One of the greatest challenges confronting intranets is ensuring that content is up-to-date, accurate and useful. In many organisations, much thought and effort is put into maintaining (and enhancing) the quality of published content. What must be realised, however, is that not all content on an intranet needs to be of equal quality. Only once this is recognised can successful strategies be put in place to support content authoring and publishing. Most intranets struggle to deliver consistent, up-to-date and useful content. In many cases, the overall content of the site is poor, impacting on staff trust and usage levels. Confronted

There is a worrying trend emerging in the field of information architecture: organisations are attempting to finalise site structures without evaluating their effectiveness in the context of a web page. Card sorting and card-based classification provide excellent insights into the inherent structure behind content. Both are excellent tools for defining strict taxonomies, but they do not necessarily generate the most approachable structure for a site. Content centred design is not necessarily user centred design. Browser windows impose many limitations, one of the most obvious is space. Failure to consider the reality that the site structure must function in the context

The fundamental question to ask for all intranets is: what is the intranet actually for? While this is an easy question to ask, answering it meaningfully involves gaining an in-depth understanding of staff and organisational needs. While much has been written about the design of intranets, less is said about how to ensure that the intranet contains useful information and tools. At the end of the day, staff will use an intranet if it is useful. To ensure this, there are a range of practical 'needs analysis' techniques that can be used to identify staff (and organisational) requirements. This article

I recently finished an "information management and records management" review in a small public-sector agency. One of the findings was that while they needed a records management system (RMS), they couldn't proceed with the system they had due to its major usability problems. This accords my experiences in other organisations: notably that there has been a 100% failure rate of rolling out records management systems (with some exceptions, such as legal firms). In my earlier article, I identified three critical success factors: the system, classification scheme and message. Focusing on the system: records management systems are perfectly designed for their

The second CM Briefing for August asks the question: is your intranet trusted by staff? To quote: It is widely recognised that an intranet must be trusted, if it is to be regularly used by staff across an organisation. While it is easy to make this statement, it is harder to qualify what is meant by trust, how users assess it, and how we can build (or rebuild) trust in the intranet. This briefing looks at the issue of trust, and presents some simple steps that can be taken to further build staff trust in the intranet.

This month's KM Column article is written by Iain Barker, and it covers the topic of information scent. To quote: How can organisations make it easier for users to step through a site and find the information they are looking for? Much is made of the importance of clear navigation headings and adherence to the three-click rule, but there is another largely under-employed, cheap and simple technique that has a more positive impact on the usability of a site. This article introduces the concept of information scent and explains how creating strong information scents enables users to confidently step through

My second CM Briefing for July encourages intranet teams to lose the language of enforcement when dealing with authors. To quote: All too often, centralised intranet teams find themselves battling with decentralised authors to enforce consistency and quality standards. Not only is this fighting ultimately fruitless, it can be very damaging for the morale of all participants, and potentially crippling for the future of the intranet itself. In these situations, intranet teams need to find a new approach, and new ways of working with their decentralised authors. The first step is to lose the language of enforcement.

The first of my CM Briefings for July looks at what to include in intranet search results. To quote: While there is much that can be done to improve the effectiveness of intranet search, a good starting point is to improve the design of search results pages. The first question to ask is: what to include (and what not to include) in search results? This briefing is designed to provide a simple checklist that can be used to assess (and then redesign) intranet search results pages.

Product costs and license terms Importance to consumers? Very important 56% Important 24% Somewhat important 16% Not important 4% How do vendor websites rate? Very good 5% Good 13% Acceptable 13% Poor 39% Very poor 30% It would seem obvious that customers are looking for prices. Our survey respondents expressed exasperation with the rarity of this simple selling point, and the way their time was wasted. "Be up-front about pricing. If you're beyond my budget, don't waste my time with information, presentations, sales pitches etc." "You have to go through the process of contacting them and getting the full sales

Product demos and samples Importance to consumers? Very important 47% Important 37% Somewhat important 13% Not important 3% How do vendor websites rate? Very good 2% Good 24% Acceptable 38% …