SharePoint Modern web experience, what’s it all about? A SharePoint development company today offers intranet implementation with modern web experience. The modern experience is meant to be enthralling, flexible, and much more performant.  

Furthermore, the experience makes it easier for anyone to build mobile-ready dynamic and beautiful websites. More than a fresh look, SharePoint Modern is a new experience entirely. 

From the ground up, it’s designed to work on mobile devices and addresses many nagging usability problems. 

Creating a Cool Intranet Landing Page with Modern SharePoint

When modern pages came out in SharePoint, they were buggy, with limited supported web parts set, and could not be used really for anything useful. So many changes have happened since then. Modern pages today provide support or with the same functionality as the classic pages, and more functional. 

At present, SharePoint development services use modern experience for more functionality. If you’re in the lookout for a new intranet solution for your online brand, there are numerous available options to choose from. With SharePoint modern, you could proceed in designing an intranet landing page that’s cool. 

Step One: Adding a New Page

When you add a new, modern page, simply click on the Gear Icon and then add a page.

You get to create a new page and customize it. 

Remember:  There’s no support for modern pages on website collections that have publishing features enabled. Thus, it’s one of the reasons if you make a new page and it would default to the Classic SharePoint. 

Step Two:  Page Customization, Adding Web Parts

With the modern pages, not all web functionality or parts are supported. You could not at the moment replicate all the functionality that you may have on the main landing page, such as the ability to embed social media feeds, Script Editor, or have a slide show. There are a few of the most common Intranet landing page staples, along with their corresponding modern web experience web parts and functionality:

a. Announcements

On the modern page, the web part announcements aren’t supported. A wonderful replacement however is the use of the News Web Part that’s available in the modern web experience.

This is the appearance of a News Web part would look like on a page.

b. Banner Design

These days, no cool site survives without a stock banner image that’s overused. SharePoint is no exception, with the development of Communication Sites and Modern pages. With Modern pages, you could splash the screen with a huge hero image or a banner. 

c. Events

Calendar, which is supported on the modern page as well, but its name is Events, with a simply breathtaking interface.

This is how it renders when you have added on a page and you populate it with events.

Individual event editing by the way is entirely cool, and it’s not like anything we had and have seen so far with the classical calendar. Furthermore, you could add a banner/stock image to every event. A screenshot is found below.

d. Map

If you want the company address or locations to be highlighted, you could make use of the Bing Map Web Part.

e. Video

If you want a video embed on the landing page, the Embed Web Part lets you embed YouTube and any other websites that you wish.

It’s worth noting that there are web parts from Office 365 to embed videos. If you’re hosting videos on Microsoft Stream Office 365 Video Portal, you could utilize them.

f. The Employee of the Month

If you want to emphasize specific people, such for instance the Employee of the Month, the People Web Part is a great tool. Upon clicking on a particular person, it brings up the person’s summary card, allowing you to drill down to the Delve profile of the person. 

g. Link Web Parts

The Link Web Part or the Quick Links Web Part could be used for highlighting links.

Step Three: Making the new page the Homepage

The classic page in the SitePages Document Library by default is the homepage. However, the modern new page should now be your homepage, meaning that whenever users click on Home, they’d be riveted to the modern page experience.  Check out how this is done.

Save and publish the Modern Page

Navigate towards the SitePages Document Library

3. All the pages you created on your websites are housed in the Site Pages library. Next to the modern page is the ellipsis, click on it and choose Make Homepage. The homepage is now the new page.

The final product should look like this.

The Pros of Modern SharePoint

Today, when you partner with a SharePoint developer to design a cool intranet landing page, the Modern SharePoint is maturing as a platform for development and as an application that provides several advantages. 

  • Modern SharePoint is the future of the platform. This is true not just in SharePoint Online, but SharePoint on-premises as well. Meaning that if you want to use a version that would see enhancements in time, then the way to go is modern sites. 
  • In the modernization of the interface, the development team of a SharePoint development company is fiercely trying to modernize the interface and the experience. 
  • The modern experience is considerably faster compared to the classic ones. In some instances, you could see up to fifty percent performance enhancements. 
  • Modern sites are adaptive out-of-the-box. Previous SharePoint versions did not design for an array of devices. 
  • The modern site development model utilizes the SharePoint framework. This is a new extensibility model that’s focused on client-side development, like Java. 
  • You could build web parts with SharePoint and still use them in classic websites, but it won’t work the other way around. Meaning that you could not use the web parts of the classic sites to the modern web experience. 
  • Modern pages are supported in the official SharePoint mobile applications. Regardless if you’re using the official app or a browser, the idea is that it would still look wonderful and with less effort. 
  • Apps such as Microsoft Groups and Teams by default provision modern SharePoint websites. Thus, most probably, even if you use classic or modern websites for your intranet, at some level you would have to work with modern websites.

Conclusion

I’ve taken you through the steps of adding web parts to a new landing page with SharePoint Modern. Designing a cool intranet page is a great way to boost your brand and to keep you always on a competitive edge.