Portal Usage Analytics: A Key Tool in the Battle Against the Empty Portal

Author: Robert Haddad

Overview

Deploying enterprise portals requires significant investments in time, effort and money. With the evolution and broad adoption of portals over the past five years, their champions have become keenly interested in measuring portal usage. While portal usage alone is not a sufficient indicator of return on investment (ROI) analysis, it is certainly a key component. Knowing how the portal is being used, and mapping usage trends over time can provide empirical evidence of a successful portal initiative. Moreover, tracking portal usage becomes an effective weapon in battling the empty portal syndrome.

Similar to web site usage analysis, tracking portal visits is important to better understand which parts of the portal are delivering value, and which parts are wanting. However, unlike traditional web sites, portals have unique attributes which pose specific challenges, and offer new opportunities to gain insights about portal usage and user behavior.

Web site tracking tools rely on web server logs. By parsing the web logs, these tools recreate a picture of earlier events, listing where an IP address came from, where it went, and possibly how long it stayed on any specific page.

More information is available in PDF.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Debi McGhee
Project Performance Corporation
703-748-7574
dmcghee@ppc.com