Implementing a web portal can require a significant investment, so demonstrating successful results is crucial.
When Jane’s team launched their self-service portal, they lacked an effective way to measure its performance and report progress. They realised that without defined KPIs, discussions about success remained vague and subjective.
Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) provides concrete evidence of ROI, identifies areas for improvement, and gives project sponsors clear updates to support further investment.
This article details 17 KPIs that offer measurable insights into portal performance and guide its successful development.
Solutions to Measure KPIs
The tools for measuring KPIs depend on your portal platform. Using Microsoft Power Pages, the Power Platform admin center provides essential analytics to monitor performance, including user logins and system performance metrics.
Using tools like Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity enhances insights. Deploying the Google Analytics tracking code on your portal captures detailed user interactions, providing valuable behavioural data. Microsoft Clarity enhances visual insights with session replays and heatmaps.
Combining these tools establishes a practical portal KPI framework to measure performance and inform decisions.
Answering the Key Questions
Your KPIs should answer fundamental questions about your portal to align with organisational goals. Common objectives often include increased efficiency, improved customer experience and cost reduction. Here are some key questions to consider:
- How many customers interact with your portal?
- What is the ROI of the portal investment?
- How satisfied are users with the portal experience?
- How well does the portal retain and engage users?
- How does the website contribute to your business objectives?
Once you define these questions, you can focus on which metrics to measure.
Efficiency and Cost Reduction KPIs
Here are two KPIs for starters that reveal operational efficiencies and cost-saving measures through streamlined, automated processes.
Completed Processes
Process-centric portals enable users to perform repeatable tasks, such as submitting applications, bookings, or logging support requests. Integration with CRM systems like Dynamics 365 allows for effective measurement and reporting of these portal-initiated actions.
For instance, Jane’s organisation aimed for 90% of inbound applications to be completed online. This goal reflects a more convenient submission method and a cost-efficient data capture process.
What recurring portal processes can you track to support ROI calculations?
Cost per Interaction
A cost per interaction KPI allows you to measure the average expense for repeatable tasks completed via your portal. You can compare this with handling the same workflows through other channels to assess the financial ROI. Here’s how it works:
- Identify Costs: Determine the online and manual interaction costs.
- Total Costs: Multiply online and manual interaction costs by their respective interaction numbers.
For example, Jane’s organisation incurs a £7 cost to manually process each application, accounting for labour and other overheads. In contrast, online applications automatically processed are attributed a £1 cost, based on technology usage and error contingencies.
Over the past 12 months, Jane’s team processed 500 online applications, resulting in approximately £3,000 in savings compared to manual processing, which demonstrates the payback of operational efficiency.
A clear understanding of the cost per interaction reveals ROI to guide strategic decisions regarding portal optimisation and continued investment.
Portal Engagement KPIs
Multiple KPIs are essential for accurately measuring your portal’s popularity and understanding audience behaviour.
Daily and Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU)
Understanding DAU and MAU can help you gauge user engagement and growth trends. DAU measures the number of unique users who visit your portal daily, while MAU tracks the same every month.
These metrics help you understand how frequently people visit your website, giving you a clear picture of retention and active participation.
The DAU/MAU ratio measures the stickiness of your portal, indicating how often people return to use it. For example, a ratio of 0.2 suggests that, on average, 20% of monthly active users engage daily. This may indicate that a typical person visits the portal 6 times a month.
Registrations
Monitoring the number of accounts created is another key metric for understanding user acquisition and evaluating the effectiveness of your outreach efforts in promoting your portal.
Portal Adoption Rate
The adoption rate measures the number of potential people actively using your web portal. For instance, Jane’s organisation has 20,000 members, yet only 4,000 are active portal users, resulting in a below-average 20% adoption rate. This indicates the need for increased awareness to enhance engagement.
Returning Users
While DAU and MAU measure overall activity, the returning users metric specifically highlights loyalty. High returning user rates reflect people’s perceived ongoing value of your portal. This metric helps you interpret how successful your portal is in growing a loyal audience.
