in the loop
A person checking or approving what AI does at the points that matter.
Ecommerce and portals for B2B.
More B2B terms, from cXML and OCI to quote to order, are in the B2B ecommerce glossary.
B2B ecommerce
Selling to other businesses online, with their own prices, accounts and ways of buying.
Customer portal
A secure, logged-in place where customers order, track and manage their account themselves.
Punchout
Your catalogue, shopped from inside a customer's procurement system, with the basket sent back for approval.
EDI
Electronic data interchange. Orders, invoices and delivery notes passed straight between companies' systems.
ERP
Enterprise resource planning. The system at the heart of the business, from stock and orders to finance.
PIM
Product information management. One place for all your product data, sent out to every channel.
Platforms, and moving between them.
Headless commerce
The storefront built separately from the ecommerce platform behind it, joined through APIs.
Replatforming
Moving your ecommerce site to a new platform, keeping your data, addresses and search rankings.
Hyvä
A fast, modern front end for Magento and Adobe Commerce stores.
Being found by AI.
How AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity and Claude find, read and quote your site.
GEO
Generative engine optimisation. Making your site easy for AI assistants to find, read and quote.
AI crawlers and robots.txt
The crawlers behind each AI assistant, and robots.txt rules you can copy.
AI visibility checker
A free check of how well AI assistants can find, read and quote your site, with a score out of 100.
Keeping systems safe.
Prompt injection
An attack that hides instructions in something an AI reads, to make it ignore its rules or do something it shouldn't.
OWASP
The not-for-profit behind the Top 10 lists of the most critical risks to web and AI applications.
Penetration test
An authorised, simulated attack to find the weaknesses a real attacker could use, so they're fixed first.
PCI DSS
The card industry's security standard for anyone who takes card payments.
ISO 27001
The international standard for managing information security, and what certification means.
Multi-factor authentication
Signing in with something more than a password, the simplest defence against account takeover.