What should be on an intranet homepage?

One of the features our customers love about Happeo is the fully customizable intranet homepage. You can apply your own branding, choose a header image, and display dynamic content. But if you’ve never set one up, you might be wondering: What should be on an intranet homepage?

In this post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about creating an intranet homepage and share some intranet homepage examples. Let’s begin!

What is an intranet homepage?

Your intranet homepage is the first screen users see after they log in to your intranet portal. This is a portal login page from Hunt Club, one of Happeo’s customers:

Just as you can customize your login page with your company logo and an image, you can also customize your intranet homepage:

Why is an intranet homepage important?

One of the biggest selling points of intranet software is that it helps employees stay engaged. That’s especially important for remote and hybrid teams that rarely (if ever) interact in person. Your intranet homepage needs to be dynamic, relevant, and user-friendly if you’re using it to develop a company culture. 

What to include on an intranet homepage

“Relevant” means different things to different employees. For example, IT managers might want to see an uptime report when they log on, whereas creatives may want to see their due dates. So, instead of creating one static homepage for all employees, it’s best to choose intranet software that lets them have a personalized intranet homepage. 

With Happeo, you can design a framework for your intranet homepage and include a few essentials (such as a spot for company announcements), but empower employees to configure their homepage view. 

Items to consider for an intranet homepage include: 

Personal calendar

In addition to a company wide calendar, employees may want to see their own work calendar when they log into their intranet portal. With a calendar view on their homepage, they can immediately see their deadlines or scheduled meetings. 

Analytics data 

If your intranet offers analytics, administrators may want to see specific analytics on their intranet homepage. Analytics options may include user engagement trends, employee onboarding progress, and team pageviews.

An example of Happeo analytics.

Company directory

New hires may want to see a company directory on their homepage, so they can learn more about who fulfills specific roles in the company. Happeo’s directory feature shows a photo along with title, department, and contact information, and it lets employees quickly schedule meetings with each other. 

A contact card in Happeo's People Directory.

News feed

To prevent information overload, employees can curate their news feed to include only the news they need to see. That might include posts from peers, managers, or all posts from specific groups.

Quick links

An intranet platform is a central hub for all of your work; however, sometimes you do need to visit external sites. You can easily create quick links on your homepage for that purpose — as shown here for a Happeo customer that needs to visit LinkedIn frequently to find talent: 

So now that you know about elements to include on an intranet homepage, let’s look at some best practices for designing the homepage framework.

Intranet homepage best practices

You don’t need to be a graphic designer to set up an intranet homepage, thanks to intuitive drag-and-drop features, as shown here:

Happeo's page builder.

Just follow these basic design principles when setting up your homepage:

• Keep it simple.

Resist any temptation to add multiple widgets and content blocks to a homepage. If you have a lot of important information to present, you can always group it by tab, as Happeo’s client BlueBridge One did here (with tabs for “Home,” “Our Vision,” and “Onboarding”):

BlueBridge One intranet homepage.

• Be consistent.

If you were to click through to BlueBridge One’s “Home” and “Our Vision” pages, you’d see the format mirrors that of the “Onboarding” page. For end users, layout consistency is important — it helps them know where to look for information. 

• Stick with a few fonts. 

If you have a branded font, you’ll want to include that somewhere on your homepage. For content blocks, choose an easy-to-read sans-serif font. This is especially important if you have employees who use assistive reading technology — screen-reading software might not be able to interpret script-like fonts. 

• Use color – but sparingly.

It makes sense to apply your branded colors to your intranet homepage header, or add a few color icons to your page, but don’t use a background color in blocks of text.  

Measuring the outcome 

After you’ve implemented your new intranet, laid out the company homepage, and encouraged employees to  personalize their intranet homepage view, it’s time to analyze engagement. 

Happeo’s analytics can reveal whether employees are truly engaging with the homepage and other intranet features, but you can also ask employees for feedback — either through an in-app poll, or with an integrated third-party app, as shown here: 

Empowering employees to do more 

A feature-rich intranet helps employees stay connected, find the information they need, and customize their intranet homepages. Happeo is not a “top-down” solution — it’s a platform that encourages company wide communication and feedback, and empowers employees to create a workspace they love. 

Find out how Happeo is helping companies improve communication and develop a culture that thrives, even in fully remote workplaces. Take a look at what Happeo can do. 

A modern intranet homepage should act as a dynamic, highly personalised portal rather than a rigid, one-size-fits-all landing page. Because different roles within an organisation require entirely different resources to work effectively, the best approach is to establish a framework of essential corporate elements while allowing individual users to configure their own views. Five key components to consider for a homepage are personal calendars, analytics data, a company directory, curated news feeds, and quick links.

Integrating a personal calendar allows employees to view their specific deadlines and scheduled meetings as soon as they log in. For administrators and managers, displaying specific analytics data directly on the homepage is highly valuable. This might include tracking user engagement trends, monitoring employee onboarding progress, or viewing team pageviews. Additionally, a comprehensive company directory is crucial, particularly for new starters who need to quickly identify roles, departments, photos, and contact details to schedule meetings easily.

To prevent information overload and keep employees updated, a curated news feed is highly recommended. This feature allows staff to tailor their feeds to display only the relevant posts from peers, managers, or specific groups they follow. Finally, including customisable quick links to frequently visited external sites, such as recruitment platforms or external databases, ensures the intranet functions as an efficient, central hub for all daily work activities.

When designing your intranet homepage, you do not need to be a professional graphic designer, especially if you are utilising intuitive drag-and-drop page builders. However, following a few fundamental design principles will ensure the platform remains user-friendly, accessible, and engaging for everyone in the company. The four primary best practices to keep in mind are simplicity, layout consistency, font selection, and the strategic use of colour.

First and foremost, you must keep the layout simple by resisting the urge to crowd the homepage with too many widgets and content blocks. If you have an abundance of important information to share, it is far better to group the content into distinct, organised tabs, such as dedicated sections for onboarding or company vision. Maintaining consistency across these different tabs is equally important. When the formatting and layout mirror one another, employees will instinctively know where to look for information, which greatly improves the overall user experience.

Typography and colour choices also require careful consideration. It is best to stick to just a few fonts, utilising your official corporate branding where appropriate, but selecting simple, easy-to-read sans-serif fonts for the main content blocks. This ensures that screen-reading assistive technologies can easily interpret the text for all employees. Lastly, use colour sparingly. While applying brand colours to headers and icons looks excellent, you should avoid using background colours behind large text blocks to keep readability high.

Measuring the success of an intranet homepage is essential for understanding how well employees are engaging with company culture, particularly within remote and hybrid teams. Because the homepage is the very first screen users see after logging into the portal, it plays a critical role in keeping staff connected. To evaluate whether your homepage is truly serving its purpose and driving engagement, organisations should rely on a combination of built-in analytics and direct employee feedback.

Using robust, built-in analytics tools is the most effective way to gather objective data on how employees interact with the platform. Administrators can monitor specific metrics directly from the system to see which features are being used the most. These analytics can reveal valuable insights, such as overall user engagement trends, the progress of new hires during onboarding, and specific pageviews across different team sections. This data highlights what works well and what needs adjustment.

In addition to reviewing hard data, gathering qualitative feedback directly from your workforce is crucial for a complete assessment. Organisations can easily implement in-app polls or integrate third-party feedback applications directly into the intranet portal. Asking employees directly about their experience allows you to understand if the homepage is helping them find information quickly. By combining analytics with this direct feedback, you can continuously refine the layout and empower your employees to build a digital workspace they genuinely enjoy using.