How to Make a SharePoint Site Look Like a Website

A complete SharePoint intranet has a design that identifies with the company's branding at one glance.

It also contains components that are important to all employees. This may include a section for easy access to tools, documents, sites that help in their day-to-day work, and more.

It will also has sections that highlight crucial information for the awareness of all such as news, recognition, and events.

The first thing you’ll notice when you look at a SharePoint site is its navigation menu. While it is useful for linking other pages on your Site Collection, it can take away the website feel of your page. After all, most modern websites do not have a clunky menu.

This is where ShortPoint's Theme Builder comes in handy! Theme Builder is an amazing feature that allows you to customize the look and feel of your SharePoint site. Here, you can customize the navigation menu’s color and even modify the font.

You can also hide the menu altogether, paving the way for a much cleaner-looking SharePoint site. The Theme Builder gives you the flexibility to incorporate your organization’s branding into your intranet branding.

Now, let’s move on to the header. SharePoint’s OOTB header capabilities can be limiting, especially design-wise. While this header works, it does not incorporate your organization’s identity. You need your header to immediately capture your users' attention and invite them to use your page.

To help you create a header that will catch your viewers attention, ShortPoint has what we call the “ShortPoint Page Builder.” Page Builder has an intuitive editing interface that allows users to see the customizations they make in real-time.

With ShortPoint Page Builder, users can showcase brand identity by adding their organization’s logo, add call-to-action buttons, and even add news and announcements to make your header more interactive:

Busy and cluttered sites overwhelm users. To make your Intranet look as good as a well-designed websites,  your users must be able to visually identify one section from another. While SharePoint does have a divider that allows you to separate rows, it does not have the same option for columns. As a result, when you have several web parts in a row, it looks like one big chunk of information.

To help you create visual separation between different sections on your page, ShortPoint has the Panel Design Element. The panels do not only serve as containers, but they also serve as visual identifiers for each section on your page. By having this clear separation among sections, your users will be able to navigate the page easily and find what they need.

SharePoint has a selection of web parts that can quickly allow you to incorporate the information you need into your intranet. However, SharePoint has significantly limited design customizations. For example, the News web part only allows you to modify the layout and hide some elements of the news. This can be limiting, especially if you want your page to stand out. Don't worry, we have great news!
‍
To make your page truly your own, ShortPoint has over 60 Design Elements that offer one-of-a-kind customization options. You can modify each Design Element to your liking and present the information you need in unique ways. The best part is you can connect these Design Elements to SharePoint Lists, Libraries, and other external sources through ShortPoint Connect. ShortPoint Connect allows you to securely integrate data from any source directly to your page, so you can create dynamic content.

When creating a page, the footer may be the last thing on your mind. But just like any element on your page, you must also pay attention to the design and functionality of your footer. SharePoint allows you to add a basic footer to your page. While it already has the basic functions, it does not have many stylistic options.
‍
With ShortPoint, you have access to our Demos Library, which has hundreds of design templates (including footer design templates) that you can easily copy and paste into your page. Additionally, users can customize the footer they copy from our Demos Library using ShortPoint Generator. ShortPoint Generator allows you to create custom elements and footers that you can easily integrate to your SharePoint page.