07/11/2025
Table of ContentsFor global organizations, information is the foundation for both everyday workflows and the future of innovation. To ensure that timely information is available and accessible to their workforce, business leaders rely on intranet environments, like SharePoint sites, that provide an effective space for communication.
Still, many organizations struggle with cluttered intranet environments where critical resources become lost under outdated or irrelevant content. As a result, employees may give up on these intranet pages altogether and instead resort to making their own resources out of frustration, which could lead to governance concerns for organizations.
SharePoint sites offer users a unique space for effective communication. However, any ineffectiveness on these pages can slow down employee engagement — leading organizations to miss out on key opportunities to use intranet benchmarking for data resilience and find areas for growth. According to Gallup, companies with highly engaged employees enjoy 23% higher profitability, 18% higher sales productivity, and 70% higher employee wellbeing — something that companies with an active, well-organized SharePoint site can achieve.
To ensure productivity and elevate employee experience, organizations must gain actionable insights into user behavior and content engagement. Armed with accurate insights, business leaders can execute a strategic overhaul of their SharePoint sites.
This blog explores how data-driven design enhances usability, boosts engagement, and streamlines access to key resources.
Identifying the Problem: When SharePoint Sites Fall Short
While many SharePoint environments can evolve organically, this does not always mean effective information sharing. Without the right strategy, these SharePoint environments lead to disorganized content structures, version control issues, and poor discoverability.
When employees face difficulty finding information critical to their work, it decreases their overall engagement. With the global percentage of engaged employees dropping to 21% from 23% in 2024, it’s clear that organizations must ensure that digital collaboration tools provide an optimized experience for their workforce.
With information emerging as a valuable currency in today’s digital workplaces, Harvard Business Review reveals that poor knowledge management decelerates cross-functional collaboration up to 30%. Even with a fountain of information, organizations may find it difficult to thrive as a result of several factors:
- Scattered and duplicated assets lead to employees spending hours sifting through multiple folders and recreating materials that already exist but are difficult to locate or verify as current.
- Inconsistent navigation results in a disgruntling and fragmented user experience, as employees must relearn how to find information every time they access a different section of their SharePoint site.
- Lack of centralized access to key information results in missed opportunities since employees may be unaware of where current or updated materials are stored.
- Reduced confidence in internal resources weakens the role of SharePoint sites as a trusted source and drives employees to search elsewhere for relevant information.
At first glance, it may be intimidating to confront the chaos of ineffective SharePoint environments. Rather than fret, however, business leaders can take a critical look at how their people work through the lens of analytics.
Leveraging Analytics to Understand User Behavior
Strategic and effective SharePoint design doesn’t happen overnight. To learn the best way to organize information, businesses need visibility into how employees interact with SharePoint sites. By tracking metrics, organizations are enabled to know where to put the most valued data according to insights.
The following key insights can inform strategic design:
- Identifying the most visited pages, like product updates, release notes, and pitch decks. Gaining an understanding of user engagement is vital for content strategy as it helps prioritize content that resonates with employees and enables organizations to take a proactive approach to their content management.
- Understanding user flow and navigation patterns through heat map technology to highlight high and low traffic areas. This helps business leaders gain insight into the overall user journey and pathways that employees take, which can inform adjustments to site layouts and link layout to enhance usability.
Pinpointing underutilized pages via engagement reports. By learning which content is being overlooked, organizations can make informed decisions on releasing content updates, archiving, or consolidating information to boost overall site effectiveness.
Key insights are just the beginning. While investing in the right analytic tools can give organizations visibility into the way employees engage with information, the real follow through is in strategically designed, usable, and effective SharePoint environments.
Making Data-Driven Design Decisions
Once armed with the right analytics, organizations can jumpstart the effective restructuring of their SharePoint environments. This enhancement includes, but is not limited to, key design changes:
Highlighting Key Assets
Based on engagement data, site owners can prioritize frequently accessed content. This design choice reduces friction, accelerates task completion, and reinforces trust in a centralized resource for current, accurate data vital to everyday workflows. Beyond visibility, highlighting critical information signals to users which materials are most relevant to their job roles, helping to guide their attention and reducing decision fatigue.
It’s important to note that strategically placed content can also serve as anchors, creating natural entry points for users to access deeper site sections.
Creating a Purposeful Interface
A purposeful interface reflects intentional design: Every element must serve a clear function that contributes to a seamless user experience. Archiving is also integral to intentional design, as removing outdated or low-engagement content declutters SharePoint environments.
Similarly, consolidating closely related materials into unified sections reduces redundant content and ensures that users aren’t overwhelmed by excessive options. This approach improves usability while also reinforcing site credibility as a reliable source of current and accurate information.
Designing for Returning Visitors
Understanding historical data is a must for content managers. By turning their attention to which pages users revisit, when they revisit, and what paths they follow, site content managers can execute user-centric design decisions. Behavioral context is particularly useful, as returning visitors – in contrast to first-time users – are more interested in completing tasks and re-accessing pages with familiar content. Pinpointing patterns in these repeat visits, including common navigation paths, would be vital for site owners to prioritize ease of access.
With these insights, content managers can ensure layouts have links to high-traffic tools, surface recently viewed content, and feature user-friendly menus for quicker navigation in response.
Transforming SharePoint into a Strategic Asset
Reorganizing a SharePoint site isn’t just about ensuring it’s easy on the eyes; it’s about aligning content architecture with how people actually work. Analytics tools serve as a guidepost for organizations seeking a strategic and data-driven approach to transforming their internal environments into reliable, relevant, and efficient hubs that provide a one-stop-shop for users to reach their productivity goals and catalyze innovation.
At a time when organizations place increasing emphasis on digital transformation, it’s equally important to underscore the role of strategically designed SharePoint sites that empower employees to do their most meaningful work.
As departments execute data-driven design for their SharePoint environments, business leaders and everyday users alike will realize that internal sites are more than just a data repository but rather a strategic asset vital for long-term knowledge-sharing and success.
