We can all agree there are few things more frustrating than getting lost. The fact that most of those things will actually only happen to you after you find yourself lost is even more incentive to stay on the straight and narrow.

Thankfully we live in the age of the GPS, and can have our route mapped out and even narrated to us by a gender of our choosing, in a soothing international accent. Your intranet users are not so lucky – they face navigating the online world without the help of their trusty Tom Tom.

Before this terrifying thought has you running back to a paper-based office, there are a number of easy ways to guide your users around your intranet with ease. Navigation comes in a number of forms such as Search, Bread Crumbs Bars, Quick Links, Navigation Bars, the list goes on…

For now let’s focus on Navigation Bars.

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This is quite a common question. Once time, effort and resources have gone into creating your intranet, how can you be sure staff are even accessing it, let alone reaping any of the hard-earned business benefits you have so carefully laid out? Like a parent on the first day of school, you can pack their lunch, dress them and drop them off but you can’t sit in class to make sure they’re learning. Don’t despair though, there are ways…

One approach, and perhaps the most obvious, is to track users’ access. Reporting tools such as iD’s Statistics Reporter can provide you with a quick snapshot of the traffic to your intranet, to give you a feel for what’s happening, to who, and when. What it can’t tell you, is whether or not your users are getting anything out of their time on the intranet.

Time would be better spent focusing on making your intranet engaging, useful and business-critical, so users will not only want to use it, but will depend on it to complete their daily duties.

There are a lot of factors which influence user access to the intranet, including:

Culture – Is using the intranet an integral part of your company culture i.e ‘Have you seen what’s on Flowercorp today?’ or ‘That’s a great idea, let’s create a forum topic on Flowercorp to get some feedback’

Content – Does the intranet contain relevant, up-to-date information that users will want, but more importantly need, to access?

Contribution – Are users trained and actively encouraged to contribute to the Intranet?

Importance – Is it the main repository of information – the source of truth – where users know they will be able to find exactly what they are looking for, quickly and easily?

Something as simple as moving the weekly newsletter onto the intranet instead of offering it via email or in paper-based format can have an enormous effect on users, pulling them to the system to get the information they need.

Another interesting idea is to create an area specifically for users to interact socially. This gives them a relaxed environment to start contributing to and encourages them to log on to see the latest information. An example is shown below using iD’s Coffee Break site.

So rather than focus your energies on monitoring the usage behaviors of your intranet’s users, why not take a closer look at exactly what you are offering and what you could do to improve your user experience. Make it as engaging as possible and they’ll actually want to use it.

Jane McConnell hosted the intranet track at J.Boye. We really enjoyed meeting Jane in person and spending time discussing and debating all things intranet.

Jane is a specialist in intranet strategy, and the author of the Global Intranet Trends Report – which is underpinned by an annual worldwide survey about strategies and practices for intranets, collaboration spaces and social media used inside the enterprise.

Would you like to help Jane conduct her survey and be part of the Global Intranet Trends Report?

Sign up for the 2010-2011 Survey You will receive a complimentary copy of the report for taking part.

This month iD sponsored the J.Boye Conference in Philadelphia, USA. Lots of very inspiring conversation was enjoyed with some of the world’s leading intranet experts & guru’s, and we have returned with a suitcase of terrific ideas.

A major trend discussed at the J.Boye conference, was that the requirements of an intranet extend well beyond just what a CMS delivers, or what SharePoint offers.

The team at J.Boye blogged about this trend before the conference, analysts repeated the sentiment and vendors agreed.

Here at iD, we’ve always known this! iD is all about intranets and was created with only intranets in mind. As a vendor, our focus has always been about the bigger picture of delivering a holistic intranet and not just a CMS or just Doc Mgt or just a collaboration tool. Maybe we were ahead of our time…

*As seen on BNET Australia

BNET Australia interviewed Connie Pandos, Director and co-founder of Intranet DASHBOARD (iD), to find out her take on how out of the box solutions such as iD stack up against bespoke systems such as SharePoint. Listen to the interview below.

‘BTalk’s Phil Dobbie discusses the benefits of Intranet DASHBOARD in comparison to the bespoke corporate intranet offerings of the past, with Connie Pandos.’

We have just released the results of our second annual Global Intranet Benchmarking Survey, which indicate a marked shift in the departmental ownership of intranets away from the IT departments into Marketing and Communications departments.

With more than 455 respondents globally, the survey is the most comprehensive evaluation of how companies communicate internally. This year’s survey has found that as companies grow to rely on their intranets for internal communication purposes there has been a shift in who manages the intranet. Read more »