Do you know how well your business uses your intranet?
Without the appropriate intranet analytics, your answer can only be no.
Sure, it might feel like it’s always busy. But what if it’s the same people creating posts and updating documentation?
Intangible things like ‘busyness’ and ‘feeling’ only go so far. For a genuine insight into how well (or not) your teams use your intranet, you must know the key metrics and best practices.
Without these, it’s just guesswork.
What are intranet analytics?
Intranet analytics are the data and reports that analyze activity that happens within your intranet.
It's like how you might use Google Analytics to track visitors on a public website. But, instead of focusing on external web visitors, it only takes into account your internal audience and company resources.
Here's a breakdown of what intranet analytics involves:
- Data collection: Tracking how employees interact with the intranet. This can include things like which pages are most visited, how long users stay on certain pages, and what search terms get used.
- Analysis: Start to analyze this intranet data to understand how employees are using the intranet. This can help identify areas where the intranet is working well, as well as areas where it can be improved.
- Reporting: Create reports that summarize the data and your findings. These can be used to communicate the value of the intranet to stakeholders and to inform decisions about any changes you might need to make.
How to measure intranet effectiveness: Key metrics you should track
There are several ways to measure intranet effectiveness. The best approach involves a combination of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that look at usage, user experience, and the impact on business goals.
Let’s explore the most important metrics available with most intranet platforms.
User Engagement Metrics
- Logins and user activity: Track the number of users logging in, frequency of logins, and the amount of time spent on the intranet. This provides a basic idea of user adoption.
- Clicks and interactions: Track engagement metrics like clicks on links, downloads, comments, and other interactions with content to show how users engage with information.
- Search analytics: Analyze search terms used by employees. This can reveal what information they're looking for and if the intranet is delivering it effectively.
- Top users: Identify your most frequent and engaged users. Analyze what content or features they use the most to understand user preferences.
- Reach: This refers to the total number of employees who access the intranet at least once. It gives a basic idea of how widespread intranet adoption is within your organization.
User Experience Metrics
- Task completion time: Track how long it takes employees to complete specific tasks using the intranet. Faster completion times indicate a user-friendly experience.
- Help desk usage: Track the number of support tickets related to intranet usage. A high volume indicates usability issues and lacking in features.
- Employee surveys: Conduct surveys to gather feedback from staff about their experience with the intranet. This provides valuable insights into user satisfaction.
- Community metrics: If you use forums or discussion boards, track metrics like the number of active users, posts, replies, and participation levels. High community metrics indicate a usable platform that encourages knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Business Impact Metrics
- Reduced IT support calls: See if the intranet helps employees find answers independently, reducing the burden on IT for basic questions.
- Improved task efficiency: Track metrics related to task completion rates or project timelines to see if the intranet streamlines workflows and improves productivity.
- Cost savings: Uncover potential cost savings generated by the intranet, like reduced printing thanks to online resources and a decrease in internal service desk tickets when employees can find answers on the intranet.
By tracking these metrics, you get a holistic view of how your intranet is performing.
You can identify areas where it's working well (high reach, engaged top users) and areas for improvement (low content engagement, lack of community participation).
You can then use this data to inform decisions about content strategy, user experience, and wider intranet adoption.
Intranet analytics best practices
You can’t just turn on intranet analytics and expect to get things right straight away.
Well, you can – but your hopes will soon get quashed by reality.
Instead, make sure you’re aware of these best practices, so you can gain valuable insights to improve communication, collaboration, and, ultimately, business outcomes.
Define goals and align metrics
Like any new technology implementation, start by setting clear goals for your intranet.
Ask yourself (and power users) what do you want it to achieve?
It could be:
- Improved communication
- Increased knowledge sharing
- Better, measurable employee engagement
Once you know your goals, you can choose the KPIs and metrics that directly reflect progress towards those goals. Until you have these, however, you’re in no position to start making business decisions with your metrics.
Track before, during, and after
The biggest mistakes IT admin make when launching a new intranet? They wait until after launching to start collecting data.
While it’s tempting to get your implementation and communications sorted before you even think about starting to collect user behavior, it pays to track usage from day one.
In fact, day zero can be even better. When you establish baseline metrics, you have a greater understanding of genuine user behavior.
