The design of your intranet could well be the difference between success and failure. An engaging, easy to use design will see your employees happily logging on and taking full advantage of all the great tools and features. A poor design, however, will leave staff members frustrated and switching. So what does a well-designed intranet look like? What lessons can we learn from the most successful intranets? Here are some best practice intranet examples together with a short commentary as to what makes them stand out. INTRANET DESIGN EXAMPLES Home Page The homepage is critical as it sets the overall look and feel for your intranet. All the best intranets tend to go for a simple, minimalist look that is easy on the eye. Too much text and images can be confusing for the user and make it hard to sort out what’s important. However, visual appeal is important and engaging staff with vibrant images is a great way to immediately entice them in to further explore the content. Photos work best when they are strongly related to the content they sit beside and where possible should show employees doing their work. Clear navigation links drill down into key departments and areas of information allowing staff to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. In this example, they have the latest company news clearly positioned, which then leads on to other key announcements, links and information. And the box style of layout clearly delineates the key information items. 1 Home Page Banners are a great way of linking to pages and help to put content into context. However, make sure that the style and color choice of your banner is in keeping with the overall feel of the site . You don’t want your employees to mistake it for an advertising banner! Another possibility is to consider introducing fat footers as a vehicle for highlighting popular tools, new content or the latest news. The dashboard-style home page provides easy access to the important areas of information your employees need. The use of boxes makes it nice and easy for the user to quickly scan the information and find what they’re looking for. The generous use of white space and a soft gray palette with just a touch of color delivers a clean and simple look Home Page 2 The example on the right-hand side uses a well-chosen, high- resolution image that is not only a beautiful photo in itself. It is also reflective of a strong core point of the Foundation: collaboration. You can also see that they have opted to add "Hub" to the Intranet name. It helps with developing an identity for the intranet site and positions what the site is all about. Home Page Home Page 3 Staff Directory Using a staff directory allows employees to easily connect right across your organization. It’s a simple but very effective tool for improving internal communications and employee engagement and makes for a friendlier, more people-focussed company culture. Another benefit is that employees can access the staff directory whenever they like. It will be a popular tool with new members of staff in particular and many companies have made it part of the onboarding process. 4 After using the staff directory to find a member of staff, user profile pages are an invaluable way of introducing employees to each other. This is great for new starters as well as being able to match an employee up to a skillset that you are looking for. Many companies are using user profiles as a platform for promoting joint working and collaboration across the board. Some intranet solutions like MyHub allow you to create and use custom profile fields within the profile pages, further expanding the options open to organizations for creating an intranet that will meet your needs. 5 User Profiles Storing files centrally within your intranet can solve a number of problems: Storing all company data and information on your intranet means that staff know exactly where to go – there’s no need to search complicated email trails and there are no security concerns like there have been with some cloud file sharing options. With a familiar file explorer interface, staff will be able to quickly and easily share files and documents both internally and externally What’s more, the intranet allows you to provide context around files by linking directly to them from pages. Quite simply, your intranet allows for a more efficient exchang e of information and data across the organization. 6 File Sharing Using accordions or expanding text modules can be a great way of putting a lot of information on a single page. Be careful though as some solutions load all of the content in one go and this can make page load times take forever, frustrating your users. A great example is shown on the right-hand side. The information in each expanding text area doesn’t load until the user clicks the chosen product. Accordions and expanding text are a great idea for mobile responsive intranets as they work better than mega menus on the smaller screen format. 7 Accordions/ Expanding Text This example shows the afore- mentioned home page again and how it responds to different device types and orientations. It’s important that your intranet is mobile responsive so that employees on the move and remote workers can benefit from the improved processes and communications that your intranet will bring and to ensure they remain productive whatever their location. In this context, it’s also important to think carefully about how your content will translate to the smaller screens of smartphones and tablets. On a mobile device it’s even more important to have an uncluttered look that’s easy to find your way around. It’s always a good idea to pilot your intranet before going live to check on how well the content is working for you from a mobile perspective. 