In 2022 the worldwide smartphone subscription surpassed 6 billion, and it is expected to increase by more than 100 million in the next few years. US, India, and China are the countries with the highest number of smartphone users. So, facets like web portal development are becoming more popular amongst corporates to target such a vast audience. Activities like custom website portal development are effective to offer your audience a unified digital experience.
Web portal development enables enterprises to automate various processes and increase customer, employee, and partner engagement in the business. This web service has gained a lot of prevalence in the last few years due to its long list of benefits to any business.
When it comes to digital transformation, you must look for digital solutions based on your business requirements. So, scroll ahead to understand the significance of this process and decide the most lucrative way to initiate your portal development project.
Why Your Business Needs a Web Portal?
Increase visibility of information
External contribution to data and processes
Improved user experience
Streamlined communication
To provide module for day-to-day processes
With web portals, you can serve a community of users through a wide range of incredible features (notification, message boards, workflow, content dissemination, etc.) that make the customer journey personalized and easier. In short, we can say that you can optimize business processes, provide better customer service, and easily manage business operations by the development of a portal for your business. Furthermore, portals can serve different purposes and improve the online reputation of a business by taking the user experience to the next level. So, acquiring web portal development assistance can prove crucial for your brand’s reputation.
Portal development has become an integral part of online marketing. Due to the increasing popularity of these intranet portals, the demand for web portal development also increases. From government institutions to private companies, a unique portal idea has become instrumental to the potential digital success.
Many people confuse web portals with websites. Are you one of them?
Then this blog is for you. Here you will get basic information about web portals, their functionality, the significance of content management, and custom portal types. How can website portal development help grow your business? How can you develop one for your business? How much is the cost to create a leading web portal? This blog will be a full guide on web portals and the best practices for top portal development steps. So, pursue it till the end and choose a reliable web portal development company.
Without further delay, let’s dive deeper.
Table of Contents
What is a Web Portal?
A website portal is a special type of website designed to serve unique purposes, meet your business goals, and gather and present information in a personalized and more diverse way. It is basically created to offer personalized information to users, such as safety manuals or a customer website, employee training, and so on. Moreover, these portals are used to improve customer, employee, and supplier interaction with the business and enhance information collaboration.
Although web application portals are just like websites, providing information to users or readers but not the same. A website is a virtual face of your business carrying all information related to your product and services. While an online portal is created to cater to the specific need of a group of people. It is the best option for users who are looking for particular information. For example, in job portals, you can get all information regarding job openings from various companies in different cities. You just need to sign up on these portals to access all the information. So, a web portal development company can guide you in this process swiftly.
Speaking of web portal development companies, you can connect with eLuminous Technologies Pvt. Ltd. We have over two decades of expertise in the IT industry and can guide you in developing phenomenal website portals.
Now, let us get back to the informative side of web portals.
Web Portal vs Website
Parameters
Web Portal
Website
Focus
To inform and to collect information
Provide information
User Approach
Identification of user group
Equal
Access to Content
Require sign-up or login
No need for login or sign-up
Interaction
Complex
Simple
Admin Panel
Multiple admin teams
One admin panel
Security
Complex
Simple
Type of Content
Adjust to different user group
Same for all users
We can easily and quickly access these online business portals on all devices (desktop, smartphone, tablet, etc.). Web portals replicate the look and feel of your business and hence provide excellent control over day-to-day business processes.
To build engaging portal applications, it is a good idea to connect with portal developers who have expertise in using the latest technologies.
Want to know more about web portals? Then, feel free to discuss your requirements and allow us to offer professional advice.
A web portal is a single point for accessing various information about a company. This information can be accessed or categorized by certain links. By developing a portal, you can access information related to products, company articles, suppliers or vendor lists, etc.
The portal development includes sign-up or log-in by users to extract information provided by the web owners. The information or data is pulled from different sources and conveniently located in one place. Moreover, you can also communicate with other portal users.
