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Top 10 Considerations when Planning an Intranet

Redesign

W H I T E P A P E R

By Praveen Ramanathan

June 16, 2010

E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y Intranet sites are quite different from external public-facing sites in a number of ways:

� Intranets are usually used only by internal employees vs. public sites which are used by customers, prospective

employees, and other constituents.

� Intranet content and tools are tailored towards employees and other internal stakeholders. There is not as much

focus on product information which is usually found on external customer-facing sites. Types of content or tools

that are found on an Intranet site include:

� Internal news and events

� Contact information

� Human Resources information

� Procedural or operational documentation

� Links to access to ERP, Sales and other customer database repositories

� From an infrastructure perspective, an Intranet is configured differently from a public facing site:

� Installed behind the firewall: Access to the Intranet and Intranet applications from outside the firewall

would require a VPN client with strict password change rules.

� More standardized access: Intranets need to be designed and developed to incorporate Corporate IT

standards. These may require standard OS and browser versions. Firewall rules may restrict linking or

access to certain internal repositories and/or external sites based on user profile. Also, corporate

bandwidth usage may be throttled and monitored depending on the nature of the user’s role within the

organization.

� Usually, in a single language as most organizations have corporate language standards

Given these differences, outlined below are the top 10 considerations to consider when planning for an Intranet

design/redesign. This list is also illustrative of the techniques and procedures a usability expert might incorporate as part

of an Intranet redesign.

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Top 10 Considerations when Planning an Intranet Redesign

1.1 Understanding the user base and the key stakeholders

Internal user profiles (or personas) help identify the overall nature and behavioral tendencies of the audience for

the site. As a first step, it is important to develop the major personas for the site, understanding their individual

needs and site goals.

Site personas fall into three levels: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary based on their importance as a site

constituent. It is important to maintain about 6-7 personas for each level as this will ultimately help prioritize

site/page content, and maintain clear traversal paths.

As part of our empirical experience in generating internal personas, we have noticed that they tend to fall into two

major types – They are either based on department functions (e.g. Procurement Specialist, HR Administrator) or

by organization levels (e.g. Executive, Senior Staff, Junior staff etc.). By itself, neither approach is good or bad –

just different ways to represent and understand the key constituents of the site. As part of conducting internal

stakeholder interviews, the Usability expert can help determine the right approach for an organization.

1.2 Focus on the key content and tools

Many Intranets have great content but they tend to be buried under loads of irrelevant or outdated content (which

usually occurs over time). Intranet redesign projects are great situations to perform a content/tool audit, identifying

the most useful ones, and marking others for archival or for deletion.

It is also important, once the key personas have been identified, to align persona goals and needs with the most

relevant content/tools. We call this “Power Content”. This also helps ensure that in the process of archiving and

deletion, Power Content is not lost.

Through an affinity modeling workshop, a usability expert will usually help lead an organization through a series of

steps to list relevant content/tools, identify content/tools that can be archived, categorize them and then prioritize

them based on importance for each persona. Please note that this step is not just for Power Content but for other

types of content (“Information Content”, “Emergency Content” etc.) as well.

1.3 Make it easy to navigate and accomplish key tasks

Once the content/tool needs are identified for personas, it is important to ensure that users can actually get to

them easily. For instance, Power Content is used on a frequent basis. Having persistent links (usually in the

primary, meta or utility navigation) across all pages on the site allows users to get to Power Content from

anywhere on the site.

A usability expert will utilize either card-sorting, use case modeling, process flows or usability tests to identify and

map the overall navigation metaphor for the Intranet. For instance, card-sorting techniques help identify how end-

users think about categorizing and accessing content. Usability tests on an existing Intranet can help identify

problem areas and adapted user practices that may need to be retained going forward.

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Top 10 Considerations when Planning an Intranet Redesign

1.4 Utilize and link to other information and resource centers

While Intranets can be a central corporate resource for all employees and stakeholders, it does not require that

the Intranet system actually house all of the content. In fact, part of ensuring a high-level of usability is to link off to

other repositories of content or tools that might be more tuned to handle specific content needs. This also helps

the Intranet administration staff to be lean and not be over-burdened with managing an enormous amount of

content.

For instance, corporate Wikis can be a great way to allow employees to collaborate and work on shared

documents. The Intranet could provide a portal for site users to access the Wikis without actually housing the wiki

content. This also allows for wiki content to be archived separately when the content has lost relevance.

