Most intranets do not fail on technology. They fail on design: nobody can find anything, so nobody comes back.
4 min read · 2 September 2026
Every intranet launch starts the same way: a homepage with a hero banner, a welcome note and high hopes. Six months later traffic is a trickle and the project is quietly defended in meetings. The cause is rarely SharePoint. It is the design: the structure mirrored the office politics instead of the way people actually find things. This guide covers the decisions that decide whether your intranet becomes the first tab people open or another forgotten site.
An intranet dies when the cost of using it is higher than the value of what is on it. Users hit a search that returns nothing useful, or dig through five levels of sites to find the holiday form, and they learn to bookmark a direct link or ask a colleague instead. Once people stop using it, content goes stale, and stale content drives the rest away. The death is quiet because nobody formally cancels the project. They simply stop opening the site, and a month later the usage report confirms it.