Now that almost everybody can make a web page we need to remind people of some basic principles of good web page design, including good Intranet web page design.
I think the best way we can make a good web page is to look at the bad web pages. The easiest way to do that is go to Web Pages That Suck. The authors of the site have compiled list of what they feel are the worst web sites and why.

A couple of things I think libraries, universities, and hospitals are continuously guilty of are:

• Having a splash page
• Using the site more for marketing than for information for your users
• Too many links (especially in one area)
• Too much text on a page
• Confusing navigation (just because you understand your navigation doesn't mean everybody else does)
• You have to click more than 4 times to get the information you want
• Content has industry related jargon (ILL, database, OPAC, etc.)
• You don't know what content is popular
• You don't conduct user testing, or you test it on people who are not your real users

Some places are more guilty of these things than others. For example universities and hospitals are more likely to use their web page for marketing than perhaps a library would. However, a library may accidentally use jargon such as ILL and OPAC which are words largely unknown to the average person.

Links, links, links.... Large organizations (especially their Intranets) and libraries easily fall victim to the over abundance of navigational links and the clicks mistake. It is a problem that creeps up. Libraries and institutions want to provide access points to everything under the sun and soon the navigation becomes a tangled web of multiple clicks.

For example: My hospital's intranet site now has a lovely and annoying splash page that is now the default on every hospital computer. Change the home page default on your computer? Sure but it changes right back in a few minutes. Not only is the splash page annoying but it adds to the number of clicks needed to find information on the hospital intranet site. It takes four clicks to get to the library page, assuming users understand they need to first click on Departments to find us.

It is always a good idea to re-evaluate your web site every year. Get some guinea pigs to test it, pay them in food. Fix small problems, and if you have some glaring problems accept that you probably will have to do a whole site re-design. While they are a pain, site re-designs are a necessary evil as technology, standards, and policies change. Content management systems are helpful but some of them are little better than the Microsoft Word for the web design and actually enable you to commit the sins of bad web site design.

If you are hospital librarian like me with no hope of changing the system and are forced to use a poor content management system, just try and do your best to make your page the best possible.