INTRANET

DESIGN
EXAMPLES
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.
 1
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.
Home Too much text and images can be confusing
Page 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.
2 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
Home
Home keeping with the overall feel of
Page
Page 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.
3 The example on the right-hand
Home
Home side uses a well-chosen, high-
resolution image that is not only
Page
Page 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.
 4
Using a staff directory allows
Staff employees to easily connect
right across your organization.
Directory
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.
 5 After using the staff directory to
User find a member of staff, user
profile pages are an
Profiles 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.
 6
Storing files centrally within your
intranet can solve a number of
problems:

Storing all company data and

File information on your intranet
means that staff know exactly
Sharing 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
exchange of information and
data across the organization.
 7
Using accordions or expanding
Accordions/ text modules can be a great
Expanding way of putting a lot of
information on a single page.
Text
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.
 8
This example shows the afore-
mentioned home page again and
how it responds to different
device types and orientations.

Mobile It’s important that your intranet is

Responsive 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.
 9
Are you looking to improve
employee engagement in your
business?

One great way to achieve this is

Employee to use the intranet’s built-in
Engagement forms builder to create
employee engagement surveys
Form 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.
10 Forums are a great place for
employees to collaborate.

Intranet Whether it’s to share insights

and updates or to discuss
Forum 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.
 11
Templates 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.
12
Videos 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.
 13
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
Embedding problems.
Documents 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.
 14
We all know that paper-based
Forms / forms can be a bit of a headache
and multiple emails can easily get
Workflow 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.
15
Site The site map is an important
way to organize your information
Map 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.
 16
Site All the best intranets are not only
easy to set up and use; they are
Administration 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.
 17
Further
Examples

Use Single Sign-On (SSO) to permit your staff to Use CSS to design and tweak your custom
use one set of login credentials to access Intranet.
multiple applications.

Employees receive personalized notifications The chat function allows employees to socialize,
automatically when there is a new task or post. collaborate and communicate in real-time.
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!

MyHub Intranet is one of the easiest-to-learn and fastest-to-launch intranet solutions.

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