With this to hand, you can then track how those metrics change after implementation to measure success. You get the full spectrum of user behavior to draw current and future comparisons.
Measure mobile app usage
If you’re enabling mobile access, track activity to understand how employees are using the intranet on mobile devices.
Note: This is often completely different to how they’re using it on laptops and PCs. By tracking how different devices trigger alternate behavior, you can incorporate all types of usage in future development and implementation plans.
Leverage search analytics
When a user searches for something on your intranet, it literally means they can’t find it. Like when someone uses Google, it’s because they don’t have the information within their reach.
Use your search function data to reveal knowledge gaps, areas where content needs improvement, or even identify new content needs. It’s a gold mine of information that can help improve both the findability and usability of your intranet.
Segment data by department
Analyze intranet usage patterns by department to reveal which departments are high users, what content they're interested in, and any information gaps.
This allows you to tailor functionalities to better serve specific departmental needs. Recognizing that different teams have different needs makes your intranet platform customized while serving the needs of your entire business.
You can also lean on this data to spot gaps in other department’s use of your intranet. If one feature is used a lot in accounts, could your HR team also benefit from this?
Focus on trends, not single data points
While it’s tempting to focus on outliers, don't get hung up on a single high or low data point.
What’s more important is finding trends over time.
- Are logins steadily increasing?
- Has a specific feature decreased in usage?
- Are downloads of specific documents spiking?
- Is one search term more commonly used than others?
These trends help you understand user behavior patterns and areas for improvement. When there’s continuous usage, lack of usage, or lack of a type of usage, it’s more important to pay attention to than a one-off event.
Qualitative feedback matters
While numbers will inform your future roadmap and help make business decisions, there’s nothing quite like hearing what users have to say.
Surveys and focus groups can provide valuable insight that complements your quantitative metrics.
With this first-hand opinion, identify where your intranet might be falling short in user experience.
Embrace a culture of continuous improvement
News flash: When you roll out your intranet, it’s not going to be perfect.
Getting it right is an ongoing process. But it’s one that will genuinely improve if you regularly review your data, areas for improvement, and experiment with changes.
By continuously iterating based on data and user feedback, you can keep your intranet relevant, engaging, and a valuable tool for your employees.
Make data accessible and actionable
So, you’re gathering all this data and generating a ton of reports.
What do you do with them?
In some cases, intranet analytics data gather dust in an Excel spreadsheet. Only two people in your business can understand them and they’re locked away for a rainy day.
Only, that rainy day never comes because you’re busy with other projects and tickets.
What you should be doing instead is presenting the data in a clear and concise way that all intranet stakeholders can understand.
With the right intranet software, this happens automatically.
You get:
- Real-time dashboards
- Historical comparisons
- Trend analysis graphs
- Departmental usage charts
When data is clear, accessible, and actionable, you can use it to make informed decisions about improving the intranet and its content.
That’s where the ROI really is.
Top 6 intranet analytics software to consider
Okay, so now you’re on board with what to track and why when it comes to intranet analytics.
The next question is naturally, what is the right intranet platform to get the job done.
Here are the six best intranet analytics platforms you should check out.
Workvivo
Workvivo, now part of Zoom, is an employee engagement platform; not just an intranet.
This makes it unique, designed with usability in mind, rather than being a document facility with some community features.
Naturally, you get tons of reports on how users are navigating your platform and insights into best and worst-performing content.
Key features
- Snapshot analytics: A quick way to see how well your platform is performing and help you identify any areas for a deeper analysis, this contains a mix of charts and graphs from the other (more detailed) analytics dashboards.
- Content analytics: Provides you with an understanding of how your content is performing on the platform, what content is performing best/worst and help you shape your content strategy.
- Usage analytics: Gives you a better understanding of the usage trends of your organization over time. Pinpoint teams with lower usage so that you can take action when needed to encourage regular usage.
- Activation analytics: Shows you levels of profile activation across the organization. Identify areas that need extra support or change management, and recognize those who are quick to activate and get on board.
- Governance analytics: Assists you with the governance and ongoing management of your platform. This dashboard contains reports like Roles and Permissions, Membership, and Spaces and Delegates.
