Organizational Hierarchy-based Navigation
This often seems to be the obvious choice when thinking about how to structure content form your company. While this is rarely the best approach for setting up publicly-facing websites, it may have value within your company’s walls. A few key factors that make this method successful are:
- The organization is built around clear silos. Divisions and departments that do not collaborate in the business or share information with others are likely to embrace this method. This is also effective when different business units operate independently under one umbrella.
- Content that is being published is targeted at specific groups in the organization. For instance, if the HR content is only usable by employees in the HR department, then this pattern will become clear to users after a very short time using the site.
- The organization is small and everyone already knows which groups are responsible for different content. When it is clear to all employees that certain types of information are owned and managed within certain departments, employees are likely to be able to find what they are looking for.
Task-based Navigation
For organizations that are using their intranet as a tool for day-to-day business activities, a task-based solution can be an effective method to assist users in navigation.
- The company is not publishing a lot of information for casual consumption. A lot of intranets are used as a centralized news and bulletins repository. When the organization is not publishing a lot of information, looking at the tasks associated with business activities can be very helpful.
- The organization already conducts a lot of business over the internet or on other web-accessible systems. The benefit of the intranet in these instances is that it takes on a portal aspect and gives employees one place to get to everything they need to find online or on the company network.
- Content and divisional roles within the organization are confusing. When there are crossovers in departments and a lot of similar content that needs to be used in different ways, organizing the content around distinct task can greatly assist the user in finding what they need.
Content Topic-based Navigation
This method is often the best way to organize content for public-facing sites since it isn’t as dependent on understanding the roles and characteristics that make up the audience. It can also serve an internal audience well when the organization is vast with a lot of different users, roles, and functions requiring specific content for different purposes.
- The Intranet is primarily a publishing vehicle for the organization. When there is a lot of different information being presented to the audience for consumption, categorizing it based on its topic is likely to serve the most users, most of the time.
- Employees do not identify themselves as part of a specific group. Often in audience-based navigation as described above, users can be parts of multiple groups and may find it confusing to select the right space to look for things. Additionally, when similar content is placed in multiple places based on the user or the content owner, the employee will need to spend more time looking around to find relevant content and may miss what they are looking for completely.
- Users are not frequent visitors to the intranet. Employees that are only in the intranet from time to time may have difficulty remembering where content is when it is organized by a different method that only directly related to the context.
Great, so which one is best?
Often, one model does not provide enough depth to cover everything. The options above are just scratching the surface as well. Start by looking for a primary method to organize content and review/test that with a representational group in the organization. You may find that multiple methods are workable and perhaps a blended approach will work for your organization. When unsure or when testing does not present a strong preference, the last method described may be the best way to approach primary navigation on the site. Users should still have search capabilities and perhaps a site map or index view to assist as well.
While off-the-rack solutions are not always the best fit, generally there is one that is a close match that will work with just a small amount of tailoring needed.
