Web guides

Appendix B - Web analytics tool requirements list

About this document

The purpose of this document is to define and explain common business requirements for web analytics tools. It is intended for use as a reference when a web analytics tool procurement process is undertaken, to help understand web analytics tool functionality.

This document is provided as a starting point to assist government agencies in identifying business requirements for web analytics tools. The use of this document is optional and we recommend that you amend this list as necessary to meet your particular requirements.

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Introduction

Background

Reliable web analytics are an essential component of assessing the performance of a web site and identifying potential issues which may affect user satisfaction with the web site.

There has been discussion on the Government Web Community shared workspace recently around web analytics. Agencies have been reporting problems with consistency and support for web analytics tools.

The Web Analytics Working Group was convened by the State Services Commission to explore the potential for coordination across government with regard to web analytics tools. This group includes representatives from the State Services Commission, Ministry of Health, Inland Revenue, Ministry of Social Development, Ministry of Education, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, Ministry for the Environment and Career Services.

The Web Analytics Working Group was tasked with developing resources to support multi-agency coordination in the area of web analytics. The following deliverables are expected from this project:

A set of New Zealand government requirements for web analytics tools that address agencies' common requirements (in areas such as offshore hosting, privacy, records management, security). These guidelines will be able to be reused across government and will assist agencies to purchase products that are fit for purpose.
Guidelines for web analytics reporting will also be developed by the Web Analytics Working Group to assist agencies in adopting good practice web analytics.
The Web Analytics Working Group will also produce a summary report, outlining their findings and their analysis of the New Zealand government situation with regard to web analytics.

This document fulfils one of the deliverables of the Web Analytics Working Group by providing New Zealand government guidelines for selecting web analytics tools.

Assumptions

In gathering these business requirements the following assumptions have underpinned the analysis:

The business requirements were identified by the Web Analytics Working Group members who are representatives of their agencies.
The business requirements list was consulted by agency representatives among their web team members as well as related business owners.
One web analytics tool may not be able to meet all these business requirements and an agency may need to consider using more than one tool.
The business requirements list reflects the current web content management technologies and widely adopted web applications. More requirements should be added as new web applications emerge in the future.

Summary of business requirements

The table below summarises the functional and non-functional requirements detailed in this document.

Rating - each requirement was rated within the Web Analytics Working Group meeting by group members or their representatives according to whether it is a "Must have" or "Nice-to-have". The factor of business significance has been taken into consideration during the rating process.
Importance - as a web analytics tool each requirement is rated on its "usefulness to" and "contribution to usability of" the tool. This rating is used as a weighting to evaluate the functionality of web analytics tool. The rating scale is: high (H), medium (M) and low (L).

