Intranets people return to

Most intranets record their highest traffic in launch week and decline steadily afterwards. The design was not the problem. The site was built around what the organisation wanted to publish rather than what employees came to do.

Design around tasks

A small number of tasks account for most visits: finding a policy, booking leave, locating a colleague, submitting a request, checking a procedure. If those are reachable in one interaction from the front door, the intranet becomes part of the working day. If they are three levels down behind announcements, it does not.

Publishing without operations fails

• Every content area has a named owner and a review date; unreviewed content is flagged, not silently retained.
• Templates constrain layout so contributors produce consistent, accessible pages without design decisions.
• Search is tuned with promoted results for high-demand queries, and query logs are reviewed for gaps.
• Content performance is reported to owners, including pages nobody opens.

Accessibility is not a late check

Heading structure, colour contrast, link text and image alternatives are cheap to build in and expensive to retrofit across hundreds of pages. Contributor training and template constraints prevent most issues at source.