Communication measurement routines that matter

Years ago, my sister-in-law brought home her newborn, who struggled to latch due to a significant overbite. She was determined to breastfeed, but worrying about his nourishment left her feeling like a failure.

(Hang tight — this story about new-parenting anxiety has everything to do with measuring the success of an intranet.)

The struggle went on for weeks. Advice poured in from hospital staff, women in her family, and even her husband. As a mother of three myself, I had ideas to offer … but amidst all that noise, how could she possibly know which suggestions were worth trying — and which didn’t matter? More importantly, how was she to know when she was actually succeeding?

In all the chaos, there was one very reassuring metric: the baby looked great, and he was growing. Instead of adding to the advice pile, I encouraged her to focus on the one person who mattered more than all the other voices: “Your most important little audience member is doing great. Let’s listen to him.”

That lesson brings me to the very practical topic of intranet success metrics — because sometimes, what matters most is right in front of you.

From baby bottles to bounce rates

Across industries, we find ourselves bombarded with ideas and helpful recommendations from everywhere: internal usability experts push uniform designs based on external branding, analytics specialists demand dashboards mirroring public websites, leadership insists on what frontline workers need, and other business partners argue their content belongs anywhere but where you’ve put it. 

Even seasoned internal communications experts offer recommendations that only make sense in someone else’s context. Like new parents, internal communications leaders struggle to filter noise and define success in terms of the audience(s) that matter most.

It is during this state of “overwhelm” that I am most often asked to analyze metrics like bounce rates or time-on-page to determine what “good” looks like for an intranet. But these metrics (which were originally designed in a marketing context for external audiences) seem to drive our anxiety up without offering much insight or a clear path forward. 

I would encourage internal communications and intranet leaders to instead be more interested in other measures of success — things that will provide the rich context you need to make great decisions for how to better communicate with your most important internal audiences. Here are my top picks for what to look at. 

12 metrics that matter more than bounce rate

1. Top pages

What are the top intranet pages being viewed? How has this changed month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, or year-to-year?

2. What’s occupying employee mindshare? 

Are we noticing shifts in what types of questions people are asking or the tone and content of recent compared with feedback from prior timeframes?

3. Top news articles

What are the top news articles trending, and are these the topics we hoped employees would engage with?

4. Engagement by topic or intent

Which news articles are getting the greatest or least interaction? (Do we see differences by topic or intent?)

5. Top searches

What are the top searches, and how do they relate to other search feedback?

6. Audience usage patterns

Which employee audiences log in most or least frequently, and what trends can we identify in their accessed content? Can we learn from differences in usage patterns?

7. Business leader feedback

When we talk to business leaders, what business communication outcomes are we hearing about?

8. Employee surveys

When we survey employees, are we seeing changes in the extent to which they are aware of company strategy, priorities, or cultural imperatives? Do they understand how they fit in? Do they feel capable and confident that they have the tools or information to do what they do best every day? Will they advocate for the company?

9. Content accuracy and relevance

To what extent do employee audiences agree that content is always accurate, relevant, and up-to-date?

10. Content findability

To what extent do employees agree that they can always find what they are looking for?

11. Help desk trends.

What questions are trending for internal help desks, and is there more that the intranet can do to offload calls to those help desks?

12. Overall trends

What trends are we noticing when we pull all of these kinds of measurements together? What course corrections do we need to make in terms of how we are reaching employees?

Trust the signals that matter

These types of questions will help guide data analysis and uncover opportunities to refine content or target audiences. Unlike external sites, where bounce rates hint at broad patterns, intranets require nuanced metrics tied to organizational goals. 

By prioritizing these, internal communications teams prove their strategic value, earning a seat at the leadership table — potentially with a Chief Communications Officer leading the charge. Just as my sister-in-law trusted her baby’s health, internal communications leaders must trust their intranet’s purpose to drive business success.

How Staffbase helps leaders listen to what matters

At Staffbase, we partner with internal communications teams to help them move beyond vanity metrics and start measuring what really matters. Our platform equips leaders with actionable insights — from content engagement to audience behavior — so they can confidently make the case for communications at the executive level.

Because when internal comms teams are empowered with the right data, they don’t just earn a seat at the table — they help lead the business forward.

Curious how Staffbase can support your strategy?

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