Do you know what percentage of your organisation regularly visits your intranet? Do you know what time of day they visit and what device they use? Which types of content get the most engagement and what are the most popular search terms?
If you’re an intranet owner, analytics can play a vital role in the success of your intranet.
According to Monique Zytnik, communication expert, coach and mentor:
“Metrics are just a way of seeing how you’re progressing towards your goals. If your measurement doesn’t directly align with what you want to achieve then you’re off trying to catch butterflies, which can be amusing but is never productive.”
In this blog we’ll explore how intranet analytics can help you raise your intranet game, including the key metrics, how to use them and, of course, our best practice tips.
How analytics can help
Assess user engagement
Analytics help track how employees are using the intranet, which pages they visit most and what content they engage with. You can use this data to improve user experience and to make sure your intranet meets the needs of employees.
Optimise content
By analysing which are your most and least popular pages, internal comms can optimise their content strategy to focus on what’s working and improve or remove what’s not.
Inform decision-making
Analytics can support better decision-making through data-driven insights. Knowing how the intranet is used can help leaders make informed decisions about future developments and strategies.
Demonstrate ROI
If you need to make a business case for a new intranet, or simply demonstrate the value of an existing one, you can use analytics to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) in terms of time saved, increased productivity and other efficiency metrics.
Identify problems
Analytics can be used as an intranet health check, highlighting issues such as broken links, outdated content or areas that are causing user frustration.
So, the benefits of analytics are clear but before you can start to take advantage of the insights available, make sure you follow these best practice tips.
Establish your intranet goals and objectives
What are your intranet goals? What do you want your intranet to achieve? Do you want to reduce your organisation’s reliance on email? Do you want to increase traffic to your intranet? Maybe you want to free-up time for your HR colleagues by making it easier for employees to access HR and policy-related information.
Nail these down, up front, to ensure you have a clear idea of what success looks like.
Set your KPIs
So, you know what you want to achieve but how will you measure success?
Set your KPIs against these objectives e.g. if you want to increase traffic, track metrics such as page views and time spent on specific pages. If you want to track how easy it is for employees to access policy documents, track visits and downloads on the relevant pages. More on the key metrics and what they can tell you later.
Understand where you are now
Unless you understand where you are now, it’s impossible to know whether your master plan is working.
So, before making any changes to your intranet, based on your goals and objectives, record your intranet’s performance now, using your chosen KPI metrics as a benchmark. Review the data regularly.
Key metrics for intranet success
Depending on the analytics tool, or tools, you’re using, you’ll have a bucket load of data at your fingertips. Here are some of the key metrics and what they can tell you.
User Metrics
User metrics track data for active users, session duration and pages visited. Use these to better understand overall engagement.
Content Engagement
Content engagement metrics measure how users interact with content, including views, likes, shares and comments, indicating what content is most valuable and what isn’t working.
Search Analytics
Tracking search analytics can tell you a lot about the issues that are important to employees, helping you to refine the search function and content strategy to better meet their needs.
Navigation Paths
Understanding how employees navigate their way around the intranet can help you to optimise the information architecture for a better user experience.
Feedback and Surveys
Direct feedback from employees can provide useful information for identifying areas that need improvement. If you have Intranet Champions in your organisation, enlist their help for this.
Adoption Rates
For when you’re introducing new features or tools, or even a new intranet. As well as tracking how many employees are getting on board, adoption rates can also guide training and support efforts.
Performance Metrics
Performance metrics are a way of tracking your intranet’s health. Also, page load times and responsiveness affect user satisfaction, making performance analytics crucial.
A Fresh approach to analytics
Of course, the range of metrics available to you can very much depend on the platform and tools you’re using. For example, for organisations using out-of-the-box SharePoint as their intranet platform, access to in-depth analytics is limited. The following approaches show how Fresh enhances your intranet analytics.
Built-in within your SharePoint intranet: Utilise Fresh analytics to gain insights into page views, peak time views, engagement and the most frequently used tools, all gathered together in a single overview. Coming soon, Fresh will also support search analytics to give you a better understanding of the most popular search terms, capture the top 10 no-result queries and more.
The holistic view: At Fresh, we integrate with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Microsoft Clarity and Azure Application Insights, giving you a holistic view of your intranet usage.
***