Functional business requirements list

No	Req.	Requirement	Rating	Importance to
				product	business
1	F1.1	Account user access set up/removal	Must have	H	H
2	F1.2	Account administration level control	Must have	H	H
3	F1.3	Account profile access restriction control	Must have	H	H
4	F2.1	Identify visitors through IP addresses	Must have	H	H
5	F2.2	Identify visitors through user agents	Must have	H	H
6	F2.3	Identify visitors through user names (user IDs)	Nice to have	L	L
7	F2.4	Identify visitors through session IDs	Nice to have	M	M
8	F2.5	Identify visitors through cookies	Must have	H	H
9	F2.6	Identify visitors through web beacons	Nice to have	L	L
10	F3.1	Total visits/sessions to the whole site	Must have	H	H
11	F3.2	Visits/sessions to homepage/folders/ subfolders/pages	Must have	H	H
12	F3.3	Page views to site, areas, folders and pages	Must have	H	M
13	F3.4	Page views per visit	Must have	H	H
14	F3.5	Unique page views	Must have	H	H
15	F3.6	Return visitors	Must have	H	M
16	F3.7	Visit frequencies	Must have	H	M
17	F3.8	Average time spent per visit	Must have	H	H
18	F3.9	Click streams information	Must have	H	H
19	F3.10	Landing pages/entrance pages	Must have	H	H
20	F3.11	Exit pages	Must have	H	H
21	F3.12	Bounce rate	Must have	H	H
22	F3.13	Search terms	Must have	H	H
23	F3.14	Up/down streams of searches	Must have	H	H
24	F3.15	Failed searches	Must have	H	H
25	F3.16	Operating system information	Nice to have	M	M
26	F3.17	Browsers information	Must have	M	M
27	F3.18	Screen resolution information	Must have	H	H
28	F3.19	Broken links	Must have	H	H
29	F3.20	Goals and conversion rates	Must have	H	H
30	F3.21	Online service abandonment rates	Must have	H	H
31	F3.22	Online marketing measuring	Must have	H	H
32	F3.23	Web traffic referrer	Must have	H	H
33	F3.24	Cross reference reporting	Must have	H	H
34	F3.25	Segmentation reporting	Nice to have	M	M
35	F3.26	Tracking Rich and Web 2.0 applications	Must have	H	H
36	F3.27	Tracking portal/portlets applications	Must have	H	H
37	F3.28	Tracking HTML emails	Nice to have	M	M
38	F3.29	Geographic location reporting	Nice to have	M	M
39	F3.30	Referring URLs reporting (down streams destinations reporting)_	Must have	H	H
40	F3.31	Page overlay (click density) reporting	Must have	H	H
41	F4.1	Reporting task scheduling	Must have	H	H
42	F4.2	Real time reporting	Nice to have	M	M
43	F4.3	Report exporting	Nice to have	H	M
44	F4.4	Dashboard reporting application	Nice to have	M	M

Non-functional business requirements list

43	NF5.1	Hardware scalability
44	NF5.2	Software scalability
45	NF5.3	Database scalability
46	NF5.4	Multi-channel enterprise BI integration
47	NF5.5	Open source standards
48	NF6.1	Available/down time requirements
49	NF6.2	Stitching logs from balanced traffic load distribution
50	NF6.3	Data migration scheduling
51	NF7.1	Data storage and transfer
52	NF7.2	Data storage life span
53	NF7.3	Data backup/DR requirements
54	NF8.1	Availability of service support
55	NF8.2	Support request response time
56	NF8.3	Support channel
57	NF8.4	Support documentation
58	NF8.5	Local support personnel
59	NF8.6	Continuously and timely upgrading and updating

Functional requirements

The web analytics tools requirements are broken down into functional and non-functional components. Functional requirements specify particular functions that a web analytics tool must perform to meet business needs.

1.0 Account administration

Requirement ID		F1.1			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Account user access set up/removal The product shall provide administrator/s with the ability to set up user access protected by user ID and password and remove user access when the individual no longer has authority to use the tool
Outcome/ benefit		- Only authorised staff have access to certain profiles - Provide opportunity for enterprise logon management - Remove user access if they change their role or leave the organisation
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F1.2			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Account administration level set up The product shall provide ability to control administration levels for defining settings and criteria for different reporting profiles.
Outcome/ benefit		Only authorised users will be allowed to change profile settings to certain profiles to prevent from un-authorised changes to the settings of reports
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F1.3			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Account profile access restriction control The product shall provide administrator/s with the ability to control access to different profiles and reports.
Outcome/ benefit		Only authorised users will be allowed to access to certain profile(s) and reports. This will simplify user interface for report users
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

