Intranet Information Architecture (IA) Trends

Intranets contain a tremendous amount of information that needs to be easily accessible. Implementing the right information architecture (IA) and using appropriate navigation elements are essential to a successful intranet and a good user experience.

On top of that, intranet IA designers face a tremendous challenge: they have limited sources of inspiration. Because of the very nature of intranets, designers often have few opportunities to see how other intranets structure their information.

To provide intranet designers with a set of ideas and solutions, we analyzed 77 intranet information architectures and presented their detailed navigation structures, screenshots, and our analysis in the 2nd edition of our Intranet IA Design Methods and Case Studies report.

The first edition was published in 2007, so comparing the two sets of case studies allows us to identify new trends in intranet IA. The biggest change lies in the navigational design elements used, not in the topics presented in the main menu. In this 7-year period, changes at the page level have completely outpaced changes at the IA level. Page-level intranet design has been transformed, as documented in the Intranet Design Annual series.

Confusion Between Categories

Many intranets suffer from confusing menu labels. Such labels make it difficult for users to find what they’re looking for.

The most common reasons for confusion are:

• Terms are too broad and end up acting as catch-all (example: For Employees).
• Sections such as How do I … or Tools grow too big.
• Different section names on the site lack distinction (example: Human Resources and Administration & Management may appear in the same menu).
• Language is polluted with jargon or branded terms.

Unclear naming is one of the biggest and most important projects to tackle when it comes to the intranet IA. All navigation categories must be descriptive, specific, and mutually exclusive, so that users can navigate without hesitation.

User-research methods such as card sorting, tree testing, and usability testing can help identify ambiguous labels and unclear information groupings.

Organizing the Intranet by Task or Topic

Task-based structures often better withstood organizational change than intranets organized by department. In many cases, intranets are initially structured to mimic the organizational configuration of the company, because this type of IA makes maintenance easy: each department or area gets a section of the intranet. The downside, however, is that whenever the institution reorganizes, the navigation must also change. We have also found in our user testing of intranets that task-based navigation tends to facilitate learning.

Luckily, most intranets we analyzed adopted at least a partial task-based organization scheme. By 2014, 86% of the new intranet IAs were task based, or at least mostly organized by task or topic. Task-based means that the content organization was independent of who owned or created the content.

A common pitfall with task-based IAs is difficult-to-scan category names. Category names do not need to start with verbs or follow an “I need to ...” pattern in order to be task based. Sometimes trying to fit link or menu labels into a specified format makes them long and more difficult to scan, because the most meaningful words don't appear until the end of the label. Task-based IA doesn't require any particular grammatical structure for labels; it just means grouping information according to how employees use it, rather than by who creates and maintains it.

Number of Main Navigation Items

Across the 77 intranet IAs in this report, there are an average number of 7.6 top-level categories, with a low of 3 and a high of 31 categories. The median number of categories was 7. These numbers did not change much between the editions of this report, published 7 years apart.

What did change between editions was the maximum number of navigation categories. In 2007, we saw more organizations with very broad menus. 11% of companies then had more than 12 categories, while none did in 2014.

This shift toward fewer total categories is good. A broad structure shows a wide range of the available content, but too many categories can make it difficult for users to choose a site area, because of potential overlap in the meaning of the many menu items.

Topics and Labels in Top-Level Navigation

Many intranets followed general patterns for picking main-menu items. 3 topics attained top-level navigation status on the majority of the intranets:

• company information (66%)
• human-resources information (64%)
• news (56%)

Information about departments or divisions was a top-level category in 45% of intranets, and support services (common needs across organization) appeared at the top in 40% of intranets. There was a very long tail of additional categories found in a smaller proportion of intranets.

Besides these most common topics, companies in the same industry tended to include the same categories at the top of their IA. For example, manufacturing companies often included a product-related category in their top-level navigation, whereas companies with a focus on intellectual property often presented a top-level, knowledge-management (KM) category.

The labels that represent each of these topics varied widely across intranets. The following table summarizes some of the specific terminology used:

Improved Wayfinding

One noticeable improvement in design between the two editions of this report was in how intranets help users orient themselves within the site. Almost all the intranets in the 2nd edition provided a consistent navigation experience across site areas. The use of templates and design guidelines helped many organizations create a similar look and feel across different pages, even with many content contributors.

Additional wayfinding cues, such as highlighting the users’ current location in the site and presenting breadcrumbs, are now standard on many intranets. These cues are especially important when users are deep-linked into the intranet from, for example, a link in an email or a search result.

Clear and persistent navigation shows users how to find information and helps them understand which site areas they’ve already explored.

Mega-menus

Of the 21 organizations added for the 2nd edition of this report, 9 implemented mega-menus from the main navigation. Mega-menus are large drop-down menus usually divided into groups of navigation options. Mega-menus frequently present both secondary and tertiary pages, thereby making lower-level content more visible to users. This exposure of lower-level topics can drastically improve discoverability of previously difficult-to-find information or applications (but it's not a solution for users on mobile devices).

What was presented in the mega-menus varied by organization. Although most chose to list all links, some highlighted only the most important pages to avoid overwhelming users.

Sage and Architect of the Capitol didn’t just list links but also included a featured area to promote specific content from that site section.

Customizable Quicklinks and Social Filters

Many intranets offered Quicklinks, or navigation shortcuts, to popular destinations. This convention was common 7 years ago when the first edition of the report was published and is still popular today. With so much information on intranets, shortcuts to content that belongs in lower levels of the hierarchy, but must be frequently accessed by employees, can be a big time saver. These shortcuts help employees discover new features, making the intranet more useful and interesting.

The best Quicklinks lists have descriptive names, such as Most Popular Pages or Frequently Used Tools, are placed prominently on the homepage, and are based on site analytics.

One way of engaging users is by showing what others are doing. Social filters are popular on websites and increasingly on intranets as well.

Intranets in this report used the following social filters:

• Most Viewed
• Trending #tags
• Most popular docs
• Top stories
• Latest comments
• Hot resources
• Top FAQs
• Commonly Used Forms

Some social filters encourage exploration, while others provide a shortcut to important information (like a Quicklinks list).

In addition to presenting the most popular pages (or documents, or tools), some intranets offered customizable Quicklinks lists. Customizability is a nice option, but users rarely engage with customization features. It’s time better spent to make the default presentation as useful as possible right out of the box.

Still, don’t forget the simplest, most-basic web navigation aid: cross-reference links. On many intranets, Related Links lists were immensely helpful, particularly when they were designed consistently, so users always knew where to find them and what to expect.

Participating Organizations

Our analysis encompassed a wide range of organizations in 13 countries:

• 43 companies from a variety of industries, including financial services, utilities, and technology
• 14 government agencies
• 7 non-profits
• 6 healthcare providers
• 4 educational institutions

Of the organizations, 9 were small (fewer than 500), 48 were mid-sized (500–20,000 employees), and 17 were large (more than 20,000 employees).

Note that 3 organizations participated in both editions: Cisco Systems, Inc.; Department for Work and Pensions (DWP); and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

Full report

The full 1,349-page Intranet IA report includes two volumes:

1. Intranet IA Design Methods and Case Studies includes analysis and a summary of the design patterns that tackle navigational and content issues common to these organizations.
2. Design Gallery: Screenshots and Examples from 77 Intranet IAs profiles each organization and includes 1,106 unique screenshots showing complete sitemaps and all the IA categories.