Blog | 04 April 2019
Part 4: Evaluate simply instead of a lot
Evaluation and follow-up is one of those nagging guilty consciences for many web and intranet managers. In the quest for improvement, we often create a fog of numbers. But the best way to start evaluating requires neither systems nor tools. It only requires your commitment.
In simple terms, you can measure potential, usage, impact and behavior. The first, potential, is about the most basic measures – unique visitors to the website or daily use of the intranet. Strictly speaking, this is not an evaluation, at least not of the site. If it evaluates anything at all, it is your, yours, marketing's or the fixed home page in the browser's ability to get people to the site. Interesting enough but no tool to improve the site or intranet.
Measuring usage goes a bit deeper but can be criticised in the same way. You get to know that a news item is read or not, that a form is used or not, that a link is clicked or not, that a product sheet is downloaded or not, that people read where you want or move on where you don't. But you still don't have any insights to help you improve the site. And while some of the examples border on impact measurement (for example, creating product sheet downloads might be a goal), most of us strive for even sharper impact metrics.
Impact metrics are of course highly interesting. For the e-retailer, it's simple – products added to cart, sales of course – while for other sites it's more difficult. Often, our only option is to test how many people can do their job on the site and how long it takes, where the effect is reduced effort for contacts and inquiries in other ways. And, of course, more people from the target group doing the "right thing", whatever that means for your business.
However, a well-executed effectiveness and quality measurement adds another dimension. It captures usage or behavioral patterns. It is this fourth type of measurement that is most important from an improvement perspective. It is when you see what is happening, and what is not happening, that you get a chance to make the site better.
Take a handful of people, ask them to do a handful of things on your site and see what happens.
Methodologically, I'm talking about the oldest trick in the book. Take a handful of people, ask them to do a handful of things on your site and see what happens. It only takes an hour or so. Forget about writing one of those news stories that are mostly there to boost someone's ego anyway, and you'll have the time you need.
If you don't recognise yourself in the following, congratulations. But I've been asking web and intranet managers, editors and publishers I've met at trainings and conferences for years how many people actually use this oldest trick in the book. I can say without exaggeration that less than 10% do it regularly.
This is the big opportunity for many sites. Herein lies a fantastic, almost unexplored, source of improvement. That five testers are enough is one of those old truths that is actually true. If 2-3 people slip on the same step, it is probably slippery right there.
So flip the evaluation staircase that most people use. We usually start with potential, we take a course in Google Analytics to learn how to track usage, we eventually construct impact metrics and maybe, just maybe, we then ask ourselves why what should be happening isn't happening.
Instead, start with usage and behavior patterns. Start looking over the shoulders of people you have asked to do important things on the site. Bite your tongue harder than you ever have and be prepared to sweat... It's exciting, painful, educational, surprising, depressing, uplifting – well, in short, it's real in a way that other evaluation never is. And that, after all, must be the goal.
(By the way: you can also evaluate to report upwards in the organisation, and not only for improvement. I know, I know. Then the discussion becomes different. Even use becomes semi-relevant. But that's another discussion).