2.0 Visitor identification methods

Requirement ID		F2.1			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Identify visitors through IP addresses This method provides ability to identify visits or sessions through user IP addresses.
Outcome/ benefit		- This allows users to track web traffic even though the cookies are disabled by a web user. - It is easier to track downloads of cgi-bin resources such as PDFs than other methods. - It provides traffic information for server capacity planning and forecasting.
Additional information		This method will not need additional servers to collect data (log files) other than the web server. The reports from this method also provide server performance information, such as response time and "404s".
Constraints/ issues		Due to proxy and browser caching issue with this method, the bias level of measurement could be significant (between 20 to 40%). It will be even higher with more dynamic IP allocations by ISPs.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F2.2			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Identify visitors through user agents This method is to use both users' IP address information and their browser information to detect a session.
Outcome/ benefit		- This allows tracking of web traffic even though the cookies are disabled by a web user. - It is easier to track downloads of cgi-bin resources such as PDFs than other methods. - This method can partly defeat proxing and caching effects. - It provides traffic information for server capacity planning and forecasting
Additional information		This method will not need additional servers to collect data (log files) other than the web server. The reports from this method also provide server performance information, such as response time and "404s".
Constraints/ issues		Due to proxy and browser caching issue with this method, the bias level of measurements could be significant .
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F2.3			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Identify visitors through user IDs This method is provided for secure sites that require logins such as Intranets and portal. The user ID is taken directly from the username field in the log file. This information is generally logged if the website is configured to require authentication.
Outcome/ benefit		This will enable to tracking traffic to intranet and portal/portlets or even online services on internet.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues		Websites that are only partially protected should not use this method. Note: when this method is adopted, legal advice must be obtained regarding privacy policy, data storage and authorised accesses.
Importance		L	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F2.4			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Identify visitors through session IDs This method uses pre- existing unique session identifiers to uniquely identify each session. Some online interactive services may use session IDs to track user interaction with the webserver. These session IDs are typically stored in a Cookie.
Outcome/ benefit		This method provides ability to achieve more accurate paths information and work out completion rates for online services.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues		Using session IDs provides a much more accurate measurement of unique sessions, but still does not identify returning unique visitors. Note: when this method is adopted, legal advice must be obtained regarding privacy policy, data storage and authorised accesses.
Importance		M	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F2.5			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Identify visitors through cookies This method applies JavaScripts to tag each page of the web content and online services and stores cookies on the user's computer.
Outcome/ benefit		This method defeats proxying and caching, identifies unique visitors and frequency of visits and provides accurate click paths information.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues		This method cannot track visitors who disable cookies. The variance is around 10% but it could be lower for a government website. Note: when this method is adopted, legal advice must be obtained regarding privacy policy, data storage and authorised accesses.
Importance		M	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F2.6			Priority	Nice to have
Brief description		Identify visitors through web beacons A web beacon is typically a transparent graphic image (usually less than 1 pixel x 1 pixel) that is placed on a site or in a graphic email. The use of a web beacon allows the site to record the simple actions of the user opening the page that contains the beacon. The beacon is one of the ingredients of the page, just like other images and text except it is so small and clear that it is effectively invisible.
Outcome/ benefit		This method can defeats proxying and caching, identify unique visitors and frequency of visits and provide accurate click paths information. It enables to compare the performance of banner ads on different websites.
Additional information		Due to public perception risks, the use of this method may be limited to track HTML emails.
Constraints/ issues		This method cannot track visitors who disable cookies. This method is usually used by a third party to track performance of email and banner advertisements. Due to the capacity limitation of web beacons, it is difficult to collect sophisticated analytics information. This method allows tracking of a web user's behavior on multiple websites. Public perception of web beacons has been very negative. Note: when this method is adopted, legal advice must be obtained regarding privacy policy, data storage and authorised accesses.
Importance		M	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

