Good intranet design is about making something intuitive and enjoyable to use, not just visually appealing. And when it comes to your company intranet, design can be the deciding factor in whether staff actually use it every day or quietly ignore it.
So how do you get intranet design right?
Good intranet design balances three things: form (how visual elements guide the user), functionality (how the intranet works for the user), and experience (how it feels). A well-designed intranet is finely tuned to your organisation, your teams, and the way they work.
The best intranet designs, across all industries, share common principles. In this article, we cover 12 intranet design best practices to help you build an intranet your staff will actually want to use.
1. How does user experience shape intranet design?
User experience (UX) is the foundation of any intranet design that works. Without it, even the most feature-rich platform will struggle with low adoption. Employees need an intranet they find fast, clear, and easy to navigate from day one.
Key UX elements to consider include:
- Consistent layout, categories and style guidelines. Having guidelines in place for how information is classified and added will keep your intranet clear and user-friendly over time.
- Descriptive labelling. Simple, familiar terms like "Help Desk" instead of "I.T." make it faster for staff to find what they need, especially when paired with clear icons.
- Clear calls to action (CTAs). Well-placed CTAs guide employees to logical next steps. No one should be left wondering where to go or what to click.
Elcom were awesome throughout the build process and beyond. Our account manager, trainer and the helpdesk team really helped us understand how to best use the product for our needs. We’re going to keep building on our solution, so it continues being a valuable resource for the business.
Ryan Davey
Associate Director - Operations
STAR Group
Read the case study
One client example: STAR Group worked with Elcom to build an intranet that made key processes easy to find and follow. Their associate director described the Elcom team as "awesome throughout the build process and beyond," noting that the account manager and helpdesk helped them understand how to get the best out of the platform for their specific needs.
It’s also important to consider the UX subset of intranet usability, which refers to how easy the system is to use as employees go about their important activities. Great usability isn’t typically noticeable, but poor usability will be impossible to ignore. Usability often includes:
- How easy it is for employees to use the intranet for the first time, or after a long absence
- How efficiently employees can perform their key tasks using the intranet
- Whether common errors can be navigated or eliminated, and
- The level of satisfaction that employees feel with the intranet.
For more on this topic, check out the recording of our webinar How to Improve Intranet Design, UX and Engagement.
2. How do you choose colours and branding for your intranet?
Your intranet's colour palette should reflect your organisation's identity and make it easy for staff to instantly recognise the platform as their own. Two complementary colours that are meaningful to your brand is a solid starting point.
A neutral accent colour can add depth without creating visual noise. Stick to tones that will remain pleasing over time. Neon or trend-driven colours tend to date quickly and can cause eye fatigue during long working sessions.
Vita Group's intranet is a good example of this in practice. Each brand within their organisation has its own colour scheme, with ample white space and a personalised view for every employee. The design is cohesive without being rigid.
Consistent branding across your intranet reinforces a sense of belonging and makes the platform feel like a natural part of your workplace rather than a separate tool.
3. Why does a clean background matter for intranet readability?
A clean, solid background makes it easier to highlight important headlines, sections, and content, and it keeps the platform looking professional over time. Too much variation in background colours or heavy use of gradients can fragment the visual layout and make it harder to scan.
Gradients and busy patterns affect readability and add clutter. Solid colours tend to produce a cleaner, more modern result that holds up well as your content grows and changes.
You can see in the example from Cabrini's award-winning intranet, Cabinet. The homepage has a clean white background, clear section headers and a layout staff can navigate quickly. This helps to emphasise readabilityand usability.
See the full Cabrini case study.
4. What font choices work best for intranet design?
Legibility is the primary requirement for intranet typography. Consistent fonts, alignment, and spacing throughout the platform improve reading speed and support a seamless workflow.
Sans-serif fonts are generally the best choice for on-screen reading. Most employees are accustomed to them in digital environments. Serif fonts can work for longer passages of text, though they're less common in modern intranet design.
Keep font sizes consistent across content types, and make sure your chosen font renders cleanly at various screen sizes, particularly on mobile devices where more and more staff are accessing intranets.
Nielsen Norman Group's 2024 intranet usability research across 57 intranets found that standardised design elements, including consistent typography, are a hallmark of the top-performing platforms.
Read the NNg intranet usability guidelines.
5. How should you organise content to improve intranet usability?
Content organisation has a direct effect on how easy your intranet is to use. Well-structured content reduces the time staff spend searching and increases the likelihood they'll find what they need on the first attempt.
Breaking longer text into shorter sections or blocks is a good starting point. A mix of text and images prevents walls of text that nobody wants to scroll through. Design elements like dividers, bullet points, subheadings, and tables all help guide the user through more complex information.
According to a Forrester Research report, employees spend roughly 20% of their working week searching for information. A well-organised intranet directly reduces that overhead. (Forrester Research)
Tables are particularly useful for comparing options, displaying policies, or presenting data in a format that's easy to skim. If your content requires a lot of detail, a table is often clearer than multiple paragraphs.
Northcott's intranet, Nula, a structured IA and intuitive department pages that replaced a confusing folder-based system.
Nula now attracts over 15,000 sessions and 800 document downloads every week. See the full Northcott case study.
6. How do integrated tools improve intranet design and adoption?
A well-designed interface means little if staff still have to jump between disconnected systems to do their work. Integrating the tools employees already rely on, such as Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Salesforce, directly into the intranet creates a consistent experience and reduces friction.
Good integration supports both UX and adoption. When tools talk to each other seamlessly within one platform, employees save time and are far more likely to use the intranet as their primary workspace. For Australian organisations managing hybrid or distributed teams, this kind of consolidation also reduces the admin overhead of managing multiple logins and separate platforms.
