5 questions that lead to a better intranet

home services portfolio intranet ideas contact us

Idea Archives

July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
July 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
April 2006
May 2006
July 2006
October 2006
November 2006

Previous Posts

5 questions that lead to a better intranet

Monday, November 29, 2004

Consider your intranet from a user's perspective with these five questions:

Can I find it? The intranet must be easy to find.
If your users never get to the first page of your intranet, everything else is irrelevant. To make sure they do:

Set the intranet as the home page of every employee's web browser
Consider an integrated intranet toolbar
Make a tour of the intranet part of the new hire orientation process
Ensure access to all online systems is via the intranet

Does it work? The intranet must be fast, reliable and available.
Nothing saps confidence in the intranet like slow response times or, even worse, downtime. To prevent this:

Use an expert architect to configure your server
Monitor your server's consumption of bandwidth, memory, and disk space
Every few minutes, test the intranet's availability using an automated script running on a separate server or by using a monitoring service.
Have a backup server that can be up and running within a few minutes
Run disaster recovery simulations to make sure you can handle an unexpected problem

Is it easy to use? The intranet must be easy to use, read and navigate.
Your goal is to eliminate question marks. Everything should be completely obvious. Follow these tips:

The page should clearly answer these questions: What site is this? What page am I on? What are the major sections? What are my options? How can I search?
Emphasize the intranet's high-priority tasks
Make it easy to scan text. Write good microcontent.
Do what other sites do. Follow internet conventions for things like navigation and hyperlinks.
See Jakob Nielsen's Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003

Does it make me feel confident? Good looking sites inspire confidence.
Attractive intranets are attributed expertise and trustworthiness. Why? It could be the "halo effect": according to a 1972 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, good looking children are viewed as being less naughty than their less attractive peers for the same behaviors. Same with your intranet. To make it pretty:

Use an expert interface designer to design your core templates
Create "design patterns" for your intranet, which help developers to elegantly solve common interface problems

Does it meet my needs? Your intranet's objectives must align with user goals.
This is the most important question--see last week's article for more details. To meet users' needs:

Figure out who your users are
Find out their goals
Help them achieve those goals

Users unconsciously ask and answer these questions within seconds upon visiting your intranet. If they answer no to any question, they won't be back. Make sure they answer yes. Seriously consider the steps you've taken to ensure users have a positive experience with your intranet.

About the Author

I'm Chris McGrath, an intranet consultant in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I've been working on intranets since 1997, and on plain ol' web sites for even longer. I run One Intranets, the firm that co-created ThoughtFarmer -- an enterprise collaboration platform for Windows-based intranets.