3.0 Web performance matrix

Requirement ID		F3.1			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Total visits/sessions to the whole website This provides ability to track overall traffic to the entire website on daily/monthly/yearly basis to identify trends of growth or decline.
Outcome/ benefit		- This is an important performance indicator to measure public's awareness of e-channel. - Another use of this matrix is to forecast future traffic to the website in order to undertake system capacity planning and task prioritising.
Additional information		Trends of this data and the correlation with other data may be more useful for measuring success.
Constraints/ issues		The variance of the data depends on which tracking method is used.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.2			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Visits/sessions to homepage/folders/subfolders/pages To measure the popularity of certain contents and evaluate content model for certain web areas
Outcome/ benefit		- This provides ability to measure the outcome of content model, navigation mechanism and public awareness of certain content/online services - This matrix can be used for measuring performance of certain online marketing campaigns (eg. the landing pages)
Additional information		Trends of this data and the correlation with other data may be more useful for success measurement.
Constraints/ issues		The variance of the data depends on which tracking method is used.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.3			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Page views to site, areas/folders, pages To measure the popularity of certain content and evaluate content models for certain web areas
Outcome/ benefit		- This provides ability to measure the outcome of content, navigation mechanisms and public awareness of certain content/online services - This measurement is also used for forecasting future traffic trends for capacity planning purpose
Additional information		Page view trends correlated with other data may be more useful for success measurement.
Constraints/ issues		The variance of the data depends on which tracking method is used.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.4			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Page views per visit To measure how deep visitors go into the website from a start point, such as a search result page.
Outcome/ benefit		The main use of this matrix is to measure the performance of website and test content model by looking at visitors' interest in and their navigation behavior.
Additional information		This matrix should be interpreted in the context of content information or online services. Higher page views per visit does not necessarily mean better web performance.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.5			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Unique page views To measure how many unique pages were visited unique visitors
Outcome/ benefit		This is useful for calculating the completion rate of an online service. Eg when a visitor submitted an online form more than once, the calculation of completion rate should count it as one. This is more accurate than using pageviews.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.6			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Return visitors To identify customers' loyalty to the website by measuring frequency of their visits
Outcome/ benefit		To measure the retention rate and may be helpful to establish customer profiles to better tailor online services to meet their needs.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues		If a customer disables cookies, their status cannot be identified.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.7			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Visit frequencies To identify customers' loyalty to the website by measuring frequency of visits
Outcome/ benefit		To measure retention rates and help establish customer profiles to better tailor online services to meet their needs.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues		If a customer disables cookies, their status cannot be identified.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.8			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Average time spent per visit This provides ability to measure how long a visitor spent on a page/area/whole site
Outcome/ benefit		Within the context of other information about the site, this measures customer interest in web content and navigation behavior. Longer visit time does not always mean better customer experience or web performance. This matrix can also be used to evaluate the content model.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues		If a customer disables cookies, their status cannot be identified.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.9			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Click streams information To identify the paths a visitor takes within the site.
Outcome/ benefit		Gain insight of customers' web surfing behaviour to find out what they are looking for, what paths they take and how effective and efficient the navigation mechanism is.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues		If user agent tracking method is used, the paths information may not be reflecting the true paths due to proxing and caching.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.10			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Landing pages/entrance pages Landing pages are pages from which visitors first enter the website.
Outcome/ benefit		This is to find out from which pages visitor are landing onto the website, so that more focus can be put into modelling these pages to improve their navigation experience
Additional information		Together with bounce rate, this matrix will be useful to evaluate the effectiveness of the page.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.11			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Exit pages Pages where visitors leave the website.
Outcome/ benefit		Identify exit pages and help understand where and why visitors leave the site.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.12			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Bounce rate To measure how many visitors land on a page and then leave the site instantly without exploring the site further.
Outcome/ benefit		Understand reasons of bounce and improve their performance.
Additional information		A maximum time spent on the page may need to be defined.
Constraints/ issues		The bounce rate tends to be over-reported due to tracking constraints. Eg if a visitor open a link to other websites or open a new window (https site) to perform online transactions, it may be counted as "bounce" which should not.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.13			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Search terms Search terms used by visitors for both external search engines and the on-site search engine
Outcome/ benefit		- Help understand customers and improve web content model and search effectiveness by improve search rankings. - Help create keywords list for search engine marketing campaign
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.14			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Up/down streams of searches To identify from which pages a visitor uses the on-site search engine and what their destination pages are.
Outcome/ benefit		Understand why customers use searches to identify opportunities to improve web content model and navigation functions.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.15			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Failed searches To identify search terms that resulted in no result pages.
Outcome/ benefit		Understand what search terms are used and identify opportunities to improve content and search function.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID	F3.16		Priority	Nice to have
Brief description	Operating system To identify what operating platforms are used by web visitors and what the proportions of these platforms are.
Outcome/ benefit	To improve website accessibility.
Additional information	This information is not frequently used by business. It can be obtained directly from log files.
Constraints/ issues
Importance	L	Rationale
Date	Source	Status description