Discussion groups are another example.

From a process perspective, a usability expert can use several techniques and artifacts such as site maps or

page description diagrams to ensure information management best practices. Page Description Diagrams help

identify key content for a specific page or set of pages on the site. Site Maps can illustrate external repositories,

navigation paths to those repositories, as well as number-of-clicks to content/tools.

1.5 Plan for technology, access and security considerations

Intranets are usually maintained and accessed behind the corporate firewall. Corporate rules often mandate how

the content is handled, managed, and shared. There are also bandwidth considerations, specific supported

browser/platforms, password specifications, uptime/downtime coverage times etc. For instance, users may

access the Intranet through a VPN client on restricted bandwidth connection from home. Sales staff may require

fast access since they may often access the Intranet on a public wifi network (e.g. Starbucks, airport terminals,

hotels). Also, in today’s day and age, the prevalence of a multitude of devices (e.g. iPad, Blackberries, Droids,

iPhone) may require consideration.

Through technology reviews and customer interviews, the usability expert can help identify such constraints and

design the Intranet site appropriately. It becomes important to have the usability expert paired with an appropriate

IT administrator + technology expert who can inform the design process appropriately.

1.6 Think glocally

Intranet users for global firms work often across regional boundaries and time-frames. They also tend to have

content needs specific to their regional or local area. Different employees may work on shared projects at different

times and may join/leave project groups depending on the nature of work. There may also be need to handle

multi-lingual content in certain areas of the Intranet. A flexible Intranet design will adapt and provide for global as

well as local (glocal) considerations.

Understanding the needs of a global audience is key to incorporating glocal Intranet considerations. This data is

captured through stakeholder interviews, focus groups and/or card-sorting exercises.

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Top 10 Considerations when Planning an Intranet Redesign

1.7 Standardize the look and feel

The Intranet should align with the corporate style guide to ensure compliance with brand and positioning

standards. While the visual appeal needs to convey the corporate culture of the firm (e.g. updated, sophisticated,

energetic) and incorporate similar branding elements as other sites, the Intranet should also be visually different

so that users always know that they are on a restricted, employee-only area.

From a usability perspective, it is important to define standard layouts and templates to ensure streamlined and

usable interfaces. Intranet users (especially content producers) should not be allowed to generate ad-hoc design,

layouts or styles which would make it difficult for content consumers to meet their needs.

Many organizations have corporate disability and accessibility regulations that need to be considered. The

Intranet interface and ultimately the HTML Templates need to handle any considerations such as W3C

compliance, Section 508 as necessary.

1.8 Deploy on an appropriate technology platform

Given the focus on the importance of the Intranet meeting the day-to-day corporate business needs, Intranet

governance procedures can often fall by the wayside. Reasons may include an inability to implement necessary

corporate procedures or non-existent/minimal archival procedures. Therefore, it is important to plan for and

incorporate tools that streamline and help IT govern the entire life-cycle of content (creation, publishing, archival

and deletion).

This can be handled through the evaluation, selection, and implementation on a scalable, robust and maintainable

technology platform (e.g. Microsoft Sharepoint).

1.9 Advertise and market it

External web sites (especially customer-facing) have associated marketing and advertising budgets to promote

site content and news to customers. Intranet budgets tend to be much smaller. There is also not as much of a

focus to market Intranet sites/content internally and user interest tends to fall off after the first week or so.

Our perspective is that an Intranet can be more effective and better leveraged if appropriately marketed (although

it is important to be smart about it, given the limited available budget). Marketing practices include having

relevant, up-to-date content, associated internal targeted email campaigns to highlight the interesting content, an

appropriate metrics tool with frequent analysis of the usage data. Any Intranet redesign project needs to plan and

incorporate considerations for launch marketing as well as ongoing post-launch marketing.

1.10 Test early and often

Once the Intranet is in place and users start using the site, it is important to collect data about usage patterns,

what works, what does not work etc. This can be handled through a number of mechanisms such as employee

surveys, usability tests or A/B testing. This will ensure that the Intranet evolves with changes in business

strategies, changes in user roles/responsibilities and advancements in technology.

An ideal Intranet plan would incorporate frequent touch-points with core stakeholder groups after launch of the

site to ensure that the Intranet continues to meet the needs of the site audience.