Feedback on mock MCQ examination

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

December 2, 2005 [3761 views]

This is the first time I have done an online mock and it clearly was worthwhile. Almost all of you have tried to answer the paper, with mixed results. The average mark was 20/40 with a range from 4/40 to 34/40.

This has been good in highlighting areas of misunderstanding and confusion. I will go through the answers in the lecture and give each of you, your score (98 KB). I cannot provide one to one feedback for each question but I hope that these different messages will help you prepare for the real exam.

Key things you need to understand

1. Terminology: go back through the lectures, recommending reading and activities and make sure that you understand what the words mean. Here is a list of some of the terms I would expect you to understand (it is not exhaustive): fulfilment, B2B, customer service, decision support, integration, PPC, conversion, budget, customer reassurance, traffic, registration, keywords, upselling, margin, DDA, availability, registration, returns, impressions, clicks, CMS.
2. Technical: you should be able to describe the main technical and business systems that make up ecommerce and online business including: software components, PPC advertising, search engines, stock & order processing, fulfilment and returns handling etc. You should have an idea in your head of how they fit together and be able to draw a diagram. Ideally you should have experimented with setting up a simple shop using OSCommerce or one of its competitors (such as Zencart). Understand how a simple HTTP server works.
3. Recommendations: you should be able to look at an existing business, compare it with its competitors and make specific recommendations about how it could be improved to make it more effective (in business terms). These recommendations would include technical, design, decision support, integration, customer service and marketing (Search engine & PPC).
4. Business options: you should have an idea of the scale of work involved in implementing your ideas and be able to break them down into a series of specific actions. You should understand the difference between low cost “shop in a box” solutions such as Actinic Catalogue, open source systems such as OSCommerce, hosted solutions such as Amazon Marketplace and bespoke systems designed for a specific company.
5. Trends: you should be able to describe some of the things that are happening in the ecommerce world (such as the impact of Google), security, fraud and developments in marketing.
6. Costs and benefits: you should be able to describe the costs involved (setup and ongoing) and the likely levels of revenue being returned.

There were some common mistakes and here are some suggestions that may help you avoid them again:

• Think about the relationships between visitors, conversion rates, prices, income, margins and profit.
• Research keywords and keyphrases and understand why they may be differently effective according to how well targeted they are.
• Think about how search engines such as Google and MSN work.
• Consider the difference between live links between an ecommerce store and a periodic update or stock and order status.

I cannot promise another mock before the real thing but if I have time I will try,

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