Best practices for planning, designing, & building an intranet
A well-designed intranet can drastically improve user engagement. Follow these intranet design best practices to create an inviting user experience.
An effective company intranet connects employees and brings your workplace culture to life. Thinking through your intranet plan and design is an important part of making that happen.
You need to approach your intranet the same way you’d tackle a major home renovation project:
- You have a vision. You’d be sure everyone was on board, from the kids to your banker.
- You need to understand costs and timing, and you’d want accurate estimates on both.
- You want to vet and then hire experienced, trusted advisors (like an architect, a general contractor, and a designer) who can help manage all the moving parts.
- You want to know the order of operations, such as when the electrician can begin without getting in the way of the plumber.
The stakes are high, because you wouldn’t want to do this all over again. Remodeling your company intranet is the same.
In this article, we’ll help you develop a thorough plan for your intranet, and give you the tools you need to see it through to the metaphorical move-in day.
The basics of planning and creating a successful intranet
Your intranet needs to deliver a high return on its objectives. However, a lot of factors go into this. Overlooking certain considerations now can lead to an ineffective and failing intranet in the future.
Here are four things you need to get right:
1. Get clear on objectives and priorities
So you’re overhauling your employee intranet, or starting from scratch. Why?
If it’s only because your peers or competitors are also doing it, you’re just keeping up with the Joneses. You need to focus on the challenges and outcomes inherent to this intranet project. What’s driving this initiative right now?
Without a clear set of objectives and priorities, your intranet project can flounder – particularly because people tend to underestimate the scope and level of effort required.
To that end, make a list. What is it that you want or need to achieve? Are you looking to improve culture? Collaboration? Productivity?
Once you’ve formed your list, rank each line item in terms of importance. Your ranking will depend on what matters most right now (knowing you’ll build from there), plus what will improve day-to-day life for those using your intranet in the future.
This list will be your roadmap as you move forward.
2. Formalize ownership and accountability
Intranets require cross-functional coordination and agreement, which is difficult when various groups and leaders have competing priorities.
One department doesn’t often have the mandate or interest in taking it on for the whole organization. So, you need to map out who’s doing what, get them all working together, and then hold people (and teams) accountable for those responsibilities.
In a large organization, any change to the digital workplace must include, or be driven by, a collaborative effort spanning the IT, HR, and communications teams.
3. Get your users engaged from the start
When it comes to new tools and apps in the workplace, a changing landscape can create a lot of confusion. If you don’t take the time to understand what your users want and need, making smart choices about the right technology, approach, and solutions gets a lot harder.
Avoid this by prioritizing employee engagement, and involving users early in the process. Communicate often, ask for ideas, and host user groups to truly understand your audience and their needs. Then make sure that you have the right technology to deliver an engaging and user-friendly experience that keeps people coming back.
4. Put strategy before speed
Some intranet vendors say they can have you up and reaping the ROI rewards in a matter of days. This generally isn’t the case.
Anyone can turn on software. But succeeding with that software takes planning and strategic thinking. Some vendors are just looking for a quick sale and aren’t concerned about how things really pan out. By then, they’ll have moved on to the next opportunity.
You want to see value from your investment as quickly as possible. But jumping to the finish line without following a set of strategic steps is going to severely hurt your chances of success.
When investigating your potential vendors, search for ones that are reputable and highly regarded. (For example, Appspace is a top-rated workplace experience platform on G2.) Make sure that your vendor is also obsessed with your success, so you’ll have quick access to support even well after the deployment period.
Intranet design best practices
The next strategic step you need to take is designing your intranet. We don’t just mean choosing the color for the header. Layout, navigation, and user experience play a huge part in determining success. Let’s discuss how you can get the most out of your intranet’s design.
According to user experience research, a well-designed and interactive intranet can increase employee engagement, productivity, knowledge, satisfaction, and collaboration. It should provide employees with the content, usability, and functionality they need in a quick and intuitive manner.
The value of design can sometimes be underestimated during an intranet implementation, since there are so many other priorities at play. But working closely with your design team along the way will ensure you’re not missing any critical steps.
Here are seven intranet design best practices that can help you understand what goes into creating a vibrant and engaging workplace experience.
1. Begin with UX
User experience (UX) design starts by considering the user’s point of view and expectations. UX encompasses the end-to-end interaction of a user with your intranet – from usability and function to interface design and brand.
Good intranet UX design practices include:
- Establishing layout, taxonomy, and design guidelines that provide a consistent and efficient user experience across the intranet.
