Designing the perfect homepage plays an important role in any intranet’s overall success.
You could say that an intranet homepage is the bread and butter of any good intranet and should be treated as one of the most important assets that your intranet has.
But knowing how to create an intranet homepage that gets users excited and engaged can sometimes be a challenge.
In this article we have put together 8 things you should include on your intranet homepage so that you can get the most from your intranet.
The 8 things you should include on your intranet homepage are;
- Branded design
- Colour scheme
- Use of Visuals
- Task Driven Design
- Tailored content
- Social Tools
- Activity stream
- Mobile optimisation
1) Well branded design
The major influence on the perception of your intranet is the way it looks.
It’s important to design an intranet homepage that reflects your company’s core values as well as keeping consistent with the brand’s corporate visual identity.
Giving your intranet homepage a strong brand identity can help to internally reinforce corporate values and messages and signify that the company intranet should be used as a corporate channel. Our Mercury product allows you to build pixel perfect representation of your brand.
2) Use strong colours
Applying a simple colour scheme to your intranet homepage can have a huge impact on the overall look and feel of your intranet and can be an effective way to make your content seem more interesting and appealing.
A great example of this is by our clients Oxford Central. They customised their Mercury intranet with their branding colour scheme to reinforce their brand internally throughout their intranet site.
3) Include eye catching visuals
If you’re wanting to increase user engagement on your intranet homepage then including strong visuals should be a part of your intranet strategy.
Research made by webdam.com found that posts that included images produced 650% higher engagement than text-only posts.
Incorporating strong visuals on your intranet homepage not only helps your users better understand the content that is being presented to them but also facilitates an increased retention rate. Mercury makes it easy to include imagery throughout your intranet.
4) Task driven design
When forming your intranet strategy, it’s important to focus on developing an intranet that is centered around the ‘user’ experience.
That’s why Mercury intranet is focused on the users needs and wants, rather than the businesses needs alone.
We have developed a document management system called docCentrum which can be used with your intranet to allow for training documents to be easily accessed and found.
docCentrum can be simply integrated into your SharePoint intranet and can help your organisation deliver relevant and timely content to each user to ensure that all documents and tasks are complete and up to date.
5) Personalised intranet content
To create a truly successful intranet, it must be personalised to each individual employee.
Research carried out by Smart Insights suggests that 72% of users are more likely to engage with content that has been personalised and tailored to their individual needs.
By improving your intranet usability and providing users with personalised content, employee productivity can be increased. Therefore, it is important to develop an intranet that not only satisfies your business needs but which is focused around employees.
6) Social tools
With modern workplaces now adopting flexible working hours and remote working, many organisations have had to adapt to a digital way of working.
Including social features on your intranet homepage provides users with quick and easy access to communication features which can be used to share knowledge and information across the organisation, building communities across the business.
7) Activity stream
If you’re looking for a way to improve communication at work, then including an activity stream on your intranet homepage is a must.
Activity streams are a great way to simplify the work day and keep your employees in the loop with company information.
8) Mobile optimised intranet
It’s more than likely at some point that your employees are going to need to access important company information when outside of the office.
Making your intranet mobile responsive takes employee communication and collaboration to the next level and provides staff a place where they can access information and documents wherever they are.
With over 3 billion people now using a smartphone, it’s essential that your intranet has been developed to be mobile responsive.
In Conclusion
An intranet homepage should be treated as one of the most valuable assets that your intranet has and should be developed to meet the needs of your employees as well as your business. Applying the tips that we have laid out in this blog post should give you the foundation to start creating the perfect intranet homepage to drive communication and collaboration within your workplace.
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Tony Pounder
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