Deck 3: Building an E-Commerce Presence

Question 1

What are the phases, activities, and milestones for developing an e-commerce presence for a typical start-up website over a one-year period?

Answer 1

A one-year e-commerce presence timeline might include the following phases, activities, and milestones. Phase 1/Planning, in which an e-commerce presence would be envisaged and personnel developed, with a milestone of creating a mission statement; Phase 2/Website development, in which content would be acquired, a site design developed, and hosting arranged for the site, with a milestone of creating a website plan; Phase 3/Web implementation, in which keywords and metatags would be developed, search engine optimization strategies deployed, and potential sponsors identified, with a creation of a functional website as the milestone; Phase 4/Social media plan, in which appropriate social platforms and content for products and services would be identified, with the creation of a social media plan as the milestone; Phase 5/Social media implementation, in which a Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media presence would be developed, with a functioning social media presence as the milestone; and Phase 6/Mobile plan, in which a mobile plan would be developed with options for porting the website to the mobile platform considered, and with a mobile media plan as the relevant milestone. Phase 6/Mobile plan might also be the first phase for a firm that wanted to employ mobile first design.

Question 2

Your e-commerce design company has received an RFP to help create an e-commerce presence for Tucci's, a renowned gourmet and specialty butcher that now wishes to sell goods over the Internet. Describe the elements you will include in your proposal to Tucci's.

Answer 2

Student answers will vary, but should include the following:
Elements that will be in the proposal include the (1) business goals, or vision, or mission statement, (2) identification of the target audience, (3) description of the marketspace, (4) a strategic analysis or SWOT analysis, (5) the content to be included, (6) a development timeline, and (7) a budget. Other recommendations that the student should mention include using social, local, or mobile marketing.

Question 3

Which of the following helps you engage your customers in a conversation?

A) shopping cart
B) product database
C) on-site blog
D) site tracking and reporting system

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which of the following types of e-commerce presence is best suited for creating an ongoing conversation with one's customers?

A) website
B) e-mail
C) social media
D) offline media

Question 5

Which of the following are the two main components of a systems design?

A) logical design and physical design
B) behavioral design and technological design
C) business objectives and technology requirements
D) front-end systems and back-end systems

Question 6

In developing an e-commerce presence, what questions must be asked and answered about the firm's target audience?

Question 7

Which system functionality must your website have to be able to personalize or customize a product for a client?

A) an ad server
B) a site tracking and reporting system
C) an inventory management system
D) customer on-site tracking

Question 8

In order from beginning to end, the major steps in the SDLC are:

A) systems analysis/planning; systems design; building the system; testing; and implementation.
B) systems design; testing; building the system; and implementation.
C) systems analysis/planning; systems design; building the system; implementation; and testing.
D) systems analysis/planning; implementation; building the system; and testing.

Question 9

Which of the following involves testing a site's program modules one at a time?

A) system testing
B) acceptance testing
C) unit testing
D) implementation testing

Question 10

Which of the following is not one of the basic business objectives for an e-commerce site?

A) display goods
B) execute a transaction
C) provide production and supplier links
D) optimize system architecture

Question 11

Most of the time required to maintain an e-commerce site is spent on:

A) debugging code.
B) responding to emergency situations.
C) general administration and making changes and enhancements to the system.
D) changes in reports, data files, and links to backend databases.

Question 12

What are the two most important management challenges in building a successful e-commerce presence?

A) developing a clear understanding of business objectives and knowing how to choose the right technology to achieve those objectives
B) having an accurate understanding of your business environment and an achievable business plan
C) building a team with the right skill sets and closely managing the development process
D) identifying the key components of your business plan and selecting the right software, hardware, and infrastructure for your site

Question 13

Which of the following details the actual hardware components to be used in a system?

A) architecture plan
B) system functionalities plan
C) logical design
D) physical design

Question 14

________ are the types of information systems capabilities needed to meet business objectives.

A) Information requirements
B) System functionalities
C) System design specifications
D) Physical design specifications

Question 15

Which of the following verifies that the business objectives of the system are in fact working?

A) system testing
B) acceptance testing
C) unit testing
D) implementation testing

Question 16

Which of the following is a simple but powerful method for strategizing about a business?

A) benchmarking
B) SLDC
C) SWOT analysis
D) DevOps

Question 17

All of the following are basic information requirements for a product database except:

A) product descriptions.
B) stock numbers.
C) customer ID numbers.
D) inventory levels.

Question 18

Which of the following basic system functionalities is used to display goods on a website?

A) product database
B) digital catalog
C) shopping cart system
D) customer database system

Question 19

The cost of hardware, software, and telecommunications services needed to build a website have ________ over the last decade.

