Cart Finder is an application designed to automatically compare prices across multiple retail platforms, ensuring users always find the cheapest option for items on their shopping list. By prioritizing quality attributes such as scalability, availability, security, interoperability, and maintainability, Cart Finder aims to support a wide range of users, integrate seamlessly with various online shopping platforms, and evolve with the e-commerce landscape.
Name: Liam Hemmett
Student number: 46976868
Price Comparison: Utilizes sophisticated algorithms to compare prices across an extensive list of major retail platforms in real-time.
User Account System: Allows users to save shopping lists, preferences, and receive notifications on price drops or deals on items of interest.
Real-Time Notifications: Alerts users immediately about price changes, offering opportunities to purchase at the best prices.
Customizable Alerts: Enables setting up price threshold alerts for specific items, ensuring users don’t miss out on the best deals.
Integration with Coupons and Discount Codes: Automatically applies the most advantageous coupons or discount codes, maximizing savings.
Basic User Account Creation and Login: Secure sign-up and login functionality to access personal account features, including shopping list management.
Initial Shopping List Price Comparison: Users can input a shopping list, and the MVP will compare prices for each item across a selected number of online retailers, presenting the cheapest options.
Summary of Potential Savings: After comparing prices, the MVP provides a summary of the total potential savings, demonstrating the value Cart Finder brings to the user’s shopping experience.
Basic Notification System for Major Price Drops: Includes a simple notification system that alerts users to significant price drops on popular items, encouraging early adoption and engagement with the platform.
Scalability: The architecture of Cart Finder is engineered for scalability to accommodate a rapidly expanding user base and to manage high volumes of transactions, especially during peak shopping periods such as holiday seasons. This attribute is critical to maintain service responsiveness and efficiency as demand increases. Scalability is measurable through load testing, where we simulate varying levels of user traffic and transactions to ensure the system can handle expected growth without degradation in performance.
Availability: Ensuring that Cart Finder is accessible to users at all times is paramount, particularly during critical shopping periods when users rely on the service for time-sensitive deals. High availability is achieved through a combination of redundant systems, robust error handling, and quick failover mechanisms in case of system failures. Availability can be quantified by calculating the system’s uptime as a percentage of total time, aiming for the industry-standard of 99.9% uptime or higher.
Security: With users entrusting Cart Finder with sensitive personal and financial information, securing this data against unauthorized access, breaches, and other security threats is a foundational requirement. Security measures include end-to-end encryption, secure data storage practices, and regular security audits. Security is testable through regular penetration testing and security audits to identify and remediate vulnerabilities, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.
The evaluation plan is tailored to comprehensively assess Cart Finder’s MVP functionality and key quality attributes with efficiency and feasibility in mind.
User Account System: Automated tests for registration, login, and session management.
Shopping List Management: Functional tests for input, edit, and deletion capabilities.
Price Comparison Engine: Integration testing with mock and real retailer APIs for price retrieval accuracy.
Total Savings Summary: Unit tests to verify correct savings calculations.
Notification System: Integration and unit testing for alert logic and delivery mechanisms.
Load Testing: To assess scalability, Cart Finder will undergo rigorous load testing simulating peak shopping periods.
Failover Testing: Availability will be evaluated through failover testing to ensure the system remains operational during unforeseen disruptions.
Security Audits: Regular, comprehensive security audits will be conducted to identify and remediate vulnerabilities, maintaining the integrity of user data.
API Integration Testing: To verify interoperability, integration testing with mock APIs from potential retail partners will be performed.
Code Reviews and Automated Testing: Maintainability will be ensured through regular code reviews and the implementation of an automated testing suite to facilitate updates and improvements.