Designing SharePoint intranets people actually love
Madhukar Vemula · October 5, 2026
Most intranets fail on adoption, not features. Here is how we design SharePoint hubs teams open every morning.
Start with the morning routine
An intranet wins when it answers the first three questions an employee has each day: What changed? What do I need to do? Where is that file?
Hub sites, not page trees
We structure SharePoint around hub sites that mirror how people work, not the org chart. Each hub gets a clear owner, a news rollup, and no more than seven navigation items.
Design tokens for SharePoint
A custom theme JSON, consistent section layouts, and a small library of web part patterns keep every department page on-brand without a design review.
Measure adoption
We ship with usage analytics from day one and review them monthly. If a page is not visited, it is archived.
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