homepage scorer
Intranet homepage best practices
An intranet homepage has one job that sounds simple, but rarely is: help employees start their day without getting lost. A great homepage is not just a pretty landing page. It is the digital front door to work.
Homepage score
More than a landing page
A great homepage helps employees start work without a treasure hunt.
It should answer the small but important questions quickly. What do I need to know? Where do I need to go? What requires my attention? Who can help me? What is happening in the company?
And, ideally, where is that one HR form everyone swears is “somewhere on the intranet”?
A 10/10 intranet homepage is not the busiest page.
It is the page that helps employees move faster, understand what matters, and trust where they are going next.
First rule
It does not try to do everything.
A common homepage mistake is treating it like a storage unit. A banner here. A CEO update there. Five quick links. Twelve tiles. A weather widget. A birthday carousel. A random PDF. An IT alert from three months ago.
A 10/10 homepage knows its role. It does not try to host the entire intranet on one page. It guides employees toward what matters most.
What employees need to know
Important updates should be visible, easy to scan, and clearly prioritized.
What employees need to do
Requests, forms, workflows, and next steps should be easy to reach.
Where employees go often
The most-used tools, services, and resources should not be hidden three clicks deep.
Designed around employees
It starts with what employees actually need.
A strong homepage is designed from the employee’s point of view, not the org chart.
Employees do not wake up thinking, “I wonder what content HR, IT, Comms, and Finance have each decided to publish today.” They think: where do I find my payslip? Is there a company update I missed? How do I request equipment? Who is working on this project?
Relevance and clarity
It feels personal, not generic.
The fastest way to lose employees is to give everyone the same homepage and hope it works. A good homepage speaks to the whole company. A great homepage speaks to the person looking at it.
That means content should be targeted by role, location, department, language, seniority, or employee group where relevant. A frontline worker, a manager, a new hire, and a corporate employee may all need very different entry points.
Personalized by context
A store employee should not have to scroll past five corporate office announcements before finding operational updates. A new hire should see onboarding resources before they are expected to magically know where everything lives.
News employees can digest
A 10/10 homepage makes important news easy to see, easy to understand, and easy to act on. The goal is not to publish more. The goal is to make what matters clear.
Speed matters
It gives employees shortcuts to the things they actually use.
Quick links are often treated like a small design element. In reality, they can make or break the homepage. A 10/10 homepage gives employees fast access to the tools, services, and resources they use most often.
HR services
Policies
Expense forms
People directory
Training
It makes search feel useful again.
If employees trust search, they use the intranet. If they do not, they ask a colleague, send a Teams message, or keep a private folder called “Useful stuff” on their desktop.
Current expense policy, updated this month, owned by Finance.
Communication and action
It balances communication and action.
Many intranet homepages are built like digital noticeboards. They are great at telling employees things, but not always great at helping them do things.
A 10/10 homepage does both. It informs employees, but it also connects them to requests, workflows, services, communities, forms, tools, and support.
From “I need something”
Employees should not have to guess whether their question belongs to HR, IT, Finance, Comms, or somewhere in the great unknown.
To “I found it!”
The homepage should guide employees toward the right place quickly, clearly, and without a support ticket for finding the support ticket.
Visual clarity
It is visually clean without being boring.
Design matters. Not because every intranet homepage needs to look like a design award submission, but because visual clarity helps employees understand what to do next.
Trust over time
It stays fresh, and it is measured.
Nothing says “do not trust this intranet” like a homepage featuring an event from last quarter. A strong homepage is alive. Content changes. News rotates. Campaigns end. Links are reviewed. Ownership is clear.
You also cannot improve a homepage properly if you do not know how it is performing. Homepage performance should not be based on opinions alone. It should be measured, reviewed, and improved over time.
Business impact
It supports the business, not just the intranet team.
A great homepage is not just useful for employees. It is useful for the organization. It helps teams communicate, guide, support, align, and reduce the friction that slows work down.
The 10/10 checklist
So, what does a 10/10 homepage look like?
Useful
Personalized
Fresh
Easy to navigate
Action-oriented
Measured
Governed
Trusted
Most importantly, it does not make employees work hard to find what they need.
Want to know how your homepage scores?
Powell helps organizations create intranet homepages that are clear, useful, engaging, and built around the way employees actually work.
Trinity Resting
Product Marketing Manager
Product marketing doesn’t have to be all jargon and slides—Trinity’s here to prove it’s about creating human connections. With 5 years in digital marketing, she’s been scaling, building, and transforming product strategies that resonate with real people. At Powell, Trinity ensures the message isn’t just heard, but felt. She’s passionate about helping teams go beyond the office and build lasting relationships. When she’s not crafting strategies, you’ll find her sipping tea (she’s a self-proclaimed tea-aholic) or working as a professional dog sitter—because, let’s be honest, dogs are the ultimate team players.
