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There's a saying in show business, "Getting to the top is easy, staying there is not." This same sentiment can be applied to any intranet implementation. But you probably want your intranet to have a healthier life than that of some poor second-rate soap opera actor whose career is filled with minor roles like that of the loud-mouth taxi cab driver, the one-eyed hotdog vendor, and the Gypsy fortune teller with a feral monkey.

Intranet developers and content owners are able to grab the attention of their users through momentum. Interest — caused by curiosity, marketing, word-of-mouth, or hype — is raised during initial rollout. And there will always be a surge in your Web server's usage logs during this period. But once the novelty has worn off, will your intranet have enough true substance to transform that initial momentum into regular usage?

Well, unless you actually want your users to abandon your intranet, make sure that you avoid these 10 common intranet mistakes:

10. Too Many "Under Construction" Signs

"Under Construction" signs simply mean "We're not ready, but here it is anyway." While it's perfectly fine to have a number of these signs on certain sections you wish to advertise and market prior to release, your site should never have a disproportionate ratio of content and "under construction" pages.

If you must place an "Under Construction" sign on your site or a series of pages, put a launch or availability date on the pages so users will know when to check back. By leaving only a simple "Coming Soon" or "Under Construction" message, users won't know if that message has been sitting there a week, a month, or a year, and won't bother to come back.

9. Content Clutter

I'm a very big fan of clean Web page designs, bordering on minimalism. But I continue to see sites with so much information packed into a single page that I don't even know what I'm reading anymore. I follow one link after another and, in the end, forget why I accessed the site to begin with. But this goes beyond personal taste.

Effective use of screen real estate allows users to achieve an at-a-glance contextual overview of the content on a page without needing to study it. Web sites enable you to do things unavailable in printed medium. And it's not necessary to layout your content as though it were a magazine or newspaper where space for content and advertisements is at a premium and must be carefully planned out in advance.

8. Too Much Flash, Not Enough Substance

Many intranets — especially during the initial stages of design — fall into a trap used quite often by magicians. While a poor unsuspecting audience volunteer is concentrating on the white dove the magician is pulling out of his jacket with his left hand, he fails to notice that the crafty magician is swiping his watch with his right hand.

This same sleight of hand and trickery is sometimes used by Web designers — either consciously or subconsciously — to hide a lack of content and real substance with a flurry of glitz and gimmicks. While users may be impressed by a flashy design, the novelty will wear off. And once it does, it won't be too long before they figure out that they have gained nothing productive by visiting the site.

7. Lack of Consistent Design

An intranet, even when composed of multiple pre-existing departmental subsites, must maintain an overall look and feel. You want the system to share common resources and design elements, such as the graphic user interface (GUI), content classifications, and search engine, rather than maintain what may appear to some as a lackluster collection of internal sites. An old colleague used to joke that the easiest way to create an intranet is to gather all your various departmental or workgroup sites, stick links to them onto a "home page," create a common banner image, and voilà, insta-intranet!

But a consistent design goes beyond simple brand recognition. Regardless of how many individual subsites are contained in your intranet, users should feel as though they're using a single system rather than navigating from one subsite to another.

See my previous articles on the subject of intranet branding and consolidation:

• Intranet Standardization: All For One, and One For All
• Strength in Numbers: Multi-Site Consolidation

6. Shifting URLs

The physical location of intranet content should never be changed. You can move the link to a piece of content anywhere you want within your intranet, but its URL should always remain the same regardless of whether it's new or archived. This is the difference between the logical re-location of content (i.e., it's link) and the physical re-location of content (i.e., the location of the file within the file/folder structure).

Changing a file's physical location will render all links to the document obsolete. And users who may have bookmarked the document will be surprised to be greeted with a "404 - Not Found" message.