Part of the Intranet Usability Guidelines Series

Navigational elements are crucial building blocks in intranet design because navigation and page layout make people aware that information exists, and helps them to find what they need. Menu design significantly impacts employee performance and success on intranets. The content must be organized such that the categories, hierarchy, and terms make sense to people.

Once users find the page they need, they don’t want to spend time wading through pages of text, especially if they’re not sure their efforts will produce the answers they need. Poorly organized pages can make it impossible for users to find what they’re looking for.

This 220-page report contains 100 design recommendations based on our usability research. Discussions and 174 screenshot illustrations supplement the findings.

Benefits

• Understand how users explore and use the intranet so you can implement an IA and use terminology that works best for them
• Examples of and considerations for different navigation frameworks and examples of good implementations
• Checklist of 100 recommendations for designing effective intranet navigation and page layouts

Topics

• Designing simple intranet navigation
• Best practices for good navigation
• Indicators of a poor navigation scheme
• Internal users are not intranet experts
• Information Architecture (IA) based on department
• IA based on topic, tasks, and needs
• Starting point for task-based primary navigation
• IA based on alphabetic list
• Evaluation framework for your IA
• Terminology for menus and links
• Navigation elements
• Consistency and persistence
• Opening new browser windows
• Intranet content
• Writing for the web
• Text layout
• Tone and style
• Acronyms and initials
• Images
• Help and tips

Download report excerpt (2MB PDF)

Research Method

The information in these reports is based on three separate rounds of user research with company employees as participants. We used two different research methods:

• One-on-one usability testing
• Field studies, during which we observed employees as they went about their normal work

In total, 176 people tested 42 intranets. The studies took place in the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, United Arab Emirates, and China (Hong Kong).