The development of a web portal requires expertise in website building, client-side and server-side scripting, rich application development, registration systems, and many more. Thus, in order to get a feature-rich and highly functional web portal, hire a dedicated software development team. Such a team can explain the difference between website portal development and web apps profoundly.
There are numerous web portals (With distinct type of information) that cater to the diverse business needs of different businesses. Businesses mostly opt for web portal development services to get customized solutions from portal development firms. Let’s cover the main types of web portals to serve the specific purpose of businesses.
Horizontal Portal
The purpose of this type of portal is to provide all information to users while they search for relevant services . All companies mostly use it, which is like a common platform providing an entry point and data and tools to a general audience. Some of the examples of horizontal Portal are governmental, educational, cultural, etc.
Vertical Portal
Web portal development companies use vertical Portals to provide certain information associated with services to users. These are also called vortals. These are associated with a single domain or industry and provide documents, tools, data files, and project information related to a specific sector.
Customer Portal
This portal is used to streamline customer service processes and interactions via a B2C customer portal. The customer portal provides customers and clients with access to a personalized data dashboard. It has common features to most direct-to-customer online stores and is compatible with mobile devices. As this portal eases the customer journey, there will be an increase in the customer retention rate
Membership Portal
This portal provides specific services to members and subscribers via an authenticated login system. After login, users can access premium data or services, such as entertainment medium, datasheets, documents, music, training materials, etc.
B2B Portals
This portal provides companies with well-organized customer self-service to offer information to customers and achieve better post-order management. A well-known sub-type of these web solutions are enterprise portals, portraying adequate technical expertise and important data, useful for a lot of people.
B2C Portals
This portal helps drive sales by providing better customer service. Moreover, it helps companies to develop trust among customers by establishing long-lasting and loyal relationships. Portal creation for such solutions requires a customized portal development process and decent knowledge of the public sector.
Corporate Portal
It is a hybrid of B2B and B2C portals wherein customers and business associates can access internal company data Corporate portals are more streamlined and require careful attention during the planning stage.
CRM Portal
Companies use the CRM portal for the comprehensive and robust collaboration of the sales and marketing team. The main purpose of the CRM portal is to manage customers via a central repository of critical customer data. Aspects like process automation, user groups, and the final price or budget play crucial role before developing CRM portals.
Partner Portal
This portal is best for industries like healthcare and real estate, where instead of depending on the portal, you need to have various partners who can help to take your business forward. In addition to these prominent types of web pages, other sub-types include ecommerce portal, sales portal (useful for sales teams), education portals, and d 2 c customer portal.
A reliable web development company can guide you in the process of portal application development profoundly. Such firms take care of crucial elements like architecture design, UI, and content creation as part of their comprehensive services.
Have a look at Legal education portal development here.
Have a look at the Legal education portal, which is one of our web development projects. The client TRTCL is a family-run organization offering cross-platform lessons in the Legal sector.
Students and individuals interested in studying Law can explore online courses, webcasts, and live lectures, which are tailor-made for different US states. In the image below, you can find a glimpse of the ‘My Account’ page. It displays crucial reporting information, a segment on courses, certificates, and live credits, all at a unified location.
If you want to develop your unique web portal, it is essential to understand the offerings. Explore our service page for more info.
Business Challenges Solved by a Web Portal Development
Web portal development is a good technological solution to interact with your customers and employees in the most effective way. Because a web portal provides a systematic structure for your content hence helps to engage visitors most compellingly. The best part about using a portal website is that it is easy to manage once set up properly and enables you to publish content rapidly. So, choosing authentic web portal development services can help solve several corporate challenges.
Web portals make it easier to inform users about their products and keep them updated on new product launches or any latest business achievements. These website portal development solutions are handy to cover a wide scope of work for an organization.
Web portal solves the problems that arise in various industries; for example:
Web portals are the most feasible option if you want to target and rebrand a specific group of users.
