What are the requirements gathering steps that are used for web applications?

The objectives for web applications are identifying the content and functional requirements and to define the interaction scenarios for different classes of users. To achieve these objectives, following steps are conducted:
- User categories and descriptions are developed for each category by stakeholders.
- Web application requirements are defined and communicated to stakeholders.
- All the information that is gathered is analyzed and then the information is used to follow up with stakeholders.
- The use cases describing the interaction scenarios for each user class are defined.

DEFINING USER CATEGORIES
Understanding the user's background, motivation, and objectives is critical in all software engineering tasks. In order to define a user category:
- one should know the user's overall objective when he or she is using the web application.
- one should know the background of the user and the knowledge of content and functionality of the web application.
- one should know how the user should approach the web application.
- one should know the generic web application characteristics that the user will like or dislike.

COMMUNICATING WITH STAKEHOLDERS AND END USERS
The communication mechanisms that can be used in web engineering work are:
- traditional focus groups.
- electronic focus groups.
- iterative surveys.
- exploratory surveys.
- scenario building.

ANALYZING INFORMATION GATHERED
An evaluation of content objects and operations can be delayed until analysis modeling begins. It is more important to collect information and not evaluating it at this point. As information is gathered, it is categorized by user class and transaction type and then assessed for relevance.

DEVELOPING USE CASES
Use cases tell how a user category will interact with web application to accomplish a specific action. Use cases help the developer to understand the user perception while interacting with the web application, provide detail to create analysis model, help to separate WebE work and provide guidance who test WebApp.