How To Create An Online Portal

This year, we are moving forward with a great shift in our day to day lives. Your home seems to be a more comfortable workplace and most office buildings wait for their employees to return. The outbreak of the pandemic has given us the biggest business experiment "Work from Home" of all times

One thing that has been made clear during the pandemic is we have entered the time where a click can literally get things done for you in seconds. But with the strong competition, it is difficult for people to find the right place to avail the services and products they want.

Well, we have a solution for these. You could easily reach a web portal of the domain and find exactly what you are looking for.

Want to monetize this simple solution? Well, then all you need to do is understand how to create a web portal.

Before we start let's have a brief at what is a web portal?

What is an Online Portal?

A web portal is basically your digital identity. It is your store that would take a picture on the screens. If you think you are ready for a web portal then hire the right web portal development team that can help you through your journey. A web portal is a website serving as a single collective source for all information on a particular web domain. A Web portal deals with a wide array of information in a certain way that's convenient for most users to handle. No matter whether the users have any prior technical knowledge of the subject or not.

That was from the user's perspective.

Online Portal

If you think like a business owner, a web portal can be the next million-dollar business idea and a profitable venture. In this article, we'll discuss a few tips and tricks to designing your very own business web portal in 2021.

Before we delve into the tips and tricks of developing a web portal, let's discuss its types and which of these should you choose for your business.

Building a Web Portal? Not Before You Know the Types

When you decide on building a web portal for your business, there are a few things that you need to consider. Our experts have been working on various kinds of web portals and understand how significant it is to define the right web portal kind for your business to make things better for you. You need to have a basic knowledge of how to create a web portal, what are the types of web portals, how the complete thing functions, and what does are the best practices. This would help you choose the right portal kind that would drive maximum sales for your business without any extra struggles.

Let's pick one aspect at a time and proceed.

web portal types

Types of Web Portals

The web portal we would discuss here is basic portals that need to be defined in a way that it is evident how they function. You can choose the one that fits your business model and we would further discuss how things would turn into an impressive reality.

Vertical Web Portals- Vertical web portals are those designed to focus on one specific domain or industry. There are usually two types of portals, in general, and these are:

Corporate Portals - Made for personalized access to certain information of a particular company.
Commerce portals - Made to support B2C & B2B e-commerce portal backend operations.
Knowledge Portals- These portals help to enhance the efficiency of employees by providing easy and convenient access to information inside the workplace.

Note: Knowledge portals can usually found on the business intranet. So keep an eye out for the same.

Horizontal Portals- Horizontal web portal design emphasize a wide array of topics and interests. These portals target the entire internet community and hence called "mega portals". These portals also offer search engine functionalities to improve the user experience.

Enterprise Portals- Enterprise portals provide a relevant range of information about a particular company. If used properly, Enterprise apps may help you improve the performance of your organization.

MarketSpace Web Portals- Marketspace portals endorse B2C and B2B e-commerce portal. Their major functionalities are inclusive of things like:

Proper software support for e-commercial transactions.
Ability to search and access product information on the Web portal.
Ability to share product listings in groups with vendors.

Web app development

These are some very common kinds of web portals that you can choose from when you want to create a portal website for a profit-generating business. Aren't sure what makes a portal website different from the general one?

Well, let's have a quick discussion here.

Difference Between Website and Web Portal

Now that you're sure about creating an online portal, understanding what makes it interesting is here. If you are technically naïve, then surely you'd find it difficult to find the right website development experts who can help you through. Various aspects of differentiation:

Purpose
Accessibility
Users
Content
Motives

Purpose

The website turns out to be a web-based solution that includes web pages with easily accessible content.
The web portal is dedicated to information of a certain domain and at most times requires the user to login to access the information.

Also, Read: Top 10 Web Development Trends in 2021 Every Business Should Know

Accessibility

When talking about a website, it can be accessed via a given URL.
The web portal can be accessed only via login credentials.

Users

Web portals require you to log in, thus the access is limited to a certain group.
Websites have a more public user group where anyone and everyone can access them.

Content

The content of a website can only be modified by the admin whereas the content in the web portal can be modified by the authorized searchers.

Motives

Websites are mostly developed to focus on building a digital presence. When you hire a website development company, you want to mark your presence over the internet.

CTA

Developing a portal is to provide a one-stop solution to any query of any domain. It could be that you build a portal that talks about all the grocery services in your locality or about the best app development companies around the world.

Now that we understand the clear difference between the website and a web portal and are sure than before, let's now see how to make a web portal.

11 Tips for Developing Your Own Business Web Portal

If you decide to make a web portal on your own there are a few things that can help you come up with a competent solution. Let's check here what makes these solutions worth it and how you can come up with an interesting web portal.

Phase 1: Getting Ready!

Before you decide to enter the market with a web portal, you need to conduct diligent research where you need to identify your target audience, their needs, and your purpose of building a web portal. Also, you would need to have a clear picture of your expectations from the portal that needs to get into the picture. If you think there are more things to be discussed our experts are a click away.

Tip#1 Assess Your Goals and Know Your Areas of Interest

The first and most important step is deciding the niche of your business. What kind of Web portal are you building? Does it have enough potential? Will it be regional, personal (like Yahoo!), or a hobby portal? You need to find these answers as soon as possible. Once you assess your goals, developing your business web portal will become as easy as a piece of cake.

