Explain the role of web architecture in website communication?

[Phoenix]

This may be one of those questions where the answer is buried in a text book, but I'll give you my take on it as an experienced web applications developer for 9 years.

Basically, the point of a website is to communicate with potential "customers" - whether they're paying directly for a product or service offered, or if they ARE the product or service. The difference being that the former can be thought of as a standard e-commerce offering (think Amazon.com, for example), and the latter can be thought of as advertising revenue-based (i.e. Google, Facebook, etc.)

In both cases, the amount of money the business makes is relative to its traffic volume. More people = more sales or more clicks (often both).

If a web architecture - the systems, hardware, software, etc. - that's set up "behind the scenes" can't handle the load of several hundred users per minute or even second, then the site may either load slowly, or not at all. Both cases result in loss of revenue, loss of customers, and negative publicity.

The answer is to make sure that the systems in place are set up properly, secured properly (a "hack" could wind up costing even a small business millions of dollars just in legal fees alone!), and operates efficiently.