- Using descriptive labels, grouped under descriptive headings. A drop-down menu can provide a complete range of navigation options without cluttering up the design.
- Keeping both the content and user interface design clean and organized.
- Making common search topics easy to find and using familiar language to aid their search. For example, use “Benefits Info” instead of “HR Information,” or “Help Desk” instead of “IT.”
- Including easy-to-find CTAs for each page, such as FAQs and contact information.
2. Usability is essential to the user experience
As a subset of UX, usability describes how easy and hassle-free it is (or isn’t!) to use the features provided. Usability affects employee productivity and engagement – because if the company intranet isn’t intuitive, simple, and accessible, people won’t want to use it.
To improve usability, ask employees what they need to get their work done. Identify the top actions or workflows, then make those tasks easy to perform and remember.
Find ways to transition paper-based manual processes to online self-service tools that are fast and easy to use. Note that functionality doesn’t necessarily equal usability – but when taken together, they determine the overall usefulness of your intranet.
Keep an eye on these five usability principles:
- Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
- Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
- Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re-establish proficiency?
- Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
- Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
3. Simple, intuitive UI design
User interface (UI) design is a key factor in influencing intranet usability and supporting the user experience.
Simplicity lies at the heart of an effective UI. If you keep the UI design simple and intuitive, it leads to a lower barrier to understanding – and usability soars.
For example, effective UI design uses intuitive drop-down menus and consistent calls to action. These measures drive the user toward something they’ll want to see, like a frequently used form or a repository of related documentation.
4. Set the tone with your home page
Your home page is where employees develop their first impression of your intranet. It’s also the page they’ll see every time they visit. Be sure to take the time to carefully consider the content and visual elements you’ll include.
Here are a few ideas for the design of your homepage:
- A welcome message
- Links to clear calls to action such as “Meet the Leadership Team” or “Get Started”
- Promotional callouts for the latest featured content and trending topics
- Obvious visual cues to key areas where users can quickly access the information they need
- Targeted information based on employee roles, geographies, departments, etc.
5. Keep your brand up front
Your intranet should have a personality that matches your corporate culture. A connected, cohesive, and clear brand experience gives employees a strong sense of belonging to the company.
To ensure your intranet feels like home to employees, use a consistent color scheme and brand elements in your corporate intranet design that complement your culture and values.
6. Make visual design a top priority
Create a user-friendly intranet experience with a visual design that guides users in the right direction. Things like visual weight and proportions give users clues about how a function should be used and provide context to the object.
Designers can combine visual elements (color, shapes, typography, imagery, iconography, and texture) with design principles (contrast, visual weight, hierarchy, proximity, alignment, space, proportion, balance, movement, repetition, etc.) to create an accessible, well-branded digital workplace.
Meanwhile, a visual hierarchy of information is equally important. If everything looks the same, navigation gets difficult. Contrast and visual cues influence the order in which the human eye perceives things, so use these elements to organize content by importance. The more important something is, the more visible it should be.
7. Design for accessibility
What if certain intranet users have trouble seeing, hearing, or reading? You need to plan for them, too.
Accessibility is the science of making intranet information and functionality universally available to every user, regardless of their unique circumstances.
Here are a few ways to achieve an accessible intranet design that guides users to the right information:
- Interface components must be presented in ways that all users can perceive, even if they have impaired vision or hearing. Consider screen readers, magnifiers, voice-recognition software, etc.
- Ensure your content can be digested with clarity and speed. Readability is influenced by design and layout; the chief factors include dimension, spacing, and alignment. You can help users with low vision by paying special attention to color, contrast, and font size.
- Colors should be consistent with the W3C‘s accessibility standards, specifically their color contrast ratios.
Ready to design a successful intranet?
Your intranet is more than just a repository for files. It’s the digital heart of your company culture. Designing an effective, usable intranet will both reflect and promote your culture, as well as make your employees more engaged.
At Appspace, we’ve learned a lot from helping 3,000 customers (including 170+ of the Fortune 500) build out their workplace experience solutions. The biggest takeaway? No two organizations are the same. What works for your neighbor might not work for you. That’s why you need a solution flexible enough to fit your unique needs, both now and in the future.
Today, you’re building your intranet. Tomorrow, you might be spinning up digital signage in your HQ, or incorporating desk booking tools to improve the in-office experience. Your best bet is to plan ahead. Chart out how your workplace experience footprint will grow beyond just your intranet, so you can seamlessly roll in new tools as you need them.
