Amy Lewis 1 May 2016 5 min read

How to create a name for your intranet

Intranet names are often last minute or agreed by committee after lengthy internal debates but there importance in helping user adoption and positioning should never be underestimated. An intranet name needs to reflect your business, your brand and your culture. You want your colleagues to come to love and look forward to logging onto your intranet. If you would like to find out more about naming your intranet, download our free naming guide.

How to name your company intranet:

You want the name to last and not go out of fashion too quickly, so maybe a timeless classic is the way to go, or would you think about a name change in the future?! So how do you go about naming your intranet?

1) Ask your agency

If you are a large organisation, maybe you might get lucky and your creative agency will take on the task of overall intranet design and naming (branding) for you. This will still need a water tight brief written by you and careful management. Their lead times may also be longer than you anticipated.

2) Launch a naming competition

You might want to launch a naming competition and invite colleagues to name your new arrival. This could be great or it could be less so. I know of instances where some amazing names were suggested and some where they ended up using their working title and all entries discounted.

3) Take some time and brainstorm

Sometimes, you just need to spare some time and let your own creativity flow and list a host of potential intranet names based on everything you know (after all out of everybody involved in your intranet’s development, you have lived with it since inception). Once you have a list of suggestions, be brave and circulate them to your intranet team. They might all highly rate some of the names you have suggested or may themselves be inspired by your list and suggest the perfect name for your intranet.

To help you, I’ve listed 10 popular intranet names:

  • The Hub
  • The Portal
  • Genie
  • Pulse
  • Heartbeat
  • Flash
  • Grapevine
  • Ella
  • Connect
  • Chat
4) Shortlist and context

However you arrive at your shortlisted names, take some time to live with them and see which you feel best suits your intranet. People love abbreviating names, so think about how it could be shortened and whether you are comfortable with that.

When you have your name, think about how the name might influence your intranet design. Once you are happy with your intranet name you then need to get sign off and buy in. At this stage it’s really important you give your preferred name context and meaning. Perhaps circulate the name with draft intranet design, so colleagues can visually see the context and highlight how the name sits with your brand.

If you circulate the name and simply ask colleagues whether they like it, don’t be surprised if you get emotional responses back elevate the naming of your intranet to a lengthy circular discussion.

I hope you have found this blog useful? How did you go about naming your intranet? We would love to hear about your experiences. If you would like to read more download our free guide: 86 Top Intranet Names.