With these web portals, you can stand ahead of competitors as they provide a professional look to your business.
The private sector creates a web portal for employees to manage scheduling, workflow, human resources affairs, contact information, document management, etc.
For each industry, the requirements of the web portal are different. For university, you might need only one portal in which students can register for classes via a login. While in school, there will be a separate portal for faculty to submit grades, manage attendance, etc.
These portals are also used as the basis for news publishing organizations and community-based websites. It will result in effective management of the tasks associated with being a content aggregator or online publisher.
Web portals provide personalized access to specific groups of users, allowing companies to contextualize the experiences of both external and internal staff.
These are some of the common problems solved by web portals. But this is not the end; the list of enticing benefits of developing a web portal for your business is very long. Let’s cover some common benefits of having a web portal for your enterprise.
The portal development is a custom solution that provides excellent versatility as users can easily access company details online across multiple devices. Moreover, these web portals offer customers and staff a high level of security, and they can derive information from these portals without any fear of impending cybersecurity incidents.
Improved Hiring and Training of Employees
Onboarding and training new employees require the investment of money, time, or resources. But by developing a portal you can ease this process by creating a single access point for information. For example, you can keep all the job applications in the portals and, based on assessment, update the status of their application.
Improved Customer Retention and MRR
The web portals streamline and optimize the company and customer data and resources, encouraging customers to build loyalty towards you. It results in a reduced churn rate, improved customer retention rates, improved MRR (monthly recurring revenue rates), and reduced company overhead.
Seamless Integration & Customization
According to a Forbes report, 34% of customers make unplanned purchases if the brand personalizes the content as per the specific needs of the group of users. Hence, custom web portal development can enhance the business success rate. Along with customization, customers like a streamlined experience when using a web portal. Moreover, we can easily integrate various high-end plugins into the portal, leading to enhanced functionality and speed.
Effective Access to Business Information
In today’s face-paced industry, everyone wants to access data efficiently and quickly. It is quite troublesome to access, review, and update business information without these portals. Web portals allow customers and employees to quickly extract the necessary information to enhance productivity.
Partnering with the right firm can help you experience all the advantages. For more details, go through our service page today!
The development of a portal involves designing and developing applications using a specific set of tools. Each web development company has its own project flow. But there are a few general steps that most development companies follow. Here we are covering a universal way of developing a portal for businesses.
Web Portal Development Process
Requirement Gathering
It is one of the crucial steps in full-cycle development as in this phase, portal development companies understand the client’s requirement for the portal. The more clarity developers have, the more the final product will have features and functionality as per the client’s exact requirements. The following information is gathered in this step-
Understanding the target audience to incorporate the right features in the application.
Analyze the strengths, weaknesses, and business approaches of competitors
Defining what tasks, you want to perform using that portal and what objective you want to achieve with the portal.
Conceptualization & Planning Phase
After requirement gathering, the planning for the development of the portal starts by setting up the scope of the work. In this phase, the tech stack is selected to get the required functionality in the portal, and big tasks are divided into small ones. A dedicated team is crucial to makeing the best decision on the latest technology stack choice. The deadline and budget are set for all the tasks to achieve development within your pre-decided time and budget. Hence during the planning phase, the client learns about the project risk, technology stack, approximate project cost, and development cost.
Design Phase
In the designing phase, first of all, architecture is prepared for the development team. The architecture is nothing but a site map describing all the pages that will be on your web portal. Besides this, hierarchy and connection between all the pages are defined.
One important thing to keep in mind is during the designing phase, always keep your target audience in mind. It will help you decide the look and feel ( colour selection, icons, and elements for the portal) as per your customers. For example, the employee portal can be less rigid in style, while a partner portal should be simple, organized, and professional.
Once the architecture is decided, then it’s time to start building a prototype for your portal. As a result, you can preview the look of your future web portal. Any changes needed are then incorporated at this stage only. That’s why the design phase is very crucial, and proper time should be given to it.
