The Ultimate Cheat Sheet To Building A Social Intranet

If you’re an IT Manager or business owner and you’re thinking about building, buying or expanding an social intranet solution for your company, you’ll need to answer some key questions before making the big jump. Starting early and being clear on its purpose, its users and its key functions could save you a lot of time and money down the road. Intranets can completely change a company’s way of working, both in efficiency and productivity. So making sure you get it right from the outset is essential to your success.

Whether you’re an administrator tasked with building and buying it for your company or you’re here as a small to medium-sized business-owner, follow these simple cheat sheet tips to get ahead.

1. Keep it simple

Overloading or over-complicating your intranet service could not only frustrate your employees, it could even result in users avoiding it or using it only for simple email functions. We understand you have big dreams for how your employees will communicate and how you want them to work together but doing too much too soon can sometimes have the opposite effect.

2. Administer it in-house

If you build your intranet so that it requires quite a bit of outside assistance and support, you’re going to further frustrate your employees. Having a simple solution that you can administer in-house and that allows you to make any changes yourself will help bring everyone on board. Keep in mind, there will already be learning for everyone when you eventually launch your service so over-complicating it with outside involvement will be added pressure for you and your staff.

3. Keep your end-users involved at all points of the project

The best thing you can do when building your own intranet is keeping your users involved at all times. While you might have a dream in mind for the end product, it’s your users that can tell you exactly how it needs to function and how it can add efficiency at each stage of the process. Like we said before, if your users don’t understand it or don’t feel that it adds value, they simply won’t use it. Usability is all about how your intranet is structured in terms of navigation, content layout and more. Hold consultations, in house workshops, questionnaires and polls about how your staff communicate, their day-to-day functions, and what’s important for them in an intranet.

In order to have a great intranet, some key considerations for usability are how long it takes employees to locate resources, how many clicks it takes to access certain popular links and if menu items are labeled in a way that makes sense, etc.

4. Make your intranet design engaging and appealing

Lastly, choosing an engaging intranet design is just as important to your users’ experience.

Choose a theme that is simple and modern and avoid using out of date features or colours that don’t add to the experience.

You shouldn’t need a graphic design degree to be able to design your intranet either. Whatever intranet service you decide is right for you, ensure that you can change your design according to your business look and feel. You might even want to change your theme throughout the year to reflect the time of year and to keep your employees motivated. For example, doing a spooky theme for Halloween or a winter theme for the holiday season.

So there you have it. Keep it simple, administer it in-house, keep your users involved at every step and ensure your design is appealing and engaging. Keep these 4 tips in mind and you will be on your way to building an excellent intranet service for your business.

Precurio has built its reputation on simplicity, user-friendly design and supreme functionality. It’s easy to administer and simple enough for everyone in your company- from administration to CE level- to intuitively assume its functionality. Plus, if you’re interested in additional services, we can add these at your discretion giving you the ultimate say in how and when you build more services. Because you are in charge of how you design your intranet in terms of navigation, organization, menu structure, etc., you can make your intranet solution simple, aesthetically engaging and efficient for your end users to use.

With Precurio, YOU are in charge. Call us for a free demo and find out how you can get a free 30 day trial. Don’t delay!