25 intranet metrics to drive improvement and track success
- John Scott
Track what matters. Improve what counts.
Intranet measurement best practices
When you are using intranet metrics there are some best practices to keep in mind:
- There’s generally an over-reliance on the use of adoption and usage metrics with intranets, but to drive improvement you’ll likely need to measure a range of different metrics.
- Numbers only ever tell half the story. It’s imperative to mix quantitative and qualitative data gained from feedback about your intranet to get a better informed, 360-degree view of improvement, and also provide context for the numbers.
- Reporting success is great, but really the most important driver for measurement should be improving your intranet.
- Always act on what you measure, otherwise there is little value in measuring – generally having a regular, diarised process to make improvements based on your data is the way to go.
- Initially measure to get a baseline set of numbers to track improvement, ideally before you launch a new intranet or new design, so you can compare the before and after.
Thankfully intranets lend themselves very well to improvement because they are generally flexible, configurable and modular, so you can make changes and add content and features that make a difference, without having to completely change the intranet. SharePoint intranets in particular – and products like Lightspeed365 – also support improvement, with the easy ability to add a large library of different web parts (features).
Intranets are also measurable, so teams can take a data-driven approach to improvement. We are often asked what the best metrics to use for intranet improvement are? This is actually not as straightforward it seems because:
- There are multiple ways to measure intranets relating to different areas, including adoption and usage, search, usability, content quality, engagement with content, productivity and time saved, performance and so on.
- Different analytics packages and systems will allow you to measure some things effectively and not others.
In this post we’re going to explore 25 different types of metrics that you can use to track intranet success and drive improvement.
25 types of intranet metrics to consider
Ready to explore intranet metrics? Here’s our view of some of the ones you can use. And this list is not complete! We didn’t cover areas such as environmental footprint, readability of content and a raft of other measures.
Usage & Engagement Metrics
Understand how often people come to the intranet and how they interact with it.
Unique active users – daily, weekly, monthly
Adoption is an overused metric, but it is important. Many intranet teams like to record the number of unique, active users (with the criteria for “active” usually defined within your analytics package) who visit on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. This might be expressed as a percentage of users across your workforce, or as a percentage of those who have access to the intranet.
Page views
Page views can show you the most visited pages of your site, including news items. (See also reaches.)
Time on page and site
The time on a page or on the site within a session can be an indication of rising interest and engagement. However, it can also indicate that people are taking too long to find things and, on some pages, you may actually want to reduce the time spent on a page. Usually, an increase or decrease in the time on page or site needs some qualitative information to fully understand the reasons for it.
Bounce rate
A bounce rate shows the percentage of visitors who leave a single page without taking any action such as clicking on a link or interacting with content. It can be an indication of high or low engagement with a page, so a high bounce rate on your homepage might indicate people aren’t particularly engaging with your intranet overall. Again, a high or low bounce rate may require context and qualitative information to explain it.
Mobile usage
If you have an intranet which is optimised for mobile and you have a high frontline proportion of staff, you may be wanting to track the proportion of users accessing the intranet using mobile devices if your analytics package indicates this.
Content engagement – shares, likes, comments and ratings
Depending on the reactions available on your intranet, there are different ways to measure content engagement at the page level including the number of likes and comments and sometimes shares. Some packages also have opportunities to rate a page out of five, for example.
Content and messaging reach
Many intranet metrics are also internal comms metrics, so views of different messages mean you can track the reach of different pieces of intranet content and news. This can be harder to calculate when the same content is distributed across multiple channels.
Intranet newsletter open rates
A keyway to drive intranet traffic is through an email newsletter – often weekly – which arounds up key recent stories and provides links back to the individual stories. Many internal communicators will want to measure open rates for the newsletter as well as the click-throughs to different intranet stories.
Calls to action conversation rate
Different pages will have certain calls to action (CTAs) on them such as clicking through a link, completing a form or perhaps signing up for an event. Tracking the conversion rate for calls to action can provide insights into how to best present calls to action for greater success, as well as reflect on the success of the intranet compared to using other digital channels such as email.
User satisfaction scores
Many intranet teams choose to conduct user surveys about the intranet to gauge levels of satisfaction with it and the value it brings. Running a “before” and “after” survey before a major upgrade or running an annual satisfaction survey can help track success.
Net Promoter Score
The NPS is a very popular way to measure user satisfaction with a particular application and is derived from users providing a score between 0 and 10 based on the likelihood they would recommend an intranet to a colleague. As a metric, it’s by no means perfect, but its widely used and easy to work out.