SharePoint Online is Microsoft’s flagship document storage and collaboration tool that can also act as an intranet.
Within SharePoint, you can choose to create any number of intranet sites from templates or custom builds. These make up the foundation of what users will see as their intranet.
While there are some third-party analytics tools available for SharePoint, it also has some insights built in.
Key features
- Page analytics: View information about how users interact with your page or news posts, including comparisons over time and average per user.
- Site usage analytics: Like a typical website, you can view which pages, posts, and documents get the most traffic.
- Device insights: See which device types are the most popular with users accessing your intranet platform.
- Time analysis: Learn which times of the day/week users access your intranet the most.
Simpplr
Simpplr leverages AI to personalize the intranet experience and prioritize employee experience.
Its goal is to provide a simple experience that doesn’t overwhelm employees with information that may not be relevant.
Key features
- Site level analytics: A traditional website-like view of metrics such as number of site members and managers, total content views, most popular content, least viewed content, page views by type of content (pages, events, albums), and content referral sources.
- Page-level analytics: Breaking down each intranet page to provide insight on key intranet metrics like content view percentage, total number of members, and number topic followers.
- Employee satisfaction stats: Uses AI to track user engagement by combining usage patterns, sentiment analysis, employee signals, and feedback.
Happeo
Happeo excels in knowledge management, making it ideal for organizations that focus on these aspects.
In terms of analytics, Happeo emphasizes to “let your intranet tell you how to improve it”.
Key features
- Birds’ eye analytics: Report on active users, channel and page engagement, content levels, mobile app usage, and organizational filters.
- Search usage reports: Learn what people search for, how long it takes, and what happens after a search.
- Per channel insight: Drill down into channel-level insights like channel views, unique channel views, number of posts, and number of comments.
- Influencer engagement: Find out who your most influential intranet users are with metrics like number of posts created, post comments, number of likes, and an overall influence score.
Jive
Jive emphasizes interactive features and social networking capabilities to create a community-driven intranet. There’s less of a one-way communication feel and more of a social network appeal.
As such, we see slightly different analytics on offer.
Key features
- Impact metrics: Get real-time metrics on the reach and impact of documents, blogs, and content, including sentiment score, views, and shares.
- Engagement dashboard: Track user engagement and interactions across all parts of your intranet.
- Community health: Analyze key indicators of community growth and health.
- Advanced insights: Track employee sentiment, and identify influencers and trends among documents, posts, and people.
LumApps
LumApps caters to enterprises with complex needs by offering a large suite of features for content management.
It comes into its own when businesses want a customizable platform that they can tailor to fit specific requirements.
Key features
- User activity reports: Learn how many users are engaging with posts, content, and documentation.
- Activity type reports: Find out what gets clicked the most and least per user, department, or company.
- Reaction reports: See which posts get the best and most engagement, based on likes and comments.
- Timeframe and comparisons: Run reports to compare different moments in time, key events, and major milestones in your company history.
Measure the pulse of your organization with powerful insights and analytics
You can’t expect to roll out your intranet and that everybody will start out using it perfectly.
You can roll out your intranet, track usage and adoption from day one, and then make incremental changes over time.
But you can only do that with intranet analytics by your side.
Intranet platforms provide valuable insights into how employees are using your intranet, allowing you to identify areas for improvement and optimize your employee engagement strategy.
Workvivo Analytics takes it a step further and transforms data into actionable insights, empowering your intranet and helping you build a more engaged and productive workforce.
Our comprehensive dashboards go beyond basic metrics and who’s using what.
Instead, you can gain insights into intranet performance, user activity, employee sentiment, platform usage, and even the impact of company values.
- Identify engagement patterns: Track logins, intranet content interaction, and participation in discussions to understand what resonates with your workforce.
- Measure content effectiveness: See what content drives the most reach and engagement, allowing you to tailor your strategy for maximum impact.
- Gauge employee sentiment: Use polls and surveys to understand employee opinions and feelings, creating a culture of open communication.
- Compare teams and individuals: Benchmark teams and identify areas for improvement or best practices to share.
- Promote two-way communication: Encourage active user participation through real-time sentiment analysis, encouraging a connected workforce.
Ready to unlock the true potential of your intranet? Schedule your free demo today.
