This course is an introduction to the architecture, design, implementation, and management of eCommerce websites. It covers topics including enterprise architecture, hosting and vendor management, outsourcing principles, challenges of multi-channel commerce, principles of design and usability of websites, licensing and ownership of software, business process, reporting metrics, Search/SEO, eCommerce fraud concerns, and some legal issues and regulations around eCommerce practices.
Prerequisite: none
| Week | Topics Covered | Reading | Assignments | |
| 1 | - Introductions & why you're taking this class - What's ecommerce - A little bit of history/timeline - Our favorite ecomm websites. Why we like them? What do we expect in a good (and a bad) eCommerce website (speed, reliability, assortment, availability, delivery options, delivery cost) - Types of ecomm websites (goods, services, data, marketplaces) - Website vs. an application - where is the line drawn? - What happens behind the scenes when we click the "Buy" button - Explain the class presentation structure. Students will suggest a list of topics and self organize into groups based on a particular topic they chose. | |||
| 2 | - Major differences between mom'n'pop and enterprise websites - How do we grow a website? Scalability - Maintainability - Risk management and fail-over - Disaster Recovery and planning - Licensing and Cost of ownership - Hosting and vendor management - Hosting and vendor management Cont'd - Call center and customer support - Order management system | |||
| 3 | - Warehouse management system - Tying everything together: Enterprise Architecture - Enterprise Application Integrations, ESB - Technology Selection (Java/.NET/PHP/Ruby-on-rails) - Web 2.0 (flash/ajax) - CDN, Akamai - Community - Ratings & reviews - Cross-selling and recommendations - Click-to-call - Click-to-chat - mCommerce | |||
| 4 | - Multi-channel selling and brand consistency - Data consistency and single customer view - Special orders / Drop ship - Email campaign management and CAN-SPAN - Traffic sources - Shopping engines - Affiliates - Amazon - Paid Search - Alternative checkout - Paypal - Bill me later - Google checkout - Measuring and reporting performance of different sources | |||
| 5 | Business Process - Merchandising & Stock position - Advertising - Long tailing and endless Isle - Promotional engines - Couponing and offer abuse - Free shipping - Seasonality - Direct Marketing and marketing strategy - Upsell, cross-sell, out-of-stock, product bundles, and substitution - Reporting: Conversion & AOV - Google Analytics - Student presentations: Q&A | |||
| 6 | Students presentations on the topics of choice (agreed on in class 1) | |||
| 7 | Fraud - Types of fraud - Credit cards: Address verification and standardization, AVS and CVN, debit cards
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| 8 | Search - Site search, filtering, refinements, faceting - Search Engine Optimization - Paid Search - Search Reporting - Search Tuning | |||
| 9 | Guest Lecturer: Building a successful eCommerce business from ground up Guest Lecturer: Managing eCommerce Marketing for a large enterprise | |||
| 10 | - Usability - User Interface: Don't make me think - What customer say they want vs. what they really want: surveys and focus groups - Build vs. buy - Software as a service vs. hosted | |||
| 11 | Management - Change Management - Release management - New features, bugs, and roadmap process - Virtue of templating and reusability - Capabilities vs. make-it-work and just-do-it - Team structure - Creating YOUR process - Value of SOP | |||
| 12 | - SCRUM Agile methodology primer | |||
| 13 | - Each students will present their website project | |||
| 14 | - Legal issues and regulations - Privacy & security - PCI/SOX compliance & credit card numbers - Taxation - Outsourcing - Types - Why/why not - What can you outsource, how, when, and to whom - Case Study - Review for the final exam |