Interview questions for an eCommerce website.

Question

Hello I recently graduated with a degree in Computer Science this December and am currently on the Job Hunt looking in the area of web design/programing. I have not had any jobs in a computer science related field.

Anyways I got a question-air back from one company that I am suppose to answer. The first question is "Please describe your experience developing for an eCommerce website." I fully intend to answer the questions truthfully, yet I need to write more than "none".

So what I would like to know is what kind of skills do you think the company may be looking for or what kind of skills may be required of a an eCommerce website developer?
I would like to know this so I can have better understanding of how my experiences can relate.

I would like to emphasis my existing non-professional experience and indicate how it applies. My assumptions is that I should mention my experience with server-side languages and database. Perhaps web-server building and the site design aspect...

Thanks for all your help, feel free to ask me questions.

Answer 1

1. knowledge of how to perform payment transactions using various APIs.
2. knowledge of legalities surrounding it. Such as storing personally identifiable information, card numbers, etc and why you should avoid it like the plague.
3. knowledge of encryption and how to apply it. At rest, in motion (ssl), etc.
4. knowledge of standard cart functions and data structures associated with that
5. knowledge of products, properties of products, and how they can be sliced and diced.
6. knowledge of advanced pricing models.
7. Can explain how a gateway, processor, internet merchant account, and a bank all interact.

If you ace those, then I'd say you were an ecommerce website developer.

Answer 2

My guess would be they are looking for the ability to create dynamic data-driven web content. Understanding how to create container pages, and using database queries to build the content of the page.

This shows good programming knowledge, as well as an understanding of database queries, etc...

The design aspect of it, they may be interested in, but probably as an added bonus to the previous skills.

Especially since you don't have experience though, and them knowing that, I would also think a big factor for answering the question, is displaying your ability to take a problem that you don't have the answer to and showcasing your line of thought as you see the problem and the potential solution. Good luck!