What's the difference between a configured SharePoint intranet and a designed one?

Most SharePoint intranets are configured. Very few are designed. The distinction sounds subtle, but it explains almost everything about why intranets look the way they do - and why so many of them feel wrong even when they technically work.

That checklist-versus-sketchbook split is the difference in one frame: assembly versus intent. On desktop the text here wraps beside the image; on smaller screens the image stacks above. The sections below unpack what “configured” and “designed” mean in practice.

What does it mean to configure a SharePoint intranet?

Configuration means making the platform work. You set up sites, add web parts, connect navigation, import your logo, pick a theme color, and switch on the features you need. The result is a SharePoint intranet that functions correctly.

Configuration is necessary. Without it, nothing works. But configuration alone does not produce an intranet that communicates well, reflects the organization, or gives employees a reason to use it.

A configured intranet answers the question: is it set up?

What does it mean to design a SharePoint intranet?

Design means making the platform communicate. It involves decisions about visual hierarchy, layout structure, typographic consistency, image quality, whitespace, navigation clarity, and how content is prioritized on every page.

Design starts from a different question: what do people need to understand, and what do they need to feel, when they arrive here?

Those two starting points produce very different results.

A designed intranet answers the question: does it work for the people using it?

Why do most SharePoint intranets end up configured rather than designed?

Because configuration is the primary deliverable on most projects.

IT teams are responsible for implementation. Their job is to build something that functions correctly, meets governance requirements, and can be maintained. That is the right scope for an IT team. But it does not include visual direction, communication hierarchy, or editorial structure.

Internal comms teams often inherit the result and do their best to populate it. But adding content to a poorly structured template does not fix the underlying design problems.

Design decisions - how a homepage is structured, how news is presented, how sections are weighted, how brand imagery is applied - are rarely owned by anyone. They fall through the gap between IT and communications.

That gap is why so many intranets look the same: lots of web parts, inconsistent imagery, no clear visual priority, and a homepage that tries to do too much.

When nobody clearly owns layout, hierarchy, and imagery, that gap shows up in the product: lots of web parts, inconsistent images, and homepages that try to do everything at once. The next section describes what that usually looks like on the page.

What does a configured intranet look like?

A configured intranet typically has:

• A header with the company logo and a navigation bar
• A homepage assembled from several web parts in their default positions
• A news section using the default news layout
• Quick links pointing to key systems
• Department sites that follow the same template as every other department site
• Imagery sourced from stock libraries or internal photographs with no visual consistency

It functions. Employees can find things if they know where to look. But it does not feel like the organization that built it.

What does a designed intranet look like?

A designed intranet has the same functionality but applies deliberate decisions at every layer:

• A homepage with a clear visual hierarchy - leadership content at the top, operational content lower down
• Section layouts chosen to suit the content, not the default
• A news display that uses editorial image selection, not whatever gets auto-pulled
• Imagery that follows a defined style - consistent color treatment, subject framing, or photography approach
• Department and campaign pages that follow a defined template, not an ad hoc structure
• Whitespace used intentionally to separate sections rather than pages that feel compressed
• Navigation structured around what employees need, not how the organization is arranged internally

None of these require custom development. They require decisions.

None of the improvements above require custom code — they require clear ownership of those choices and applying them consistently. The section below covers whether you need to rebuild to get there.

Can you move from configured to designed without rebuilding?

Usually, yes.

The most common misconception is that a design improvement requires a platform migration or a development project. It rarely does.

Most configured intranets have the tools they need already. What they lack is a clear set of design decisions applied consistently across every page.

The work is typically:

• Defining a homepage structure and applying it
• Creating page templates that govern how content is laid out
• Establishing an image standard and enforcing it
• Simplifying navigation based on actual usage patterns
• Removing web parts that add noise without adding value

This is design work, not development work. The platform does not change. The decisions do.

If you want to understand what that looks like in practice, read: Can you brand SharePoint without custom development?

Key insight

The difference between a configured intranet and a designed one is not the technology. It is the ownership of visual and communication decisions. Configuration delivers a working system. Design delivers a system that works for people.

Most organizations have everything they need to cross that gap. What they are missing is someone who holds both the platform knowledge and the design judgment to make those decisions and apply them consistently.

FAQ: configured vs. designed SharePoint intranets

Is a configured SharePoint intranet a bad intranet?

Not necessarily. Configuration is the foundation. An intranet needs to be correctly set up before design can be applied. The problem arises when configuration is treated as the finished product rather than the starting point.

Do you need to redesign the whole intranet?

In most cases, no. Starting with the homepage and the most-visited pages delivers the highest visible impact. A consistent template applied to new pages over time gradually lifts the quality of the whole intranet.

Who is responsible for design decisions on a SharePoint intranet?

This varies by organization, but in practice the answer is often: nobody clearly owns it. IT owns configuration. Comms owns content. Neither owns the visual and structural decisions that sit in between. Naming that gap is often the most useful first step.

Can out-of-the-box SharePoint look designed rather than configured?

Yes. The visual quality of a SharePoint intranet is determined more by the decisions applied to it than by the tools available. Out-of-the-box SharePoint, used with design discipline, can look significantly better than heavily customized intranets built without it.

If you want help with a real intranet, get in touch.