A) increased dramatically
B) increased moderately
C) decreased dramatically
D) decreased slightly

Question 20

Which of the following typically includes a data flow diagram (DFD) to describe the flow of information for an e-commerce site?

A) physical design
B) logical design
C) testing plan
D) co-location plan

Question 21

When using multivariate testing, if you wish to test two different versions of an image, a button, and a piece of text, how many combinations will you need to test?

A) 2
B) 4
C) 6
D) 8

Question 22

The leading web server software is:

A) Apache.
B) Microsoft Internet Information Server.
C) Sun Solaris.
D) Google Enterprise Server.

Question 23

Which of the following involves creating a skeleton version that focuses on functionality rather than design?

A) web services
B) wireframing
C) Scrum
D) DevOps

Question 24

The process of comparing a website with that of its competitors in terms of response speed, quality of layout, and design is known as:

A) split testing.
B) funnel testing.
C) benchmarking.
D) system testing.

Question 25

All of the following are simple steps for optimizing web page content except:

A) reducing unnecessary HTML comments.
B) segmenting computer servers to perform dedicated functions.
C) using more efficient graphics.
D) avoiding unnecessary links to other pages on the site.

Question 26

Web services are loosely coupled, reusable software components based on XML and other open protocols and standards that enable an application to communicate with another application without requiring any custom programming.

Question 27

A template test is a form of which type of testing?

A) unit testing
B) system testing
C) acceptance testing
D) A/B testing

Question 28

All of the following might be part of a website's middle-tier layer except:

A) a database server.
B) an ad server.
C) legacy corporate applications.
D) a mail server.

Question 29

All of the following are basic functionality provided by web servers except:

A) site management tools.
B) data capture tools.
C) security services.
D) a shopping cart.

Question 30

Describe the major issues surrounding the decision to build and/or host your own e-commerce site or to outsource some aspects of site development. Include the advantages and disadvantages of each decision.

Question 31

In general, the annual system maintenance cost will roughly parallel the development cost.

Question 32

The concept of a "sprint" is related to which of the following development methodologies?

A) prototyping
B) Scrum
C) component-based development
D) DevOps Apache

Question 33

Which form of testing compares a control page with one that is very different?

A) template test
B) new concept test
C) funnel test
D) system test

Question 34

Using prebuilt templates is typically one of the most inexpensive options when building an e-commerce site.

Question 35

Which of the following is the minimum system architecture requirement for an e-commerce website that processes orders?

A) single-tier architecture
B) two-tier architecture
C) three-tier architecture
D) multi-tier architecture

Question 36

Which of the following is used to process certificates and private/public key information?

A) HTTP
B) Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security
C) File Transfer Protocol
D) data capture tools

Question 37

Scrum is a type of agile development.

Question 38

A multi-tier architecture typically includes only a web server and a database server.

Question 39

Which of the following would you use to verify that links on web pages are valid?

A) HTTP
B) FTP
C) data capture tools
D) site management tools

Question 40

The SDLC methodology helps developers to understand the business objectives of a system and design an appropriate solution.

Question 41

DHMTL is used to generate dynamic web pages.

Question 42

Which of the following is not a main factor in determining the overall demand on an e-commerce site?

A) file sizes of web pages being served
B) number of simultaneous users in peak periods
C) speed of legacy applications that are needed to supply data to web pages
D) whether content is dynamic or static

Question 43

The term stateless refers to the fact that:

A) no one government entity controls the Internet.
B) the server does not have to maintain an ongoing dedicated interaction with the client computer.
C) system performance degrades as more simultaneous users require service.
D) web servers may maintain multiple instances of server software to handle requests.

Question 44

All of the following are basic functionality provided by e-commerce merchant server software except:

A) a product catalog.
B) marketing analytics.
C) a shopping cart.
D) credit card processing.

Question 45

________ are a kind of middleware software that provides the glue connecting traditional corporate systems to the customer as well as all the functionality needed to conduct e-commerce.

A) Application servers
B) Web page servers
C) Database servers
D) Content management servers

Question 46

Upgrading a server from a single processor to multiple processors is an example of scaling a site vertically.

Question 47

All of the following are examples of open source CMSs except:

A) Joomla
B) Drupal
C) Dreamweaver CC
D) WordPress

Question 48

Which of the following technologies is used to separate the design and presentation of content from the content creation process?

A) CGI
B) proxy server
C) shopping cart
D) CMS

Question 49

Which of the following is a standard that makes it possible to access data from any application regardless of the database and operating system software being used?

