The inability to locate information, or uncertainty about its reliability, poses a serious risk to the credibility of an intranet as the central, trusted source of business information. This has the potential to affect user adoption rates.
A powerful and
reliable search function is key to credibility and I would argue as important
as a well designed information architecture. A good search will scan both
webpage and document content and allow users to filter the results by file
type. Searches by keywords, phrases, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and
wildcards(*, and ?) should all be possible.
Of course, you can
have the best search facility available, but if your content isn’t written in a
way that is optimised for the web (SEO), users will express dissatisfaction
with it, because it won’t always return the results they expect to see.
Action point – Find out whether the reporting system of
your current intranet (or server log files) tell you about the search terms
employees have entered in the past? Analysing the search terms entered will
provide you with an important steer on the taxonomy of your new site.
Action point – Create a plan for the
ongoing maintenance of intranet content. Secure buy-in at management level to
dedicate resource to this task.
Action point – Identify whether users will want the option of searching specific areas
of intranet in isolation, as well as the site as a whole.
Action point – Educate employees about the value of
adding meta-data to their documents and content pages. The best search on the
market won’t operate fully without this – it’s a case of rubbish-in,
rubbish-out. Plan in resource to educate content authors in the basics of
writing for the web (SEO).