High intranet traffic isn’t always a sign of success
When organisations measure the success of their intranet, one number gets more attention than the rest: traffic. Page views are up. Site visits are increasing. Employees are coming back more often. But do traditional intranet success metrics tell us whether employees are actually finding what they need?
It's tempting to read these as evidence the intranet is working, and sometimes it is. People value the content and use it regularly.
Sometimes it's evidence of the opposite. People can't find what they need, don't understand what they've found, or keep coming back because the information didn't answer their question the first time.
The uncomfortable part for anyone who works in comms is that the number looks the same either way.
What the headline numbers hide
We recently worked on a major SharePoint intranet project where the headline figures looked reassuring. Two-thirds of survey respondents accessed the intranet every day. More than half described it as critical or very important to their work.
But our employee how-and-tells told a different story.
People struggled to browse and navigate. Search returned irrelevant results. Content could be inaccurate or years out of date. Some employees gave up on self-service and asked colleagues instead. Others saved their own copies of documents because they were not confident they would find them again.
One person admitted judging the age of undated information by its font.
The numbers showed that the intranet mattered. They did not show that it was not doing what it was supposed to do.
Our work with Virgin Media O2 demonstrates how simplifying an existing SharePoint intranet can make information easier to find, understand and trust.
When more visits mean more effort
Imagine an employee wants to know how much parental leave they are entitled to. They search. They open one page and realise it is out of date. They return to the results and try another. They follow a link, discover it is broken, search again and eventually find a PDF that looks current.
The analytics show several searches, multiple page views and clicks. A positive result for intranet traffic.
But the employee experienced one frustrating journey. A better intranet might produce a single search, a single page view and one clear answer. The same need has been met with far less traffic and much less effort.
This doesn't mean fewer visits are always better. Employees may return to the intranet regularly for news, operational updates, community activity or frequently used services. The point is not to aim to push traffic up or down. It is to understand why the traffic exists and whether the intranet is helping people.
The job of an intranet is not to keep people there
No one comes to an intranet because they want 'an intranet experience'. They come because they want to know something.
A policy. A pay date. A process. A form. A contact. An answer to a customer question. Guidance on what to do next. The intranet’s job is to help them get there with as little unnecessary effort as possible.
Good SharePoint delivery is not about filling pages with more content, carousels, news, web parts and calls to action. Often it means doing the opposite.
Radical page decluttering. Simplifying navigation. Using language employees understand. Making ownership clear. Grouping information into sensible topics. Retiring obsolete pages. Making sure the current, authoritative answer is easy to recognise and understand. Making sure absolutely nothing gets in the way of this.
An intranet should not shout. It should be quietly effective: somewhere people can find what they need, understand it and get on with their work.
Measure ROI: Reduction Of Irritation
At Work Networks, we think about intranet ROI in terms of Reduction of Irritation: how effectively an intranet removes the unnecessary effort employees experience when trying to find information and complete everyday tasks.
It may not appear as a single number on a dashboard, but irritation leaves evidence.
Repeated searches. Search terms being reworded several times. Dead ends. Unnecessary clicks. Abandoned journeys. Calls to the helpdesk. Questions to managers. Documents saved locally and passed between colleagues.
Some of that evidence sits in analytics. Some of it comes from employee research, observation and testing.
Alongside page views and visitor numbers, we should ask:
Can employees complete common tasks first time?
How long does it take them to find an answer?
What is camouflaging the right answer?
Do they understand and trust what they find?
Are unsuccessful and repeated searches falling?
Are fewer people asking colleagues for information that should be self-service?
Can they tell which version of a policy or document is current?
Traffic still belongs on the dashboard. It just should not be treated as the verdict.
AI raises the stakes
This distinction matters even more as intranets become a source of organisational knowledge for artificial intelligence. AI can make information easier to access. It cannot make muddled information authoritative.
