Ecommerce Detective (Activity 6)
Written by: Jonathan Briggs
November 12, 2008 [3403 views]
A challenging but I hope interesting activity this week. Using one or two of the sites you have been looking at recently, 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 Tuesday 18th November 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
- What operating system is the site running on?
- What server software is being used?
- When did the company launch its first site?
- When did the site last have a major upgrade?
- How many visitors does this company get per month?
- What scripting language, cms or shopping cart system is being used?
- How many other sites link to this one?
- What is the PageRank reputation for this site?
- What is the AlexaRank reputation for this site?
- 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.domaintools.com
http://www.Netcraft.com
http://www.TrafficEstimate.com
http://www.SeoMoz.org
Keyword Analyser
http://www.archive.org - The Wayback machine
Keyword Discovery
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 back your findings http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228GZQE535H
Remember if you want to complete the activity for TWO sites you will need to fill in the survey TWICE.
Recent comments:
What do you think?
On November 16, 2008 at 10:42 PM, Kazeem wrote:
Is it possible to look at a different website than the one you've been looking at if it is quite difficult to find the answers to all the questions??
Jonathan replies: Yes, if you want to change site then do but try to use the same type of ecommerce site