Mattia Manazzale graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in ICT and Software Development from Fontys University Eindhoven, The Netherlands. As part of his thesis, he dealt with the implementation of a web analytics platform for Qualitas’ web applications. In this blog post he tells us more about it.
“Web analytics platform implementation for Qualitas’ web applications”
The project was carried on at Qualitas AG during the graduation internship of my eighth semester of ICT & Software Engineering bachelor at Fontys University of Applied Sciences. I have worked on the research, implementation, and documentation of the project from February 2022 until July 2022.
During the internship, I focused on analysing Qualitas’ applications and researching alternatives that would be an improvement over the web analytics technology currently in use. Also, I have been directly involved with the customers and stakeholders which allowed me to improve my communication and expectations-management skills. Finally, I developed the necessary modules to properly integrate the web analytic tool with the existing applications.
Figure: Webalizer user interface
Qualitas is a service company for organizations that deals mainly with the breeding and keeping of farm animals. They develop online applications that offer to farmers and breeding associations the possibility to handle daily challenges easily and efficiently like consulting animals’ performance data or consulting the genetic evaluations. Two of the main Qualitas’ customers currently make use of a web analytic tool called Webalizer to evaluate how their users interact with the applications and plan feature developments in a targeted manner. Unfortunately, the Webalizer application has not been updated since 2013. The lack of regular maintenance and upgrades forces Qualitas’ customers to work with an outdated and unpleasant user interface and important limitations. In addition to that, it is currently impossible for the customer to obtain from the tool all the information they need for their business decisions.
The assignment consists in researching and implementing a software solution that can replace the Webalizer and fulfil the customers’ requirements. The new tool must integrate with the web applications, have a pleasant and modern user interface, and track all the relevant parameters about the users’ visits.
The internship started with the analysis of the technical details of the applications developed by Qualitas that should be monitored by the web analytic tool. Then the stakeholders were interviewed to express what they desired and expected from the new tool. Extensive research was performed to compare and present the most promising tools following the DOT research framework.
The research was performed to identify which of the available tools would be the best fit for the customers’ needs and could be integrated with the complex applications developed by Qualitas. Google Analytics, Matomo, Adobe Analytics, Sumo Logic, Grafana, and Open Web Analytics were the most promising candidates. Matomo resulted as the best tool because it fulfilled most of the requirements while addressing the privacy concerns regarding the collected data. Costs and resources were estimated and considered during the final discussion about the preferred software architecture: cloud or on-premise. Later, a proof of concept was prepared to demonstrate and evaluate the chosen tool. After the approval from the stakeholders, the implementation phase took place during which new Java modules were developed to integrate the tracking scripts in the XHTML front-end of Qualitas’ application. In the end, the dashboards and reports were prepared to display to the customers the collected data in a relevant manner.
