Why Miserable Intranet Stats May Indicate Success

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October 24, 2012   Internal Communication

How about turning the conclusions from your intranet statistics all around? Your failure becomes your success. What was bad before is now good and vice versa. But how, and why? Let me explain it to you.

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Let us assume this is your story: Your CEO wants you to measure how valuable internal communications is to the organisation. What do you measure?

Probably how many clicks you have on the intranet every month, how many pages people visit at a time and how long they stay on each page. The usual stuff Google Analytics provides you with.

If you’re like me, you work very hard on both quality and regular posting on your intranet. And you check on your stats regularly.

Shockingly, the click rate goes down after a period when you worked really hard to improve the intranet structure and it’s content. Your CEO isn’t happy and you lose your confidence. What on earth did go wrong?

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You Interpret the Figures the Wrong Way

It’s easy to be blinded by your own work. If you work with internal comms, it’s often mainly about the intranet. The intranet serves as the company’s information hub. Nothing wrong there. If you’re the intranet editor, you want the employees to read what you publish on it. That’s what you measure: clicks, pages visited, bounce rate… And that’s what your boss judge your work by, right?

But, think about it one more time. What’s the company’s aim with the intranet? Probably not having people click around the intranet all day long. The aim with the intranet is to help the employees  do their work tasks more effectively. And what’s effective when it comes to intranet use? Quickly find what you’re looking for, right?

Keeping people informed is not the same thing as they spend as much time as possible on the intranet

Actually, effective communication means keeping the employees informed in the shortest period of time. And that’s why high click rate and a lot of time spent on the intranet doesn’t necessarily mean success. 

A short time span on the intranet and not so many clicks may on the contrary indicate you’ve done your homework: that you have improved the site and/or educated the staff so well that they find what they are looking for without having to click around very much.

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You Write Exceptionally Well

Good writing skills should prevent rather than encourage people to click on the “read more” link. Keeping people away from the intranet, still keeping them informed on what’s published there is your goal. 

So what does low click rate on the news section say? Let’s say you’ve analyzed the headlines and your writing and don’t find anything wrong with it. Actually, you think you’ve done better than before. Still, your stats tell you about fewer clicks. How can this happen?

The truth is: if you write an excellent headline and a very good introduction, fewer people need to click on the link to read the entire story. You’ve already made your point clear and that’s excellent! Your co-workers get the picture, and that’s many times enough. Not all employees need to know all the details all the time!

And, as well, if your headline and introduction is clear, people don’t have to spend valuable time reading a fuzzy story to get a clue of what’s happening (and perhaps still not get it). So, if they don’t click on the link – it may be proof your job is well done! And, as you know, time is money and this way you save money for your company. Your CEO should be proud of you instead of concerned.

For you who still got high figures on your employees intranet use, here’s some tips and tricks to lower them, still maintaining your outreach and assure excellent employee communication.

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1. Write a killer headline

A good headline not only draws interest and attention to your story, it should also be informative. At it’s best, it answers one or more of the questions “What is this story about?“, “What’s in it for me?” and “Why should I care?”

2. Work on your front page excerpt

Write a really good introduction or summary. Your goal is to tell the story in one single line. If people get it already on the front page, they don’t need to waste valuable work hours to get your point. A good excerpt saves time and money!

3. Use journalistic techniques

Make sure the most important facts are there in the beginning. Be broad at first and narrow your story more and more at the end. An editor should be able to shorten your article from the end without losing your point and so should your readers. (Remember that people actually read less than you think).

4. Make your post readable

Satisfy both skimmers and those who like to dwell into every detail. Make use of lists, bullet points, a lot of white space, paragraphs, links and sub-headings. A good article is skimmable but all the facts are there for those who need all the details. Use plain language and skip all jargon. Avoid word fillers and corporate bullshit. Go straight to the point. Don’t waste the employees’ valuable time.

5. Make sure navigation is easy

If you want to cut down on time people spend on the intranet, make sure it’s easy to find the stuff they are looking for. Make sure every employee get a proper introduction to your intranet. And make it as easy to navigate as possible. Cut the crap: delete pages no one ever visits, re-work messy information and archive old data. Maintain a clear structure and be aware of information overload.

How do you measure internal comms and intranet success? It’s not easy to obtain reliable figures. Please share your experiences in the comment box below!

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About the author

Anna Rydne is a communications specialist, a mother and a small business owner. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, she's determined to uncover the secrets of how successful people and companies communicate. Anna has a special interest in social media marketing and personal branding and she believes the road to success is trying. She tweets about all things comms, social media and marketing @CoSkills and writes for SteamFeed.com twice a month. She holds a bachelor's degree in psychology. Contact her at anna@communicateskills.com.