Hino Australia's Hino Central platform uses the Elcom platform to build an interconnected intranet, dealer portals and ERP integrations. Different stakeholders have access to personalised views and interfaces that pulls data from multiple systems. This means that staff can't tell where the intranet ends and the other systems begin. See the full Hino Australia case study.
Elcom's platform includes pre-built connectors for Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Salesforce, so you're not starting from scratch. Learn more about Elcom's intranet software and how integration works in practice.
7. What does accessibility mean for intranet design?
Accessibility means designing your intranet so it can be used by as many people as possible, across all ages, locations, abilities, and devices. For Australian organisations, this aligns with WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines and broader obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
Practically, this means your intranet should work seamlessly across desktop, tablet, and smartphone, and any third-party integration should be accessible through a single login. Visual design choices matter too. High contrast colour combinations reduce eye strain and support staff with vision impairments. The ability to adjust font sizes is a simple feature that makes a real difference for many users.
For frontline workers and field staff, accessibility often comes down to mobile access. Organisations like GJK Facility Services, with 2,500-plus field staff and no requirement for a corporate email address, rely on mobile-first intranet design to keep their entire workforce connected. See the full GJK case study.
See more Elcom client examples.
8. How does mobile design affect intranet adoption?
Mobile-optimised intranet design is no longer optional. More than half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices, and many Australian workforces, particularly in industries like construction, healthcare, retail, and facilities management, rely on smartphones as their primary work device.
Designing for mobile means more than making your desktop intranet responsive. It means rethinking layout priorities for a smaller screen. Key considerations include:
- Collapsed navigation menus. Main menus that work on desktop should automatically collapse into a clean hamburger menu on mobile, keeping the screen uncluttered
- Shorter paragraphs and chunked content. Content formatted into smaller sections is easier to read on a phone screen than long text blocks
- Reduced scroll depth. Use filters and smart categorisation so staff can find what they need without endless scrolling
- Retained essential elements only. On mobile, keep home button, notifications, and main menu. Remove page elements that add noise without adding value
Always preview your intranet design across multiple device types before launch. What looks clean on a desktop can become cluttered and hard to use on a phone screen.
Quick checklist: Is your intranet mobile-ready?
- Does the main navigation collapse cleanly on mobile?
- Are paragraphs short enough to read without zooming?
- Can staff find what they need in three taps or less?
- Do images and tables render correctly on smaller screens?
- Is your intranet accessible without a corporate email address?
9. How does visual design guide users through your intranet?
Visual design actively shapes how staff move through your intranet. Research suggests around 90% of the information the brain processes is visual, which means layout, hierarchy, and imagery have a significant effect on how quickly staff find what they need.
Practical ways to use visual design effectively include:
- Choosing layouts, colours, and graphics that reflect your company culture and internal branding
- Setting up the right intranet dashboard to present the information each user actually needs
- Using visual hierarchy to give more weight to important content and guide the eye naturally down the page
- Supporting text with icons and images for faster communication
- Using video for key messages, particularly for staff who may not engage with long-form written content
- Offering a virtual tour for first-time users, with the option to switch it off once they're familiar
For more design inspiration, explore our successful intranet design examples.
10. What are the best practices for intranet navigation?
Clear, simple navigation is one of the most important factors in intranet adoption. The fewer clicks it takes to find something, the more likely staff are to use the platform regularly.
A good rule is to keep top-level menus to a maximum of seven options, with sub-menus handling additional depth. Mega menus work well for intranets with a large volume of content, though they're not right for every organisation. Your intranet provider can advise on what suits your structure.
Visual hierarchy in navigation helps staff distinguish what's most important at a glance. You can go further by personalising navigation menus for specific users, teams, or departments so each person sees the links most relevant to them. Vita Group uses this approach effectively, with a mega menu that structures a large volume of content without overwhelming users.
Vita Pulse, Vita Group's intranet, uses a personalised mega menu to serve 1,600 staff across five brands without overwhelming any single user. Vita Group mega menu is a strong example of task-oriented navigation for a large organisation. See the full Vita Group case study.
For a deeper dive, read our guide on intranet navigation best practices.
11. Why is white space important in intranet design?
White space makes content easier to scan, easier to read, and easier to act on. It's both a visual and functional element of good design.
Readability directly affects how efficiently your staff can complete tasks on the intranet. Cluttered pages slow people down. Pages with room to breathe let employees focus on the content rather than fighting the layout.
White space also makes an intranet feel modern and well-considered. It signals that thought has gone into the layout rather than simply filling every pixel with content.
Taking Shape's retail intranet, a clean, spacious layout with a graphical sales dashboard that updates automatically three times a day.
See the full Taking Shape case study.
12. How do you manage access levels and permissions in intranet design?
Role-based access control is a core part of good intranet design. Not all content should be visible to all staff, and a well-designed permissions structure keeps sensitive information secure while still making the right content easy to find for the right people.
Forty Winks, one of Australia's largest bedroom retailers, built their intranet with seven distinct access levels based on each user's role. Administrators can update information instantly across all relevant users, with minimal IT involvement required. It's a practical example of how permissions can be both secure and easy to manage at scale.
Of the organisations named in Nielsen Norman Group's top intranets, 6 out of 10 sought guidance from reputable agencies or consultants to get their intranet design right. Expert input at the design stage tends to pay off across the full lifecycle of the platform.
Ready to improve your intranet design?
Great intranet design connects your people, reduces wasted time, and makes daily work feel smoother. Get the design right and staff will use it. Get it wrong and you'll be battling low adoption for years.
Following these principles gives you a strong foundation, whether you're designing a new intranet from scratch or improving an existing one. For more guidance, explore:
If you'd like to see how Elcom approaches intranet design for Australian organisations, request a demo or book a free consultation.