Personalisation or subscription adoption
Most modern intranets have personalisation options, some of which might provide opportunities for users to personalise their experience. For example, Lightspeed365 features allow users to configure the apps including in their homepage apps launcher, as well as subscribe to topics of interest for news. Metrics can track the percentage of users who have actually gone out of their way to personalise their experience.
Content & Governance
Focus on quality, freshness, and how effectively your content is being produced and managed.
Content pipeline – published content
Depending on what you are trying to achieve with a new or improved intranet, some teams measure the volume of new content coming through and being published, particularly from a distributed or decentralised group of publishers. This might be a temporary measure if you have an initiative to introduce more evergreen, reference pages or a collection of “How Do I” instructional content. If you are encouraging distributed publishers or communicators to contribute news, then measurement might be ongoing, and part of your set of internal communications metrics.
User-generated content
Most intranets encourage user-generated content – this can come in many different forms including blogs, shout-outs to colleagues, even classified adverts which can be achieved through Lightspeed365’s Noticeboard feature. User-generated content helps to balance out more corporate content, drives adoption and underpins engagement, so measuring the volume of contributions over time can be useful.
Content governance – various metrics
You may be introducing some content governance which might be leading to a reduction in out-of-date pages or an increase in items being updated to certain standards. You may be looking increase the number of pages which are being reviewed by a certain date or reduce pages which don’t have a recognised owner. Whatever you are hoping to achieve, appropriate metrics can help you to track the progress.
Usability testing
Usability testing comes in different shapes and sizes, but it is an essential part of improving your intranet. You might be comparing two different content approaches (A/B testing), the success rate of your navigation, and so on. It’s often carried out when improving a particular aspect of your intranet and as part of a project, but the metrics can contribute to overall improvement.
System Usability Score SUS
The System Usability Score (SUS) is a popular measure that is used to score a user’s perception of their experience in using a system and is based on ten questions that use the Likert scale. The score then gives you a number out of 100. This could be used to track an improvement in perceptions of user experience before and after some design changes, for example.
Search success
Search and findability are a critical part of any intranet so measuring search success can also be important. There are a range of different search metrics that can be used, for example relating to search relevancy, search frequency, the number of searches with zero returns, and so on.
Performance & Technical Health
Monitor the intranet’s stability, speed, and accessibility.
Intranet performance: page load times
There are a number of intranet metrics that relate more to technical areas and focus on performance. Average page load times are particularly important, as a very slow intranet can impact adoption and also shed a light on patterns of usage. They may also differ across your network and can be down to local connectivity issues.
Intranet performance: uptime
The uptime of your intranet is also an important measure, although this is usually seldom an issue as outages should be highly unusual.
Accessibility
The accessibility of your intranet and its content is critical. There are number of paid-for and free tools which can help you measure levels of accessibility, sometimes in relation to the WCAG 2 standards.
Intranet related queries
Keeping track of the intranet related queries which are logged is also a way to track issues an overall intranet performance. What you measure depends a little on how you log queries – either via the IT helpdesk or ticketing system, directly to the intranet team, via feedback to content owners etc., or a combination of all of these.
Business Impact Metrics
Go beyond usage to show the real-world effect on business operations and efficiency.
Time saved
Intranets help drive efficiency. Some teams attempt to measure the time saved by an intranet, which can be shown as a way to demonstrate intranet value. This is quite difficult to track and in practice usually involves some guess work, but usually is derived through controlled testing relating to a particular task carried out (such as finding some HR information), users keeping diaries and recording their time, analysis of a particular business process, or estimates by users of time saved. Sometimes time saved will relate to the work specifically of intranet admins.
Reduced usage in a related system
Successful intranets can lead to efficiencies which then trigger the reduced usage of a related system. For example, more efficient internal communications should lead to fewer communications emails. Employee self-service information can also trigger fewer queries to the HR or IT helpdesk. Measuring these can be an effective way to track the real-world impact of intranets.
Reduced costs
Intranets can lead to reduced costs, for example the need for less resourcing due to improved processes or reduction in software costs due to the ability to sunset legacy tech or streamline the application landscape. Reducing costs is a great metric, when its genuinely reduced costs. However, estimating cost savings based on saved time is often unconvincing and does not really stand up to scrutiny.
Choose your intranet metrics wisely
Intranet metrics come in all shapes and sizes, and it is important to pick ones that you are going to act upon and areas that you are going to improve. You’ll also need to ensure you can measure them effectively based on the metrics package you have, and the information you have access to. Good luck on your intranet measurement journey!
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