8 Mobile Responsive Are you looking to improve employee engagement in your business? One great way to achieve this is to use the intranet’s built-in forms builder to create employee engagement surveys that will help you identify areas of improvement. This could be a snapshot survey in relation to a particular issue or initiative, say for example, seeking staff views and feedback on the new company logo. Or it could be as part of a more formal employee engagement survey that you carry out on a regular basis. Employee disengagement is a proven major cause of increased rates of absenteeism and low productivity so this is a relatively simple and effective way of reducing costs in this area. 9 Employee Engagement Form Forums are a great place for employees to collaborate Whether it’s to share insights and updates or to discuss issues surrounding different projects, having the conversations stored within your intranet and being able to access them from anywhere , even remotely, is a great asset for an organization to utilize. Access to the forum can be restricted to the relevant personnel only by using the intranet’s intuitive administration tools. And it’s possible to set up a system of subscriptions and notifications so that members are automatically notified when there is a new post without the need to directly login to the forum. 10 Intranet Forum Intranet design templates reflect the latest design trends and best practices. They come with the required coding and functionality plus a basic design and graphics. There are several intranet templates to choose from. You just need to pick and mix those that are relevant to your business needs. This way, deploying an intranet platform is much simpler and quicker You can dive straight in and implement the layouts and functionality you want. The intranet design templates ensure your intranet has a consistent look and feel. 11 Templates Your intranet users will find videos very engaging They will also give your intranet visual appeal and variety However, keep the file size in mind. You might want to upload them to a video platform like YouTube first. You can then embed the video on your intranet. That way, you can be certain users can access the footage, whether working from a desktop or mobile device. 12 Videos Embedding cloud files such as Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365 files directly within your intranet pages can provide a powerful solution to a number of business problems. By using page permissions , you can easily restrict access in conjunction with your existing cloud solution permissions. This also opens up a number of options in terms of being able to provide context and training information on the page. Embedding a file directly in the intranet means that multiple users can simultaneously access and edit the data at any time. Updates are made in real time with the intranet automatically saving the information. What’s more, any explanatory notes about how to complete the spreadsheet and why the information is required can be displayed alongside for users to refer to. 13 Embedding Documents We all know that paper-based forms can be a bit of a headache and multiple emails can easily get lost and often contain errors that end up just going backward and forwards. You can use the intranet’s intuitive forms builder to set up your workflow processes or alternatively you can use an embedded G Suite or Office 365 app. With simple drag and drop fields, it’s possible to create a fully customizable form and automate processes in your business. Whether it’s to book holidays, set up an IT support request form, or order new stationery, the intranet makes for a more streamlined and efficient process Forms / Workflow 14 The site map is an important way to organize your information into a workable framework. Be mindful of the navigation : You want to make it as easy as possible for users to find the information they need. The general rule is to use as few clicks as possible. As your site grows, so too will the content. Your intranet governance policy should make it clear who has responsibility for ensuring the site map’s integrity as you still need to provide the user with quick and easy access to information. Site Map 15 All the best intranets are not only easy to set up and use; they are also simple to manage. An easy-to-follow dropdown menu sets out the available tools. Say, for example, you want to change the color scheme in line with your new corporate image. All you need to do is select the appearance tab and click on the color you want from the palette. And it’s the same simple process to change any of the settings on your page . You can also use the administration tool to add content or edit pages , upload graphics or videos , and add or delete users The intuitive software makes ongoing administration a straightforward task. Site Administration 16 Use Single Sign-On ( SSO ) to permit your staff to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications. Use CSS to design and tweak your custom Intranet. Employees receive personalized notifications automatically when there is a new task or post. The chat function allows employees to socialize, collaborate and communicate in real-time. Further Examples 17 INTRANET DESIGN EXAMPLES Now that you’ve seen the various ways on how to design your Intranet, we hope you can’t wait to try it for yourself! If you need assistance, please feel free to reach out for support. Are you still in need of an Intranet? Whether you want to improve Communications Employee engagement or Managing information – We are here to help! 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