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Ecommerce detective work (activity)

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

October 14, 2005 [6234 views]

A challenging but I hope interesting activity this week. Using one or both of the same sites as last week I want you to try and discover the answers to the following questions and then fill in an online survey for each of the sites.

The deadline is Wednesday 19th at midnight. I recommend that you look at doing both sites although you will have completed the activity if you only look at one.

You will need to make notes on the answers to each question before completing the survey to feed back your answers.

If you cannot find an answer leave that part of the survey blank and complete the rest.

Questions
  1. What operating system is the site running on?
  2. What server software is being used?
  3. When did the company launch its first site?
  4. When did the site last have a major upgrade?
  5. How many visitors does this company get per month?
  6. What scripting language, cms or shopping cart system is being used?
  7. How many other sites link to this one?
  8. What is the PageRank reputation for this site?
  9. What is the AlexaRank reputation for this site?
  10. What keywords bring people to the home page?
Tools and clues

You can answer some of the questions just by looking but you will probably need to explore the web in ways you have never done before. There are many free tools for analysing different aspects of sites. Let me know if you find some good ones. Here are some tools that will help.

http://www.Google.com – extended search – try “link:www.url.com” in the search box
http://www.URLTrends.com
http://www.Netcraft.com
http://www.TrafficEstimate.com
http://www.Alexa.com
Keyword Analyser
http://www.archive.org - The Wayback machine

You can often find out what tools/scripts/software a site is running by looking at the URL strings and “powered by” messages on the site or by looking at the source code.

Here is a link to the survey to enable you to report by your findings Ecommerce Detective Survey

Recent comments:

On October 17, 2005 at 10:50 AM, hashem darwish wrote:

i just wanted toknow if you can send me JARIKS EMAIL ADDRESS, its in regards with my project. i will comment on this particular excress once i finshed the activity.

thanx
sorry about the inconvenience

On October 17, 2005 at 9:16 PM, Camilo Fernandes wrote:

This site is running on Solaris operating system... [rest removed by JHB]

www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk/home.html

Jonathan replies: Fill in the survey rather than filling in your answers here!

On October 20, 2005 at 12:09 AM, M Hassan wrote:

John I submitted my survey at 00:06 I hope it will count :) Cheers

Jonathan replies: Its OK!

On October 20, 2005 at 1:41 AM, Agnes Igbedion wrote:

This was an interesting activity which helped me to optimise the use of the search engine. also I did not find the whole answers to all the questions, I found a few. sorry for the late submission but I've got a four months old baby that does not give me a moments rest.

Jonathan replies: Its OK - I am not a monster! Glad you liked the activity

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This site is an educational resource, a research project and a publication channel written by Jonathan Briggs, Professor of eCommerce at Kingston University.
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