01/04/2008
Requirement ID		F3.17			Priority	Nice to have
Brief description		Browsers information To identify what types and versions of browsers web visitors are using.
Outcome/ benefit		To improve website accessibility.
Additional information		This information is not frequently used by business. It can be obtained directly from log files.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		L	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.18			Priority	Nice to have
Brief description		Screen resolution information To identify customers' screen resolution information.
Outcome/ benefit		To improve website accessibility.
Additional information		This information is not frequently used by business. It can be obtained directly from log files.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		L	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.19			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Broken links To identify broken links on websites.
Outcome/ benefit		To improve web performance and customers' online experience.
Additional information		This information can be collected from log files.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.20			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Goals/conversion Ability to set up goals and work out conversion rates for each goal.
Outcome/ benefit		To measure conversion rates of certain goals such as a destination page of web content or the end of an online service or transaction.
Additional information		Unlimited goals and funnels settings must be available.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.21			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Online service abandonment rates Ability to work out abandonment rates at different stages of an online service or transaction.
Outcome/ benefit		To help understand barriers preventing users from completing a transaction and identify opportunities to improve online services.
Additional information		Unlimited goals and funnels should be available.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.22			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Online marketing campaign measuring Provides ability to measure the performance of certain marketing campaigns in terms of ROI, click-throughs and conversion rates.
Outcome/ benefit		To measure the success of online campaigns
Additional information		Capability to measure email campaigns, SEM campaigns and banner advertisements are required.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.23			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Web traffic referrers To identify which websites, which areas and pages a web visitor comes from.
Outcome/ benefit		To identify valuable referring websites so that appropriate links can be set up and appropriate promoting materials can be put in these sites.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.24			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Cross reference reporting To provide ability to report multi-dimensional measurements.
Outcome/ benefit		To understand customers by segments and get in-depth insights of their web behaviours.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.25			Priority	Nice to have
Brief description		Segmentation reporting Ability to segment visitors by customer groups, eg segment visitors by customer sources, certain online service users, certain search words users, etc
Outcome/ benefit		To understand customers by segments and get in-depth insights of their web behaviours.
Additional information		When this information is integrated with data/information about other channels, it will provide more valuable business intelligence.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		M	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.26			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Tracking Rich media and Web 2.0 applications Provide ability to track RSS, RIA, online video, slide shows, blogs, Ajax and other web applications
Outcome/ benefit		Ability to accommodate the tool to new technologies.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.27			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Tracking portal/portlets applications Provide ability to track traffic in the portal environment.
Outcome/ benefit		Ability to accommodate the tool to new technologies.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.28			Priority	Nice to have
Brief description		Tracking HTML emails Provide ability to track activities of HTML email recipients
Outcome/ benefit		To measure the performance of HTML email performance and identify opportunities for improving emailing activities.
Additional information		Note: when this method is adopted, legal advice must be obtained regarding privacy policy, data storage and authorised accesses.
Constraints/ issues
Importance		L	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.29			Priority	Nice to have
Brief description		Geographic location reporting Provide ability to track geographic locations where web traffic comes from by countries, cities
Outcome/ benefit		To identify where traffic comes from to provide input for marketing campaigns
Additional information
Constraints/ issues		The accuracy and completeness of geographic location reporting may be limited by geographic location identification supporting software.
Importance		M	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.30			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Referring URLs (Destination websites) reporting Provide ability to track external links after exiting from the website (down streams)
Outcome/ benefit		To identify where traffic goes to provide customer insight
Additional information		Tracking mechanism (eg "redirect) needs to be set up to track external links before the traffic exits from the website.
Constraints/ issues		It may be challenging to track down streams if a visitor type external URLs on the address bar of a browser.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F3.31			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Page overlay or click desity reporting Provide ability to show click distributions on a webpage graphically.
Outcome/ benefit		To gain an overview of customers' click behaviour on a certain web page.
Additional information		Both number of clicks and percentage of clicks should be available.
Constraints/ issues		It may be challenging to track clicks on rich media and external links in an page overlay report.
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