If SharePoint contains three versions of the same policy, an AI agent still needs a reliable basis for deciding which one matters. If organisational language is unclear or inconsistent, for example 'annual leave', 'holiday', 'time off', 'PTO', then AI may retrieve and summarise the wrong material. Likewise, if pages are obsolete, poorly structured or unclear, AI may not present the optimal response. If permissions are poorly managed, information may be exposed too widely or hidden from the people who need it.
The quality of the answer always depends on the quality of the source. Or GIGO for those who remember.
Microsoft’s own direction reflects this. The SharePoint Admin Agent addresses issues such as content sprawl, lifecycle, permissions and oversharing. Copilot in SharePoint can surface inactive pages, gaps in content and broken links.
These tools can help organisations identify problems. They cannot decide what good organisational knowledge should look like.
Technology can identify an inactive page. It cannot necessarily explain why employees keep asking their manager instead.
It can identify a broken link. It does not know that nobody understands which navigation label means what.
It can help classify content. It cannot decide how knowledge should be organised around the needs of employees. That still requires research, judgement, content strategy, information architecture and governance.
Our work with British Heart Foundation demonstrates how to build strong SharePoint foundations for a better digital employee experience.
Improve the foundations first
It is tempting to treat a struggling intranet as a technology problem.
Search is poor, so perhaps the organisation needs better search tooling
People cannot find answers, so perhaps it needs an AI assistant
The intranet looks dated, so perhaps it needs another platform sitting over SharePoint.
Sometimes those investments are right. But new technology applied to a messy intranet may simply help people reach the mess more quickly.
Before adding another layer, look underneath. Improving an existing SharePoint intranet starts with understanding how employees find, use and trust information, rather than simply adding new features or technology.
Is there a clear information structure? Is content organised around employees’ needs rather than the organisational chart? Can people identify the authoritative version of important information? Does each area have an owner? Is obsolete content being removed? Are permissions appropriate? Do pages answer one subject clearly?
These may not be glamorous questions. They are still the foundations of a useful intranet. Increasingly, they are the foundations of AI-ready SharePoint too.
How to measure intranet success beyond page views
Look in two places to build the picture of how well your intranet is doing its job.
From the data. Are unsuccessful searches falling? Are people repeating searches on the same topic? How many versions of the same document are in circulation? Is obsolete content actually being removed? How many steps separate a question from an answer?
From people. Are employees still asking colleagues for things that should be self-service? Do they trust what they find? Are they keeping private copies? And increasingly: is your content good enough that an agent would give an answer you'd be willing to stand behind?
I've yet to find a single metric that tells you whether the intranet is doing its job. The question 'what irritates you about the intranet?' is the closest I've got so far. The goal of an intranet is not 'more traffic'. It's fewer searches, fewer dead ends, fewer workarounds and better answers.
More understanding - and less irritation. Sometimes the best intranet is the one people need to visit least.
FAQ's Does high intranet traffic mean an intranet is successful?
Not necessarily. High traffic can indicate that employees value and regularly use an intranet. It can also indicate that they are struggling to find information, repeatedly searching or visiting multiple pages to complete a simple task. Traffic needs to be considered alongside measures of employee effort and task completion.
What are the most useful intranet success metrics?
Useful measures include successful task completion, time taken to find information, search success rates, repeated searches, employee confidence in content and the number of unnecessary steps required to complete common tasks. These measures help organisations understand whether their intranet is making work easier.
How can organisations improve their SharePoint intranet?
Start by understanding how employees use the existing intranet and where they encounter difficulties. Review navigation, search, content quality, ownership and governance. Simplifying information structures and removing obsolete content can improve the employee experience without necessarily introducing additional technology.
Is your intranet working as hard as your employees?
High usage doesn't always mean a good employee experience. If your SharePoint intranet has become difficult to navigate, overloaded with content or frustrating to use, we can help you understand what's getting in the way and where to focus your improvements.
Find out how Work Networks can help you improve your intranet.
