Creating an Effective and Appealing Intranet Homepage

If you have ever tried to sell a home, you know how critical it is to create a welcoming entrance for anyone walking through the front door. The same holds true for your intranet. Since the homepage is often the first page your intranet users see, it can make or break an entire intranet experience.  

To make the most of your homepage, you need to take advantage of customization possibilities. A customized homepage is not only visually appealing, but also provides the content and functionality your employees depend on. 

Within ThoughtFarmer we have created endless opportunities to customize your entire intranet to increase usability, but also to help reflect your culture and values. One of the ways we facilitate this is through a feature we refer to as Cards.  

Here are our top five most often used Cards: 

News Carousel

The news carousel is usually placed at the top and centre of the homepage. The carousel is best used for company-wide announcements since it’s great for catching your employees’ attention. The carousel will rotate between a number of news posts to keep information flowing. 

News

The news card allows you to share both global news and group news from subscribed groups. Subscribed groups work when a user is part of a group page that contains a news feed. That user will see that relevant news on their intranet homepage, making the news card more curated to the user. You can also choose a list view or a grid view for the news card. 

Quick Links

Quick Links helps users access commonly used links. We suggest only adding quick links that every employee uses so it’s helpful for all. For example, access to pay stubs, links to applications the entire company uses, a direct link to IT helpdesk portal, etc.. Quick Links can be accessed through either the provided Quick Links card, or by using the Rich text Card and adding customer image buttons that hyperlink to your links. 

Shoutouts

Shout-outs are a great way to share recognition and gratitude amongst each other. The Shout-outs card allows your employees to tag others in a post and recognize some great work! Received Shout-outs are also displayed via a badge on employee profile pages.  

Social Media

If your organization uses Facebook or Twitter, you can easily integrate these platforms onto your ThoughtFarmer homepage. 

Taking it to the next level

While these are the most common cards we see customer’s adding to their intranet homepage, there are many more available options. While Custom Cards are cards our Professional Services team builds, there are also standard cards that ship with the product. Here are some additional cards that can take your homepage to the next level: 

Forms

Once you’ve created a form, you can add it to your homepage. Create a form for helpdesk submissions, feedback surveys, or any type of information you’re looking to collect from your employees. 

Work anniversaries or birthdays

Celebrate your employees’ birthdays or work anniversaries on your homepage. . Simply add the birthday or work anniversary into a profile page and it will integrate into these cards (Don’t worry—you have the option to remove the birth year). 

Company calendar

If you’re using a ThoughtFarmer calendar to display your company-wide events, you may want to consider adding this to the homepage. The calendar card will show all upcoming events and keep your employees informed.

Rich Text Card

The Rich Text Card allows you to add anything from plain text to images and beyond. We’ve seen customers use this to display their company values, company logos, support contact information, or even use it as an alert banner if there’s an outage. 

Even more customization 

Customers seeking unique and specific customizations can access additional cards on the ThoughtFarmer Card Marketplace available to ThoughtFarmer customers.

Need more inspiration? 

Check out our whitepaper on Award-Winning Intranets to see some of the best ThoughtFarmer intranets over the years.