Development Phase
Using the prototype created in the previous step web development team starts the coding part to bring your portal to life. First, the home page is developed then developer focuses on the other necessary pages of the portal. The main goal of the development phase is to build a product that looks and feels precisely as per your business requirement. A proficient development team should include a Business Analyst, Software Engineer, developer, designer, Quality Analyst, and Scrum Master. Learn how and from where to hire a dedicated software development team for portal development.
Testing Phase
This phase is critical as it helps discover all faults and weaknesses of the web portal developed in the previous step. Many portal features like navigation, performance, speed, etc., are thoroughly checked at this phase. The main purpose of testing is to ensure that everything in the web portal works fine, and portal should be user-friendly.
Deployment and Evaluation
After all the errors and bugs reported in the testing phase are fixed, the next step is to deploy the portal. Deployment is real-time running. During this phase of professional portal development, there is continuous monitoring of performance for load balance. Once the website portal is up and running, we will do the real-time performance evaluation. Both evaluation and deployment phases happened in real time.
Maintenance
The website portal development teamwork isn’t complete after deployment. Constant maintenance and periodic updates are required to keep your portal ahead of competitors. Be it optimizing the performance of mobile apps or desktop portals, continuous maintenance can give you a competitive advantage in the market.
Now comes to the most awaited section, the cost of development. Like websites, portal development costs depend on various factors, including complexity, features, and functionality. Moreover, we can say that cost depends on the specific functionality you want to achieve in your portal. Let’s dive deeper into all the factors affecting the price of portal development. After knowing these aspects, you can choose an appropriate web portal development company.
Factors Affecting the Quotation of a Web Portal Development
The number of features
The type of tech stack chosen
The kind of mobile experience (PWA, cross-platform app)
Number and complexity of integration with third-party libraries
Number of user roles
Complexity and uniqueness of portal design
The complexity of the portal logic
Required performance and scalability of the portal
Needed regulatory compliance
Other than these factors, the location of the development team also affects the cost. For example, hiring a dedicated development team from India will cost you less compared to hiring from other countries. We break down the cost of portal development for your understanding.
To get more insights on the costing factor, team eLuminous can assist you without any delay.
Note*-This is an average cost; it will vary depending on your specific feature requirement in the portal.
Final Word
Web portals can take your business to its deserved heights as they improve customer retention and acquisition and reduce operational costs. With the help of a professional web development company, you can develop a web portal catering to all your business requirements. A customized web portal will reduce your stress of recording and managing data and resources and effectively carry out the business operation.
After reading this blog, we hope you will develop a modern, scalable, and feature-rich web portal for your business. If you are still confused about whether a web portal will solve your business challenges or not, don’t worry; consult with our web portal development team.
Contact eLuminous – Your Trusted Custom Web Portal Development Partner
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the stages of creating a web portal?
First, you need to complete the planning stage by addressing your web portal’s intent, timing, and target audience. The following steps include design, testing, quality assurance, and deployment.
2. Which are some well-known web portals on the internet?
Some popular online portals are Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Excite. These search engines are portals that can allow you to sign in and explore various functions of the internet.
3. What popular tools do developers use in web portal development?
Developers predominantly use MySQL, Node.js, Python, HTML5, WordPress, Meteor, or cloud platforms like AWS while developing portals. Approaching a reliable web portal development agency can help you choose the proper tech stack for your project.
4. What is a company’s average span to develop portals?
On average, the time to develop a complete web portal is around 3 – 5 months. However, this duration is subject to change. It depends on factors like the project’s complexity, the team’s strength, the use of the technology stack, and other miscellaneous aspects.
Nitin has over 20 years of IT experience and 3+ years of experience in on-site work in Arizona, USA. In all these years, he has held the positions of delivery manager, module lead, and senior consultant. Expert in advocating product life cycle phases while using self-motivational skills and problem-solving abilities. He works on the principle of “Always Deliver More than Expected.”
