Nowadays Intranets are recognized as important business tools but there are many out there making some common mistakes. A successful Intranet needs a lot of work and careful thought to make your staff collaborate and share information but mistakes can limit its success, so it's better to test your Intranet design for mistakes before getting too late! Here are some words of wisdom for you to keep you away from traveling that road of mistakes: Complex To Use Intranet should be intuitive, not complex. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to use as there is nothing worse than clicking here and there for retrieving the information. And users won't mind clicking if they know that they are searching in the right direction, but if they are not confident then more clicks can blow their minds.
Cloudy Navigation A poor navigation system can confuse users. Navigation link should take users to the next level only, not into an entire different section. There must be a breadcrumb trail so that user can easily navigate without any disorientation. Uncategorized Information Un-categorization keep users away from the information. So to avoid this problem group the similar things together and make sure the words used in the categorization make sense to users and are descriptive of the information found within that category. Better to avoid bulky categorizations and keep most common categories on the top. Universal Homepage Some contents are relevant for most of the users, but not for all as each department in an office needs specific information only. Employees of different departments require different information, displaying all the information on the welcome page just doesn't work as everyone is interested in What's For Me not in What's For Everybody. Cluttered Welcome-Pages Welcome-Pages should be as simple as they can be so that users can easily find things they seek. It should not contain all the possible links; to keep your welcome-pages effective keep only those links which are important. Creating A Single-Way Communication Platform Design Intranet for employees not for the corporate. So to make your employees get involved ask them for their suggestions that what features they need to get their job done better. Avoid to make complex approval process for publishing over the Intranet by employees as strict control stops users from participation. Many Sign-Ups Signing up every time to take a step ahead hesitate your users to go further. So better to keep a single sign-up step open the other doors automatically for them. As already too many passwords are there for users to learn, so it's better to give them a stress-free experience. Ignore Security Issues Everyone has some official data that can't be shared with everyone out there, so it's must to have some kind of security lock where employees can keep their official data secure such as financial data, strategies, organizational plans etc. No Integration Integrate your corporate Intranet with external sources such as News, Stock Price, Press Release so that users can interact with the outer world and can experience a better interface. Integration also increases the interest of users in Intranet. No Search Option Keep a search tool for the convince of users so that they are not supposed to go through each file and document while searching for something particular. An easy-to-search tool save efforts and time of your users and make your system more user-friendly. We hope we made it – the wrongs you might end up in while developing your Intranet.
The contributor of this post is an award-winning web development company, PixelCrayons. The company specializes in social networking websites /applications development and corporate intranet development, though ecommerce, CMS and mobile also come among its primary solutions.