How to Audit Your Google Sites Intranet

No. While a UX expert helps, HR, IT, or internal comms professionals can successfully run it using established usability principles. Two or three cross-functional reviewers from different departments will provide excellent, actionable insights without requiring any formal UX design training.

Expect one to two hours per reviewer for the walkthrough, plus an additional hour for debriefing and consolidation. A focused evaluation of your core intranet sections typically takes just one working day to complete for a small, dedicated evaluation team.

Employee surveys measure general satisfaction and subjective feelings. A heuristic evaluation objectively diagnoses specific structural failures—like confusing HR jargon or buried request forms—explaining precisely why your employees are frustrated and exactly where the digital workplace experience breaks down.

You should actively check for inconsistent page templates, missing breadcrumb navigation, poorly rendered embedded Drive documents, unconfigured form confirmations, and search results that surface outdated content because old pages were never properly archived by the internal communications team.

Always start with four critical findings that completely prevent task completion. Next, tackle high-frequency tasks, like a broken leave request form, before dedicating resources to fixing a minor cosmetic issue on a rarely visited, low-priority intranet page.

You should run an evaluation annually, or immediately following any major structural changes, platform migrations, or homepage redesigns. Pair this assessment with a routine content audit for a highly comprehensive, data-driven health check of your entire digital workplace.