The power of actionable analytics for intranets

When it comes to analytics to measure the success of your intranet, web-based tools like Google Analytics are potentially misleading and meaningless. Analytics for intranets need to be led by the actions you’re planning to take, says intranet and digital workplace specialist Sam Marshall.

Using the right analytics will provide a roadmap of what needs to be done, and who needs to do it.

Sam Marshall is the owner of ClearBox Consulting, which specialises in intranets and the wider digital workplace, with a focus on enabling workplaces to become more coherent and employee friendly. ClearBox also publishes the Buyer’s Guide to Intranet and Employee Experience Platforms which is must read for anyone interested in intranet and EX (employee experience) platforms.

He says it’s vital to have analytics for intranets, but they need to be analytics you’re going to act on, and data you can map to a specific role. Web-based analytics will provide details about the type of people accessing the intranet pages but as the employer, you already have that information.

Sam Marshall, Owner, ClearBox Consulting.

“Intranet analytics should be saying; ‘Who are we actually engaging with and where are we missing people?’,” Sam said.

“There’s no point in measuring something unless you intend to do something with that data.

“Don’t be led by what the tool wants to tell you, be led by the actions that you’re planning to take.”

Good analytics must be actionable and range from a very narrow focus all the way to a broad focus, all with the view of making working life better for employees.

When it comes to intranet analytics, Sam breaks it down to four necessary levels, starting at the narrow end and finishing at the broad end.

1.      Page level analytics

Analytics for individual pages. Sam says these could include heat maps, the number of visits to a page along with dwell time, and provide practical and actionable advice for the owner of the page.

For example, a Finance Department administration assistant’s role might be to update the intranet page on financial reporting. This is their sole responsibility when it comes to the intranet.

“They don’t care about anything else on the intranet and if you give them an overall intranet site report, they will feel it’s just noise,” Sam said

“But if you say; ‘Your page is underperforming’, they can do something about that.”

2.      Site level analytics

These analytics provide information about how each intranet site is performing and would include data on popular content, show what pages people are visiting and how they are navigating the site.

For example, the person responsible for internal communications for France in a multi-national company would use this data to see if their French colleagues are accessing the information they need on their intranet site. They don’t care about the data related to US employees but if they can see French employees are not accessing the site, they can use the data to change their content.

3.      Platform level analytics

This level of analytics takes in the whole company intranet. The data provides information on whether employees are actively using the intranet and on the  governance side, the data would identify dead and outdated content.

“At the platform level, the analytics might be accessed by the product owner who can see the intranet is generally working fine, but everyone is complaining about search not working,” Sam said.

4.      Digital workplace level analytics

Think of these as cross-channel communication analytics across the entire organisation. The internal communications and HR departments would access these analytics to see how a particular campaign performed across all channels. Are employees still reading newsletter emails or should they instead be directed to the intranet to avoid spamming people? These analytics would ensure organisations get the balance of communications right.

For example, if a company was launching a diversity and inclusion campaign, they could access the analytics to see how successful it was.

“They should ask: ‘Did we have the most effective reach by doing a mail drop, by putting something on Viva Engage, through the home page of the intranet or by doing push alerts to the employee app?’,” Sam said.

“This data gives us insights into how we reach our audience by a multiplicity of ways rather than just saying the intranet was good or bad.”

Digital workplace level analytics would also give insights into how employees from different teams, departments, countries etc are accessing communications to target each sector.

The key to digital workplace level analytics, Sam says, is to tag all content related to a campaign, which might include everything from videos posted on the intranet and Viva Engage, to executive posts and news articles on the intranet. You can then look at what performed well and what resonated with employees.

Sam shared the example of a diversity and inclusion campaign at a multi-national organisation that used its intranet as a business-use platform for dry, corporate communications. As part of the campaign, an employee in Greece posted a blog on the intranet sharing his personal story of what he’s had to deal with as a gay man.

“It was the most engaged piece they ever had,” Sam said.

“It had over 100 comments whereas most intranet stories didn’t get a single comment. Executives were asking why they didn’t get that sort of engagement?

“It was a great lesson for them to realise that maybe you need to bring yourselves to it a little more and not just talk about the business.”

Other things Sam would like to see for intranet analytics is how people are accessing the site, whether it be via an app on personal phones or via work or personal computers.

At SWOOP Analytics, we’ve taken Sam’s advice on board and many of the themes outlined above are included in SWOOP Analytics for SharePoint intranet. SWOOP Analytics provides actionable insights by developing a series of health scores that cover quality, experience and engagement from the enterprise level right down to page level. This helps everyone involved in your intranet to be alerted to spelling errors, broken links or pages that are hard to read. Combining SWOOP Analytics for SharePoint with SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage, you can cross-reference intranet pages with relevant communities to find out if intranet content shared on Viva Engage is driving readership and if discussions around intranet-related content are occurring on Viva Engage. If you are looking for advice on selecting an intranet or EX platform we suggest you also talk to ClearBox.