Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

The answer is to get valuable content fast. The solution is to either write it yourself or get someone to write it for you. People seek unique knowledge and by having it on offer through your site -- you will attract visitors.

In my experience, company intranets do not take off until they surpass other forms of communication. I would begin locating important announcements on the intranet several days prior to letting them out via other methods.

Another idea we used was, place employee birthdays and other fun information only on the intranet site. This forced people to go onto it.

Possibly the employees do not feel that the content / site is of proximate value to be visited weekly. Frankly, it sounds as interesting as a stock prospectus.

Consider:

1. Review usage logs / analytics, or conduct a survey of employees on how they really use the site - likes, dislikes, etc. Discover the root of their needs (not those of the corporate communications department)

2. Is "weekly" a realistic time frame? Does the valued information change that much to necessitate that viewing frequency. As a contrary thought, hopefully employees have a full schedule so as not to have time to necessarily wander through the site weekly unless there is real perceived value.

3. I love the MarketingProf's feature of notifying me when some forum has a change or addition I'm interested in.

4. You could always add more "info-tainment" - information in a more entertaining manner - video versus reading four pages of text, more photos, in-company video reports, reports on people instead of things, articles by employees, a sound-off, items for sale, how the company is in the community, contest (hopefully you won't need those), etc.

5. As a last resort - have a company directive to make their browser home page the company intranet site. Too "big-brotherish" but a consideration.

As a more pleasant alternative - each time they log-in to the network, it checks to see the last time they visited the intranet. If too long - then send them directly there.

Bob

Hi there,

Great ideas above. Here are my simple (yet hopefully effective) additions...

1. Contests - Get employees involved via contests for usable content or answering questions, etc.

2. Forum - let employees interact with one another

3. Reward good behavior - I win points on Marketing profs for answering questions like yours. This makes me feel awesome! Use the same model for your employees. Make them feel awesome for using the intranet!


Best of luck!

Kris

I agree, it doesn't sound like the site is very appealing.

In addition to the other suggestions, you could add other information people are likely to want that doesn't require an editor (pay schedules, holidays, promotions, new hires, results of intra-league company softball games, etc.).

If you have an electronic employee newsletter you can "tease" with a single paragraph in the newsletter, and then drive clicks to the site.

Jodi

Along the lines of valuable content, I would add:

- Ability to access shared files through the intranet. (Assuming that users can access the intranet from home & while traveling -- typically adding the remote access through the intranet is a little easier then accessing the shared files from VPN).

- RSS feed.

- If you send an employee newsletter, link it back to your intranet.

- Employee forums. The usual emails about happy hours, stuff to sell, etc. can go in forums (I recommend creating guidelines for posting).

Instead of pushing information down to the employees, make the intranet site into a wiki (using, for example https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/). Put all departmental documentation online, employee vacations, company holidays, etc, and make that the "go-to" place for information. The home page of the intranet would have "breaking news" from management.