6 tips to build an intranet that your employees will love to use

Do you know what’s worse than having no intranet? Launching one that nobody uses. If you are planning to build a new intranet or rebuild the old one, these are 6 essential things you should take into consideration throughout the developing process.

1) Keep it visually appealing

“Dress to impress” – it applies not only to people but also to products. As humans, we are naturally attracted to appealing, well-designed objects. If you want to impress your employees with the upcoming intranet, dress it nicely, give it a decent outfit. However, the challenge to most intranet owners is how to build an intranet with the right “look and feel”. If you have little or no experience of UX and UI, consult graphic designers to create a visually appealing intranet, or use a ready-to-go intranet solution like Involv.

Involv offers 3 visually appealing templates that allow you to customize the colors, theme and logo to match your company brand. Restructure the layout as you like, or create a new layout from scratch.

2) Keep it matched to your employees’ needs

Your employees are the key users of your intranet. If you want your users to use the company intranet on a daily basis and get the most out of it, build it based on their needs. You might want to add many features to your intranet, but are they necessary? My advice is to do some research on who your users are and what they need;

• Who are they? Are they familiar with working on an intranet? If the majority of your users are non-tech savvy, you might consider keeping your intranet as simple as possible.
• What is your business communication style? How do your employees communicate?
• What do they need to do their jobs better?

Your intranet should accommodate the workforce needs, whateve they are. Don’t forget to get people involved in testing the platform. Being aware of these things can help you understand what you need to do to build an intranet that is useful, meaningful, and valuable for your company.

3) Keep it easy to navigate

Don’t make your employees get lost in a sea of information. That explains the importance of having a smart menu and navigation that allow users to quickly identify where they need to go. Is the content well-organized and are documents properly categorized? Is it easy for users to locate the information when they need it? A well-designed navigation means that users can easily access the content they want without hurdles. That’s your goal.

A great tip is to get users involved when building the navigation. Those people who frequently use the contents know best how to group them in the right category.

4) Keep it relevant and engaging

Do you know why people keep checking Facebook every five minutes? Because the news feed is always refreshed. Don’t launch your intranet and leave it covered under 5 meters of dust. Constantly publish new contents, identify the people who actively use the intranet and use them as intranet ambassadors, bring out the topics that create engagement with your users. That requires of course some research on your users’ interests, behaviors and attitudes.

5) Keep it fast to browse

Yes, the loading speed of your intranet is crucially important. The main purpose of intranet is to help people work more productive. If it’s too slow to load or to upload, no one will use it. Your employees will expect the same level of performance from their intranet as any other app or platform such as Google Docs, Drive, Dropbox, etc. You can easily examine the speed of an intranet by requesting a trial to test how the platform performs.

6) Keep it mobile

Last but not least, make sure that your intranet is optimized for any kind of device. As everybody now is mobile, if your intranet is not mobile friendly, you might fail to keep people updated. It will be better if your employees are able to keep the intranet in their pocket, I mean, the mobile intranet app. Today more and more employees don’t work at a desk or work remotely. A mobile intranet app is a great tool to keep all employees connected wherever they stay.

In conclusion:

Developing an intranet that your employees love to use requires a lot of work. Instead of starting from scratch, there is a way to be one step ahead by using a ready-to-go intranet solution like Involv. With Involv, you have all the most requested features for your intranet and a visually appealing design. Other advantages are the ease and speed to implement, an attractive pricing and the fact that you don’t need any deep technical knowledge. Want to see Involv in action? Watch our demo here!

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash