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When analyzing your Web server log reports, the most important thing to take into consideration is the difference between casual visitors and actual users. Casual visitors jumping from page to page every few seconds are probably not sticking around long enough to read anything and may inflate the numbers in your reports. But this is the nature of passive methods. They do a great job of delivering hard and objective facts — who is accessing what — but they don't give you any indication of one key aspect of intranet response: user satisfaction. This is why passive methods are not enough to provide you with a complete picture of intranet usage. In order to do this, you have to use more active methods.

WebLog Expert log analysis tool showing example of a numeric report (Click image for high-resolution image).

Active Methods

Active methods involve a certain level of interaction with the end-user community — whether through open discussion or gathering data from a survey. By providing users with an outlet to voice their opinion, you'll get a much better indication of user satisfaction that you just can't get by reviewing Web logs alone.

There are many ways to obtain this feedback; the most often used are a simple e-mail address, an online feedback form, or a user survey (online or otherwise).

An e-mail address is the simplest way to allow your users to provide their feedback since it requires no more effort than supplying a link to an e-mail address on your site. However, it's also the least effective. The problem lies in the fact that e-mail is free-form feedback. Users will have the ability to write just about anything they feel is relevant, from their dissatisfaction with the site's navigation system to the way the background colors make their dogs bark and chase their tail for hours-on-end. It will be difficult to mine and graph this type of information with any accuracy, leaving you with a pile of e-mail letters and no way to quantify the results.

In order to make sense out of user feedback you need to provide them with a template. And the best way to accomplish this is by creating an online user survey that gathers responses on key areas of your intranet such as user-friendliness, quality of the site's content, ease in which information can be located, and site cosmetics. The responses to the survey questions can be selected from a drop-down list (such as Satisfied, Not satisfied, or No Opinion), expressed as a numeric rating, or a combination of the two. Many surveys include an area at the end to enable users to input their free-form feedback as well.

Creating a user survey allows you to collect and graph quantifiable results, but make sure that you don't overdo it. It's important to choose your questions carefully — covering the most important aspects of your site — and not to make the survey too long. A survey with 20 well-crafted questions will be more effective than a survey with 50 vague questions, not to mention the fact that users may be discouraged if they're confronted with a lengthy survey.

Unfortunately, as effective as surveys are in gathering information about user response, the failing of active methods is one of human nature. People are much more inclined to voice their opinion when they are dissatisfied with something than when they are happy. This is why stores have complaint departments and not satisfaction departments.

Intranets that meet or exceed user expectation will most likely be taken for granted. Sure, you may get the odd e-mail or phone call now-and-again from a user telling you how much they appreciate the system but more often than not, satisfied users will be a silent majority. On the other hand, if something doesn't quite measure up to par, you're likely to hear an uproar. This may create an imbalance of loud complaints and quiet satisfaction.

You need to even out the scale by getting as many user responses as possible — good and bad. You can place a prominent link to the survey on your intranet's home page to catch users' attention, place a visible announcement in high traffic areas around the company, or offer up some type of incentive for completing the survey (a popular incentive is to hold a drawing among survey participants to win several days vacation time).

Final Thoughts

There are a number of routine tasks that need to be done by any intranet owner such as archiving older information, updating the site with new and relevant information, and checking for broken links. Reviewing and measuring user response should be included on that list as well.

An intranet is built to support your end-users. And similarly, as their needs change, so should your intranet. Only by listening to what your users have to say and by studying their intranet activity can you get an accurate reading on how the system should progress. The success and evolution of your intranet will depend on this feedback.