30 May 2008
Web users becoming more ruthless
Just get to the point!
The latest research into web habits shows people are becoming much less patient online – they want to reach a site fast, get the job done and then leave.
Web users running out of patience
Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group told BBC News "The designs have become better, but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment."
He says web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so. "People want sites to get to the point. They have very little patience."
Intranet users too
Dr Nielsen told the Hub that most of the Nielsen report’s findings are the same for intranets. “We recently tested 27 intranets and the main lessons are the same: employees definitely want to get their facts fast and don’t spend much time browsing the intranet just to enjoy it,” he says.
Employees definitely want to get their facts fast and don’t spend much time browsing the intranet just to enjoy it.
Inconsistent design is still a problem on many intranets, with the page design changing drastically depending on which department is responsible for a certain area.
Search rules OK
In 2008, Dr Nielsen says only 25% of people travel on the web via a homepage. The rest arrive at a page via search – "Basically search engines rule the web," he says.
Search is still important for intranets, but not quite as much. Nielsen says this is because intranets:
- have the homepage as a starting point; and
- are supposedly a controlled environment. This means a good information architecture (IA) will help employees navigate to the most important information in more helpful ways than search.
“We recently surveyed 56 companies’ intranet IA and there's a lot of good work done in that area,” he says. But don't forget search. Users rely on it for the web and so they also use it a lot on intranets – “even though intranet search is often insufferably bad and should be improved.”
Intranet differences
Well-run companies only have one intranet and employees can feel confident the content is from a credible source, compared with some external sites.
However, Nielsen acknowledges some organizations are still so disorganized they have several intranets – which, in his opinion, is very bad. Another difference is that intranets have homepages. “The web doesn’t have a homepage, other than Google,” he says.
There needs to be an editor in charge of the intranet homepage.
“Thus, there needs to be an editor in charge of the intranet homepage, and if done well, it can become a major resource for keeping employees informed about company news, corporate culture and messages from top management.”
Implications for intranets
We asked this month's guest expert from the Hub's editorial board, Michael Rudnick (pictured left), global practice leader, intranets & portals at Watson Wyatt Worldwide, what he thinks the implications are for intranet sites.
“From our experience – not only consulting to Fortune 500 corporations on their intranets and enterprise portals, but as a firm hosting many of these sites on our clients’ behalf – I can tell you that we’ve seen the same type of change in online behavior by employees. Employees are using the primary navigation less, and the search engine more.”
However, the shift has been less successful behind the firewall because:
- intranet search engines are nowhere near as effective as internet search engines; and
- companies still focus too much effort and budget on graphic re-design and not enough on re-doing the user interface, improving useful functionality and fixing their search engines.
Companies must do better
“Companies need to a far better job of purchasing, managing and tweaking their internal search engines,” Rudnick says. “I can’t tell you how many organizations target their intranet budget for new portal software, graphic redesigns and content management systems, yet fail to buy an adequate search engine.”
Companies need to a far better job of purchasing, managing and tweaking their internal search engines.
But there's more to it than providing better search. “Search inside an organization requires more than just buying a ‘good’ search engine,” Rudnick says. “That engine needs to be managed and maintained. In addition, content and page owners need to understand – and be able to get the training and help they need – to know how to optimize their content for that search engine.”
He says some content owners believe they shouldn't have to make this effort – and that a good search engine will have the necessary algorithms to index content correctly. “This belief, and that such efforts don’t occur on the internet, is mistaken.”
High expectations
Rudnick says the level of employee expectations for intranets is high – comparing their intranet experiences to the internet. In some instances company intranets have not kept up with the internet. He believes this is because most organizations don't understand the value the intranet brings and therefore the resources aren't allocated to support it effectively.
Products such as Microsoft’s SharePoint are rolling out across the corporate landscape with more organizations using SharePoint as their intranet platform – along with the collaboration tools SharePoint offers.
Rudnick believes we'll soon see a shift in the perception of the intranet as mainly a communications channel – and into the real work tool it has always promised to be.
Have your say
How switched on are your intranet users? Are their expectations disappointed – or does your intranet compare well with best of breed external websites?
Discuss these issues with other comms practitioners by joining the Internal Comms Hub members' group on the Communicators' Network.
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