Forum Moderators: DixonJones
However, onto business!
I recently had some questions to ask a company that provide a java tagging solution. Below is the list. As for the other issue of what product I will implement eventually- I think a DIY solution will be perfect.
So, this list will hopefully be a good start for anyone needing to ask lots questions about a javascript tagging system. Some questions maybe obvious to the more technical among us, however they are all valid. If anyone wants to add more questions, go for it!
[Start]
1- Is it the case that your software is provided as a 3rd party service? Therefore, we don't have to think about a dedicated server solution?
2- Do you provide a solution that we can host ourselves?
3- If (for argument's sake) there is a connectivity problem between us and you, will our pages get stuck when they are trying to process the JS/graphic?
4- I assume that tagging of content such as PDFs, MS Word documents is not possible?
5- Do you provide any mechanism for capturing none-JS aware agents such as users without support for JavaScript and also things like bots?
6- Do your solutions use 3rd party cookies at all? If so, do they have a compact privacy policy?
7- How likely is it that if someone navigates quickly between pages, the JavaScript is not processed?
8- Can we see trends over time? For example, over the last month, how many visitors read a related article after reading the original?
9- If you host a service for us, how far away is your server (or servers) and are there service level agreements in place about uptime etc.?
10- On the above subject, what guarantees/SLAs do you have in place?
11- What sort of support packages are available and what do they cover?
12- Would we be expected to pay for any sort of consultancy fees after the initial purchase (i.e. to set things up)?
13- How much does the product cost?
14 - What are the ongoing maintenance/support fees?
15 - How do you charge for the service (fixed fee, page views, number of stats collected etc.)?
16- Similar to the question about PDFs & Docs; do you provide anything that can track use of files other than ones that support graphics and/or JavaScript. Prime examples here are CSS, image files, text, Excel etc.
17 - Do you provide anything that would track errors (e.g. file not found)?
18 - In the case of our intranet, we would like to show stats based upon authenticated username (i.e. Windows Username and domain). Is this possible?
19 - Is it easy to effectively duplicate some reports- 1 set for external visitors and one set for people using our proxy's IP address? I see that we can filter, however I was just wonder how flexible this is.
20 - What's the deal with the data that you collect? Do you use it for anything that we should be aware of?
21- How many lines of code do we need be putting into our pages? What's the extra size (roughly)?
22- I assume by the tagging nature, stats are real-time?
23- I see that you can group visitors by country. How often do you update your database that maps IPs to countries?
24 - Is it possible to export results into other formats than Excel? Maybe PDFs or CSV?
25 - If we ever wanted to end the service, is it possible to request a complete record of site statistics since the service started?
26- If a visitor doesn't support JavaScript, what information can be captured (I assume a limited subset, but just how limited)?
27 - How do we tag content? Can we integrate this with our CMS?
28 - Do any tagging methods involve altering hyperlinks, or is everything code based within the rest of the page?
29 - Is it possible to see bandwidth usage stats?
[End]
Scin
