70% of people start their journey by navigating. It is at the very heart of an effective digital workplace. We have put together our eBook to help you properly plan and strategize for effective intranet and digital workplace navigation.
In this overview of our latest eBook, you will discover a little about the following sections:
Does this eBook sound like exactly what you were looking for? Then, download it here.
OR if you still need more time to gain a better understanding of how our eBook will help you, continue reading below.
In today’s world, the digital workplace empowers organizations to adapt and be resilient to the changes we are all experiencing. Today, effective digital workplace design is about more than establishing a great digital hub for your digital workplace (your Intranet) and is much more about how we can improve digital experience, excellence, productivity, and collaboration with the effective use of technology.
While navigation is the #1 use case for an Intranet and its most crucial purpose, many fail to deliver dynamic and personalized navigation. In this section of our eBook, we look at why you should prioritize navigation for the sake of IT and end-users.
Navigation starts by understanding clear navigation objectives and designing your nav based on identified user scenarios, personas, and user goals. These need to be S.M.A.R.T. or specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.
While it can be tempting to start with digital workplace objectives that relate to navigation that are generalized, these can often reduce your ability to prioritize the right investments.
So, if you need an effective plan for your navigation efforts, this section of the eBook has you covered.
As an example, you might start with these high-level navigation objectives, which could be further broken down with specific examples per persona or user grouping, or based on known user scenarios:
Navigation should be clearly and meaningfully labeled and signposted so that users understand where they are and where they can go.
When consistency is maintained, and clarity is promoted, navigation is easier to comprehend, and efficiency is improved.
Navigation should require less clicks or delayed interactions to see and get where you need to go.
When usability is focused on, it leads to better navigation experiences that work for more varied audiences from accessibility to functionality.
Our eBook also includes specific examples of the listed objectives. When you are designing your global navigation for your organization, you should embrace these objectives.
In Microsoft 365, Intranets act as a portal to many key areas of interest within the business. The navigation should be personalized and dynamic for the Intranet to improve relevancy and usage.
In SharePoint Online, you can create a navigation experience with global navigation, hub navigation, site navigation, local site navigation, and then links on the page(s) themselves.
Not only this, but through Microsoft Viva Connections some navigation is also brought directly into the Teams app experience both in the desktop and the mobile Teams experiences.
Many organizations still feel that navigation is an area that merits customization. Some of the design imperatives we consider when building a custom navigation experience include:
The issues outlined in our eBook can be resolved in a timeframe of weeks or months, even the largest organizations. It can be resolved in a phased approach, starting with out-of-the-box and low to no cost technology solutions – many of which you already own. You will begin seeing immediate improvements after resolving some of these issues. It is equally important to maintain/review them long-term as the digital landscape is constantly changing, as is Microsoft 365.
No matter if you are looking for more knowledge around strong navigation tactics or if you are looking for help from Microsoft 365 experts, we are happy to help!
