Summary

See the descriptions of the individual reports below for information about the topics covered.

Richly illustrated with 701 color screenshots of designs that worked particularly well or that caused problems for employees as they used the intranets.

Save 43% by buying the complete set on one CD-ROM instead of buying the individual reports one at a time. (Save even more — 48% — if buying a site license set on CD-ROM.)

Comparing the First and Second Editions

If you already own the first edition of this report, should you buy the second edition?

Yes, because there have been immense advances in intranet usability in recent years. The second edition contains about five times as many insights as the first edition.

Comparison of the editions:

(*) One company's intranet was tested in two countries to collect additional information about international usability of a multinational intranet. Thus, we have data from 28 tests at 27 organizations.

> Read Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox about the second edition

Individual Reports

Understanding and Studying Users (Test Data, User Behavior, and Methodology), vol. 1

Data-based findings from our intranet usability studies with guidelines for testing and benchmarking your own intranet.

• Data from user testing and field studies conducted on 27 intranets
• Information about what users do on intranets and how long they take to perform key tasks
• Benchmark data for comparing your intranet's usability to others
• Steps and tips for testing your own intranet

105 pages, 6 design guidelines, 13 color photos from field research, 9 diagrams, and 14 data charts.

Address, Access, Homepage, Personalization, and Promotion, vol. 2

Getting users to your intranet, enhancing the homepage and presenting personalized information to them.

• Intranet branding that worked
• How organizations have used marketing effectively to draw users to the intranet
• Tips for homepages, essential to attracting users and communicating information
• Personalization and customization

108 pages, 84 design guidelines, 63 screenshots

Forms, Procedures, and Policies, vol. 3

Presenting standard intranet information, including policies, forms, and procedures.

• How to organize Human Resources information
• Presenting policy information effectively
• Designing and organizing forms
• Examples of workflows and processes, such as expense and time reporting

128 pages, 102 design guidelines, 89 screenshots

Communications (Including News and Newsletters), vol. 4

Effective communication through the intranet, news and the relationship of the intranet, print publications, and email

• Writing news items for the intranet, including headlines
• Topics to cover in intranet news
• Keeping information fresh
• Managing multiple sources of information: print, email and the intranet

80 pages, 60 design guidelines, 50 screenshots

Corporate Information, Teams, Departments, and People, vol. 5

Presenting information about the organization, individuals, and teams.

• Finding people at the organization
• Discovering what people do and where they report
• Effective employee directories
• What to include in employee profiles
• Presenting organizational charts
• Team and project information

134 pages, 63 design guidelines, 122 screenshots

Searching the Intranet and the Employee Directory, vol. 6

Helping users find the information they need via search.

• The relationship between search and navigation
• Presenting intranet search and search results
• Handling multiple searches: employee directories and site search
• Designing the employee directory search

93 pages, 64 design guidelines, 64 screenshots

Navigation, Layout, and Text, vol. 7

Organizing and presenting intranet information.

• Designing good menu and page structure
• Naming links
• Organizing by task rather than department
• Writing concise text that projects the right tone

150 pages, 67 design guidelines, 121 screenshots

Content Management and International Intranets, vol. 8

Managing content and supporting users in multiple locations and using multiple languages.

• Collecting, reviewing and managing content on intranets
• Content management roles, forms and processes
• Educating, managing and training content contributors
• Designing beyond headquarters: supporting multiple locations and languages

92 pages, 62 design guidelines, 39 screenshots

Managing the Intranet and Teams, vol. 9

Coordinating a site, communicating goals, and supporting the intranet team.

• Governance issues
• Creating a consistent experience
• Templates and standards
• Building a good intranet team
• Creating and communicating goals

84 pages, 24 process guidelines, 37 screenshots

Killer Apps (features that drive people to the intranet), vol. 10

Examples of killer applications, engaging or essential intranet content that brought users to the intranet

• 20 case studies of killer apps and what makes them indispensable tools for employees, including
  • Project and people information, including a CEO blog
  • Training, job listings and new hire information
  • Notice boards and information for doing daily work
• Best practices for applications and functionality on intranets

186 pages, 82 design guidelines, 116 screenshots

What You Get

• Checklist of 614 specific recommendations: review your intranet for these 614 best practices, and you will discover many things that need improvement.
  • The average intranet violates almost half of our usability guidelines. You might have the one perfect intranet in the world that does everything right, but the odds are against you. It is safest to score your designs against a checklist of usability guidelines to make sure you don't do anything wrong.
  • A company with 10,000 employees that currently has average intranet usability can gain $2.4 million in productivity per year by increasing usability to the best quartile of intranets in our study.
• Data on how employees behave when navigating, searching, and reading intranets. Design from knowledge of intranet users' needs, not guesses. This insight alone is worth the price of the report because of the time it saves you in design meetings: when people argue over what's best for users, you can look up the research facts instead of wasting everybody's time with more arguments. (And arguing over what users need rarely gives you the right answer; it just means that the best—or most obnoxious—debater wins.)
• 701 screenshots of intranet design elements with analysis of why they worked well or poorly in user testing.
  • When your boss has a stupid design idea, you can point to screenshots in this report and say how the idea was tried on other companies' intranets and failed there.
  • When your boss has a good idea, you can find examples of what other companies have done with similar ideas and design something even greater on top of it.
• $560,000 of user research at 0.2% of the cost.
• Vendor-independent analysis. Other companies charge much higher prices for their reports even though they receive large amounts of money from vendors. In contrast, we are independent of any vendors of intranet software and solutions. We are not trying to sell you design services, so we don't have to push any particular approach. (We do offer usability evaluations and intranet usability training, but these services also depend on being independent of design firms and technology providers.)
• Knowledge to make your intranet a positive force for productivity in your company. The return on investment for intranet usability is often a factor of 10 or more, as further analyzed in the ROI chapter of vol. 1.

Who Should Read These Reports?

• Anybody who is responsible for the design, implementation, or strategy of intranets.
• The CIO (at least give him/her vol. 1 with the ROI data).

Running a similar usability study yourself to collect comparative design lessons from a large number of intranets would cost a fortune, if you could ever get enough companies to let you in the door. Realistically, reading this report is the only way you will find out how users actually use a wide range of intranet design alternatives.

Please help us continue publishing research reports by buying a site license if you have colleagues who will read the report. If you only need it for yourself, then that's obviously what the single-user license is for. If somebody "gives" you a copy, then please buy a download anyway to keep prices down in the future.

	Buy CD-ROM with All 10 Reports (from Yahoo Store) $898 for a single-user license $1,798 for a site license (the right to place on your intranet and make unlimited copies within your organization)
	Download Individual Reports (from eSellerate) $158 for a single report, $348 for the report and the right to place on your intranet and make unlimited copies within your organization.

> in-house seminar for your intranet team
> public tutorial at the Usability Week 2008 conference (New York, San Francisco, London, and Melbourne)

We can conduct a usability review of your intranet.