4.0 Task scheduling and reports exporting

Requirement ID		F4.1			Priority	Must have
Brief description		Task scheduling Provide ability to schedule times for generating certain reports and send these reports to pre-set email addresses in certain formats.
Outcome/ benefit		This reduces manual work and reduces the time needed to perform tasks.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		H	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F4.2			Priority	Nice to have
Brief description		Real time reporting Provide ability to generate reports in real time.
Outcome/ benefit		To enable business owners to identify and fix issues sooner.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues		The timing of reporting depends on business needs and cost consideration.
Importance		M	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F4.3			Priority	Nice to have
Brief description		Report exporting Provide ability to export reports in different formats for report users to manipulate.
Outcome/ benefit		To provide flexibility in meeting business needs.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		M	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Requirement ID		F4.4			Priority	Nice to have
Brief description		Dashboard reporting application Provide ability to generate reports in line graphs, pie chart, maps, etc.
Outcome/ benefit		To provide better UAI for report users.
Additional information
Constraints/ issues
Importance		M	Rationale
Date	Source			Status description
01/04/2008

Non-functional requirements

While functional requirements capture the behaviour of a web analytics tool, non functional requirements (NFR) capture the properties, qualities or characteristics that the tool must have to ensure functional requirements are meet.

5.0 Scalability requirements

Scalability is the ability of the web analytics package to support increased numbers of users, larger amounts of data and higher transaction rates with minimum disruption and redevelopment cost.

Vertical scaling is the ability to add more processing power or disk space to an existing server.
Horizontal scaling is the ability to add more servers at any level of the architecture eg add more application servers or database servers.

NF Req ID	Requirement	Brief description
NF5.1	Hardware scalability	The solution must be able to be scaled both vertically and horizontally to cater for increased throughput or volumes.
NF5.2	Software scalability	The software must be capable of adapting to any scaling upgrade of the hardware capacity, both vertically and horizontally.
NF5.3	Database scalability	The database disk space must be capable of being increased without major hardware purchases.
NF5.2	Multi-channel enterprise BI solution	Provide capability to integrate web data with other channel intelligence.
NF5.3	Open source standards	Enable to use in-house capability to modify its tracking codes if necessary.

6.0 Operating performance requirements

NF Req ID	Requirement	Brief description
NF6.1	Available/down time	The tool must be available during work time. All maintenance, data migrating, software maintenance or other activities should happen during scheduled time.
NF6.2	Stitching logs from balanced load distribution	Having the ability to "stitch" logs from different servers as the result of load balancing to provide true paths information of a visitor. This is important for user agents based tracking method.
NF6.3	Data Migration scheduling	Having the ability to schedule data migration from databases to reporting server(s). This is required for reporting tools based on log files.

7.0 Data storage and security

When selecting the web analytics tools, the concerns addressed in the Cabinet Paper Use of Offshore ICT Services by Government should be taken into account. Before choosing an overseas ICT service, a formal risk assessment should be undertaken by the government agency concerned and legal experts should be consulted before engaging the agreement.

NF Req ID	Requirement	Brief description
NF7.1	Data storage and transfer	If web analytics data is hosted internally, it must meet agencies' infrastructure/architecture requirements (DR, backup and support etc). If data is collected and stored by external/overseas vendors, data storage and transfer must comply with related privacy legislation. When data is hosted overseas, public perception risk needs to be evaluated.
NF7.2	Data storage life span	If web analytics data is hosted by an external party, agreement on data storage life span and data transfer arrangement when service contract ends should be specified and documented. This is to ensure business continuity and meet the requirements by the Public Records Act 2007.
NF7.3	Data backup/DR	The raw data and reports must be backed up in case servers or databases failure. This is to meet business continuity requirements and comply with the Public Records Act 2007.

8.0 Service support

These business requirements include expectations for the provision of service support from web analytics tool vendors to ensure that all functional and non-functional business requirements are met.

NF Req ID	Requirement	Brief description
NF8.1	Availability of support	Technical support must be available as agreed.
NF8.2	Support request response time	All support requests must be responded within the agreed time frame.
NF8.3	Support channel	Support through email, online, phone and face-to-face channels must be available as agreed.
NF8.4	Support documentation	All necessary documentation must be made available online or in paper and updated in a timely manner.
NF8.5	Local support personnel	Local support through email, online, phone and face-to-face channels must be available as agreed.
NF8.6	Continuously and timely upgrading and updating	A vendor must provide continuous and timely version upgrading service and updating filters for robot, spiders, crawlers.