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12 Responses to Why Miserable Intranet Stats May Indicate Success

  1. dongrgic says:
    October 24, 2012 at 01:33

    Great. I like it. Very informative.

    Reply
  2. ioanna aggelidaki says:
    October 24, 2012 at 10:59

    Very useful tips! :)

    Reply
  3. Nejdan Yildiz (@nejdanyz) says:
    October 24, 2012 at 11:04

    Agreed but I guess these remarks aren’t aimed at more sophisticated intranets, where employees are supposed to get their work done on intranet and spend a lot of time there.

    Reply
  4. Jonathan Phillips (@DigitalJonathan) says:
    October 24, 2012 at 11:55

    Anna — I agree that traditional intranet stats, such as page views and unique users don’t really tell you that much about the quality of the communication. I’ve long argued that we need a more sophisticated approach to this topic as these stats (going up, or going down), don’t really cut the mustard.

    Example: You have an article with 100 views and another with 200 views. Which is better? Frankly, you can’t tell. Neither could you tell if one had 1 view and the other 10000.

    Stories about bonuses or redundancies will likely be better read than articles about the canteen. Articles in English might have higher views than in Swedish. Views, frankly, tell you nothing.

    Further, views or user stats tell you how many people opened the page and not — categorically not — how many people read, consumed or acted upon the information in the article. That, surely, is the point of internal communications isn’t it?

    It’s time we ditched these stats. Stop measuring outputs and measure outcomes. I’ve written more on this topic here: http://intranetizen.com/2011/12/06/its-not-about-the-outputs-its-about-the-outcomes/

    Reply
    • Anna Rydne says:
      November 6, 2012 at 22:13

      Thank you Jonathan for your excellent reply. Your post is very interesting and I would like to recommend all readers of this post to read yours too. We really need to to start measure action instead of clicks.

      Reply
  5. Intranet Lounge says:
    October 24, 2012 at 20:39

    Why Miserable Intranet Stats May Indicate Success – Anna Rydne…

    This article has been submitted to Intranet Lounge – Trackback from Intranet Lounge…

    Reply
  6. Andrew Wright says:
    October 26, 2012 at 04:19

    I have to disagree. In fact I can’t help but think this line of argument is a bit of a cop-out for not building an intranet that people need.

    I think the goal of an intranet should definitely help make people more productive. The challenge is to deliver an intranet that does just this. For example, if I provide a list of competitor products and the reasons why a customer should choose our product over these other products, then this is something that customer sales staff can use every day to answer sales inquiries.

    A recent interview with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner sums up this concept very well

    “Interviewer: Are you succeeding in getting people to stay on LinkedIn longer during the course of the day, and is that a goal?

    JW: Time spent has never been the primary objective. As we like to say, LinkedIn is not a service that enables you to pass the time, it’s a service that enables you to save time. And that goes back to our mission, which is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.

    So, ultimately would we like our membership to become more engaged, yes, as a proxy for the value that we’re delivering to them on a daily basis, and that’s why we’re introducing products like LinkedIn Today, that’s why we have over a million groups now servicing LinkedIn members within a professional context.”

    He is saying yes, he would like more engagement (ie. time spent on the site) but only if it’s for greater professional value & productivity, not entertainment (like Facebook). I think a variation of the LinkedIn mission could be applied to intranets. – ‘connect your organisation’s staff to make them more productive and successful’. It seems to work for LinkedIn!

    Here is the complete article:
    http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/18/what-the-future-holds-for-linkedin

    I also published an article recently that has some stats to show that more time spent on the intranet = greater value.

    If employees spend more time on the intranet, does this mean it’s more valuable?http://cibasolutions.typepad.com/wic/2012/06/if-staff-spend-more-time-on-the-intranet-does-this-make-it-more-valuable.html

    Reply
  7. Measure the Intranet You Have (Not the One You Don’t Have) « Anna Rydne Communicate (your) Skills says:
    October 29, 2012 at 11:50

    [...] was not surprised when my latest post about intranet stats (Why Miserable Intranet Stats May Indicate Success) raised a few different [...]

    Reply
  8. Nada Enan says:
    November 2, 2012 at 11:45

    I like how the post is looking at things from a different angle, however, we r still missing the ultimate aim of measuring employee engagement. One idea that can help and which we r currently trying to implement, is to look at stats along with number of comments for each article/video. Look at how many times employees have shared an article and how many are actually talking about it. We also support it through constantly setting up small focus groups and Intranet “101″ interviews with employees. This helps us to study trends and determine our direction for each quarter.
    Glad to get more tips though :)

    Reply
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