Tip#2 Identify and Cater to the Requirements of Your Customers

So you have already assessed your goals and have decided on the features that you are going to have on your portal. Now it's time for you to identify the requirements of your customers and cater to them according to their needs. If you can personalize your portal to the individual tastes of your clients, they will love it. Big data analysis is the only thing that can help you with that. Hence, make sure you don't ignore the task of data analysis for any reason whatsoever.

Tip#3 Know the Standard Features of a Web portal

Do you know the features that your business web portal needs? Some of the most common features of a business web portal include things like:

Classifieds
Chats
Photo Galleries
Personal profiles and much more

So what features will you have on your portal? Make your choice wisely.

The feature set of a web portal makes it more accessible and popular among users. It may seem a little difficult to accept but a little investment on your feature set would set you way ahead of your target audience.

Related blog: How Much Does Web Application Development Cost in 2021?

Phase 2: Turning Your Vision to Reality

Once you are done with the research part and are clear about what you want and how to develop a web portal, the next task is to turn your vision into a working reality.

Tip#4 Be Ready with an Action Plan

Once you know the basic requirements of how to create a web portal just be ready with a team that works with you. Have a clear picture of how you would like to proceed and what you want to focus on. Know the team members required and hire a team of experienced performers who can make things easier for you.

CTA-web portal

Tip#5 Decide on Your Web Portal Software

You would prefer open-source web portal scripts for this purpose of yours. Some of the major web-portal scripts that can come in handy in your situation are:

Liferay
Dolphin
UPortal
Osclass
DotNetNuke

Tip#6 Upload the Portal Software to Your Site

Upload the software to the website and install it according to the script-specific directions. You should have a sound knowledge of MySQL for this job because web portals usually run on databases.

Related blog: Streamline Your Web Application Business with MEAN Stack Development

Phase 3: The Finances!

Your venture would need a little investment. As you're making an investment in the business that is in demand, make sure that you have a clear budget and your web portal development team knows that. Share your budget with the team and let them help you identify what features and functions would be set in your budget. They may also help you get cheaper alternatives for some features making your investments less and returns higher.

Tip#7 Design Your Portal on the Idea of Earning Maximum Revenue

One should never waiver from the reality that a web portal has the sole purpose of making the maximum profit within minimum time. Hence, you must ensure that when designing a web portal front-end part of your portal (the one that's presented to customers) is optimized in the best possible manner to minimize the bounce rate and maximize profit in the long run. Also, it's important to track the results of your website. This will help you determine whether or not you are moving in the right direction.

Tip#8 Determine Which Product or Service You Are Offering

business development

It is important for an entrepreneur or startup firm to have a clear view of their products or services so that they can have an idea about what are the visitors going to do when they reach the web portal. As a business owner, you need to determine how the information is being provided. This will help the custom web portal development prospective client in getting the service or product delivered.

Tip#9 Financial Aspects to Be Taken Care of When Developing a Web Portal

The other important aspect when developing a business web portal in 2021 is to know about the costs involved in developing and designing the web portal. The use of technology is what matters the most in determining the cost of online portal development. To make the right decisions, you must master the art of using technology.

For instance, low-cost or open-source technology can be used when developing the web portal to lower the financial burden in case of start-ups to gain the financial edge over their competitors. Such a step would also help in achieving sustainable project development.

Phase 4: Build Something Your Customers Love

Now that you have a web portal ready with all its features and other aspects, but it may still not convert, the reason being the aesthetics and engagement factors. No matter how good your portal is if it isn't eye-pleasing and easy to navigate you're surely losing a great customer batch. Your web portal would only prosper if your customers show some love to it. Let them explore the various aspects and be attracted to your portal with its looks and aesthetics.

Tip#10 Don't Go for the Looks - Go for the Feel

Today, web portal designing is all about improving "user experience", on the whole. Your portal can have good looks, but if its access to web portability and comprehensive web portability raise issues among your customers, your revenue is bound to suffer in the long run.

For example, if a web portal looks brilliant on the desktop but takes a whole lot of time to load on the mobile internet, it becomes a liability to your business growth.

Do you think your audience would love that? No! Your user interaction rate is bound to decrease as a result of that. You will also be missing out on a whole lot of business (from your mobile customers, in particular). Hence, it is always advisable to stress more on UX than looks. Work hard to increase the page loading speed of your website.

Trust me, it works!

Tip#11 Last but Never the Least, Market Your Web Portal

Promote your portal on the internet through content marketing, social blogging, social media marketing, Google AdWords, and various other SEO practices or tools to gain profitability over time. Though it's a time-consuming process, if done the right way, an entrepreneur will always be a benefit for sure.

Wrapping It All!

So now you are all set to have a web portal for your business. You are quite sure about the types, various aspects, and the best tips to build the best web portal. The tips shared here are curated by the experts and if followed in totality, would help in your business development endeavors. Just stick to these tips and get going!

If you think it is difficult for you to build a web portal on your own, hire the best development team in the market and let them help you with your business needs. We have been delivering A-class products over the years and have helped several industries survive the story.

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