Retention Rate
The retention rate measures the percentage of people who continue using a portal over specific periods, e.g. day 1, day 7, and day 30, to understand sustained engagement. It’s calculated by dividing the number of users at the end of a period by the number of users at the start.
The returning users’ metric highlights immediate re-engagement, but the retention rate is about prolonged participation, offering a broader view of user commitment. This rate reveals the percentage of active users to understand user habits and long-term engagement over time.
Session Length
Longer session lengths are an obvious website goal, indicating that people find content relevant and reflecting a positive user experience. However, shorter sessions could signify efficient navigation for self-service portals if users quickly find what they need.
Tracking session length trends helps you identify changes in user behaviour and potential issues. Combining session length with the engagement metrics below will give you a representative view of how effectively your portal is meeting user needs.
Pages per Session
Higher pages per session indicate an engaging user experience as users explore more content or portal functionality. However, fewer portal pages per session could suggest efficient navigation. Monitoring this metric alongside others will help you interpret user engagement.
Content Utilisation
Content utilisation measures how often users engage with specific types of portal resources, such as FAQs and knowledge base articles. Google Analytics and other tracking services provide detailed insights by tracking page views, time spent on pages, and user interaction rates.
Utilising content effectively allows individuals to find answers and solve issues without needing direct support. When people can easily find and use helpful content online, their satisfaction increases, driving higher adoption rates and lower support costs.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate measures the percentage of sessions involving only a single page view. While not a primary metric for self-service portals, alongside other KPIs, it does provide insights into user behaviour and areas for improvement. Its importance depends on your portal goals. High rates may indicate quick information retrieval or a need for better content or design.
User Experience KPIs
These qualitative metrics help you understand how well your web portal is meeting the needs of its users.
Page scroll depth
Scroll depth enables you to assess engagement by measuring how far visitors scroll on your portal pages. Tools like Microsoft Clarity provide visibility of this metric for individual pages and heatmaps to see where people are clicking.
A 75% scroll depth for long-form content suggests high engagement while landing pages with direct CTAs might aim for 50%. Tailor these assessments to align with your specific content goals.
Customer Satisfaction Ratings
Customer satisfaction ratings, such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS), offer valuable insights into client loyalty and satisfaction. Implementing a web portal can significantly boost these ratings. Many organisations have seen notable improvements in NPS following their portal rollout.
A self-service portal improves user experiences by simplifying access to information and streamlining service interactions. This leads to faster issue resolution and a more satisfying overall experience.
Page Load Speed
Slower loading pages can lead to user frustration and a decline in overall satisfaction, making this another important metric to follow.
Monitor page load speed to identify areas for improvement. Optimise page coding, use caching solutions or upgrade hosting services to ensure faster performance.
Portal Site Search
Monitor how users interact with your portal’s search capabilities for valuable insights. Frequent searches for the same topics might indicate content gaps, requiring new knowledge articles or better signposting. Analysing these patterns helps refine and update your resources to serve your audience’s needs better.
Feedback Ratings
You can gather immediate reactions by integrating feedback invites directly into your portal design for nuanced perspectives. This could involve using thumbs-up/down controls for specific knowledge articles. Similarly, you can embed feedback invites within your portal processes. For instance, Jane’s organisation asks people to rate their experience upon completing a multi-step application form, providing a direct measure of satisfaction.
These feedback mechanisms capture real-time sentiments. You can then collate and analyse the collected data using business intelligence tools, like Power BI, to unlock insights and inform decisions.
Rage and Error Clicks
Monitor rage and error clicks to identify usability issues. These clicks occur when users try to interact with non-responsive elements or face errors, revealing their frustration.
Tools like Microsoft Clarity allow you to monitor and analyse these clicks, helping to pinpoint problematic areas, fix errors and correct design flaws that may hamper user experience.
Final Thoughts
Your self-service portal is only successful if it contributes to customer satisfaction and organisational goals. Combining these KPIs will help you effectively measure your portal’s performance to demonstrate and improve ROI.
The Portal Company partners with organisations to provide ongoing support and consultancy, ensuring your portal can evolve and perform at its best. Contact us today so we can help you drive your portal’s success.