A) CGI
B) ODBC
C) MySQL
D) HTTP

Question 50

Objects can be retrieved from the database using Java Server Pages.

Question 51

Advantages of dynamic page generation include all of the following except:

A) lowered menu costs.
B) market segmentation.
C) nearly cost-free price discrimination.
D) client-side execution of programming.

Question 52

Which of the following cannot be used to retrieve objects from a database?

A) CGI
B) ASP
C) JSP
D) HTML

Question 53

Which of the following monitors and controls access to a main web server, and implements firewall protection?

A) proxy server
B) list server
C) groupware server
D) mail server

Question 54

The web server software used has a significant impact on how a website's web pages look on a user's computer.

Question 55

Which of the following types of sites typically require a high percentage of secure pages?

A) web services
B) customer self-service
C) trading
D) publishing/subscription

Question 56

All of the following are steps one can take to right-size a website's hardware platform and meet demands for service except:

A) scaling hardware vertically.
B) scaling hardware horizontally.
C) replacing static pages with dynamically generated pages.
D) improving processing architecture.

Question 57

Explain the main functionalities included in e-commerce merchant server software and the decision-making process for a manager choosing from among the various e-commerce merchant server software packages.

Question 58

Dynamic page generation enables price discrimination.

Question 59

All of the following are methods of improving the processing architecture of a website except:

A) separating static content from dynamic content.
B) optimizing ASP code.
C) optimizing the database schema.
D) adding web servers.

Question 60

MySQL is which of the following?

A) open source database software
B) scripting language embedded in HTML documents
C) web server software
D) website analytics software

Question 61

Storing HTML pages in RAM rather than on a server's hard drive is an expensive way to fine-tune the processing architecture of a website.

Question 62

The primary way a website is able to personalize the content presented to a visitor is through the use of:

A) privacy policies.
B) cookies.
C) accessibility rules.
D) site management tools.

Question 63

List and describe the eight most important factors in successful e-commerce site design.

Question 64

What are widgets and how are they used? How do they differ from mashups?

Question 65

All of the following are website design features that annoy customers except:

A) slow-loading pages.
B) pop-under ads.
C) splash pages.
D) multi-browser functionality.

Question 66

Which of the following is a server-side technique that detects the attributes of the device making the request, and using predefined templates, loads a version of a site optimized for the device?

A) LAMP
B) AWD
C) mobile first design
D) RoR

Question 67

________ is a programming language invented by Netscape used to control the objects on an HTML page and handle interactions with the browser.

A) VBScript
B) ActiveX
C) ColdFusion
D) JavaScript

Question 68

Ruby on Rails is based on which of the following philosophies?

A) SLDC
B) CoC
C) LAMP
D) Ajax

Question 69

Django is based on which of the following?

A) PHP
B) Python
C) Perl
D) Ruby on Rails

Question 70

Which of the following statements about responsive web design (RWD) is not true?

A) RWD works best for sites that have complex functionality.
B) RWD tools include HTML5 and CSS3.
C) RWD makes it possible to design a website that automatically adjusts its layout and display according to the screen resolution of the device on which it is being viewed.
D) RWD can be costly.

Question 71

A security hole known as Shellshock enabled hackers to target JavaScript running on Apache web servers.

Question 72

Building which of the following is the least expensive path to creating a mobile presence?

A) native app
B) mobile website
C) mobile web app
D) hybrid HTTP

Question 73

All of the following are key design principles of responsive web design except:

A) flexible grid-based layouts.
B) media queries.
C) coding by convention.
D) flexible images and media.

Question 74

What tools or technologies are available for providing interactivity and active content on a website and what functionality do they add? Describe at least five.

Question 75

Django follows the ________ programming principle.

A) CoC
B) WYSIWYG
C) DRY
D) LAMP

Question 76

All of the following are important factors in search engine optimization except:

A) selecting keywords and page titles.
B) encouraging other sites to link to your site.
C) buying search engine ads.
D) adhering to privacy policies.

Question 77

Which of the following is the most commonly used server-side scripting language?

A) Ruby on Rails
B) Django
C) PHP
D) Perl

Question 78

Explain both demand and supply-side considerations when choosing the hardware platform for an e-commerce site. Include a discussion of I/O-intensive vs. CPU-intensive operations and scalability.

Question 79

________ provides a set of standards for communicating between a browser and a program running on a server that allows for interaction between the user and server.

A) CGI
B) ColdFusion
C) JavaScript
D) VBScript

Question 80

Which of the following is not part of the LAMP open source web development model?

A) Linux
B) Apache
C) Microsoft IIS
D) PHP