Designing Web sites for the intranet

The Internet is a fast-changing medium with hundreds of thousands of Web sites that range in design from graphically complex to fairly simple. Design advice and guidelines are abundant, both online and in bookstores; and, although the material is often contradictory and confusing, at least it is available. Designing Web sites for an intranet is a different task and necessitates a somewhat different kind of thinking. For one thing, the audience is narrower and easier to define. While the Internet audience is extremely vast and diverse, the intranet audience is often made up of employees of a specific company, maybe even a very small company. In this situation, designers and developers can better survey their audience to understand and meet their needs. Before you begin to develop an intranet Web site, you need to identify and understand your audience, establish your goals and objectives, and decide what you can deliver based on your resources and timeline.