Online portals can change how your company’s employees, clients, and suppliers communicate with one another. Did you know 89% of American consumers anticipate businesses to have an online self-service support portal. Hence, if you want to meet the expectations of your audience, you should immediately contact a seasoned web portal development company to begin developing the platform for your enterprise.
A portal is a web-based platform that compiles data from several sources into a single user interface and shows users the most pertinent information when needed.
In the early years of the internet, content finding was a problem that web portal development companies attempted to be addressed. With the abundance of online information, a portal—a hub of human-curated content—was the most straightforward way for the average user to find information.
As modern portal platforms are expanded with new capabilities like content management systems or marketing automation, they can significantly increase client engagement. Portal systems continue to be very helpful. Have a look at the amazing benefits of portal development.
Table of Contents
Benefits of Web Portal
Development
Access to accurate data and analytics
Reach an extended audience
Offering Single Sign for a Variety of Applications
Providing Services to Diverse Domains
Offer Improved Customization
A web portal is a safe online-based platform that provides quick access to various features and material. Online portals can facilitate communication with customers and clients while also assisting your company in expanding and increasing revenue.
Any form of web portal can be created with the assistance of a leading web portal development company. There are tons of portal development service providers across the globe. According to Statista, by 2024, there will be 28.7 million developers worldwide.
But there are a few things to keep in mind before hiring any custom web portal development business, which we’ll cover in this blog.
Before that, let’s take a detailed overview of a web portal and why you need one for your enterprise.
What is Web Portal Development?
Often people confuse web portals with websites, but web portals are specially created websites and online platforms that collect information from several sources into a single user interface and show users the most relevant information. Also, it frequently has a membership component allowing users to log in and access their accounts.
Regular users have access to RSS, news feeds, and other information that the portal gathers from various sources and then presents in a centralized location. It can be viewed as a communication and information hub.
A top-quality portal development may increase sales, improve user experience, and simplify content distribution. Let’s examine the benefits that building a platform brings to the business.
For web portal creation, rich application development, client-side and server-side scripting, registration systems, and other complex site-building techniques are needed. You’ll require the assistance of a seasoned web portal development company.
Top 5 Points to Consider While Hiring a Web Portal Development Company
With the help of web portals, you can organize your content and give users the most engaging experience possible. Blogs, comments, social media, polls, surveys, email marketing, guest bloggers, etc., may all be used to engage visitors. The best thing about web portals is that they allow you to post content quickly and are simple to administer once set up properly with the help of a reliable web portal development company.
The number of internet browsers is continually increasing as technology evolves. It may be challenging to keep up with all of them, from Firefox and Safari to Internet Explorer and Chrome. Make sure your portal can be accessed from various browsers when designing one.
The web portal should work well on all popular browsers, including earlier versions. A company may incur expensive consequences if this stage is skipped because it may exclude a sizable portion of its consumer base.
According to statistics, mobile device use has seen a noticeable growth in online searches over the last two years. In fact, around 95% of people who use mobile devices rely on them to look for nearby goods and services. Functionality, usability, and appearance & feel must therefore be preserved or gracefully incorporated for mobile devices. A responsive website may “react” to the browser type automatically and provide a fantastic user experience.
How can you be sure that the development partner you select will offer you a responsive web portal that is simple to explore across various browsers and devices?
Verify the compatibility of their own website on various devices.
Examine the earlier projects.
If you choose a responsive design, verify the costing part.
Bonus Tip:
The website’s navigation menu serves as a map that shows the way around each page. Although it shouldn’t have a distinct structure, responsive navigation should scale proportionally to the relative screen size. Users who browse your website from various devices may need clarification if you modify the navigation structure for each device. Thus, make sure to discuss this point with the custom portal development firm.
2. Check Privacy & Security Policy
Hackers are slang phrases used to refer to computer experts who are not regular people. In addition to stealing your essential data and your audience’s personal information, they can damage your small to large online identity by turning your websites or portals into an entry point for viruses and malware that will hurt the web’s user base whole.
So, find out what security protocols, benchmarks, and tools your web portal development company is familiar with and where they have been implemented. Make sure they employ the measures below to ensure high security.
The software development industry and nearly all web development agencies have adopted the signing of NDAs (Non-Discloser Agreements) as a legal and moral practice. It guarantees the privacy and confidentiality of your data.
Web development firms always employ local servers as development servers for the sake of protecting digital data. When deploying websites, developers enlist the assistance of hosting businesses to run Internet-based development servers for customer testing and approval. Talk about the hosting options they provide with your web design team for your website or online application.
The company’s portfolio conceals the truth. To evaluate their prior work, you can request their portfolio and carefully review it. Moreover, cross-referencing lets, you learn more about your chosen organization from existing and previous customers.
Fortunately, the software development sector has policies in place to provide legitimate references of their past clients upon request. If those clients are ready to speak with prospective clients, it will be like an apple on the pie for you.
Overall, strive to get the following information from the portfolio, online reviews, and client testimonials.
Whether a project was finished on schedule or not?
How do the team and business treat clients regarding project management, communications, and reporting?
How does the development firm act after a project is completed or payment has been made, when defects or maintenance problems appear, or in other words, their post-development conduct?
Check whether the previous project was completed on time and within budget.
4. Ask for Source Ownership
When engaging a custom web application or portal development company, inquire about the assets you will receive at the end of the work. It’s crucial to own the source code, as well as the documentation, images, graphics, and data produced while developing your product.
However, not all software companies are able or willing to grant ownership of the application code. But with source code ownership, you can maintain long-term control over your product. You should always be able to take the source code and modify it at any time if you’re ever unhappy with the project’s direction or decide to extend it later and maintain the product internally.
Several items are included in the source code, such as,
Using a web interface (HTML, style sheets, images, fonts, JavaScript)
Backend code (C#, Java, PHP, Ruby, etc.)
Database (The database schema, stored procedures and the data itself) (The database schema, stored procedures and the data itself)
Various Libraries (Code written by 3rd parties that is used to speed up development)
So, it is always advisable to check with the portal development services provider whether they provide source code ownership after project completion.
5. Check Experience & Expertise
The final and most important factor to consider when hiring a custom web application development company to build a web portal for your business is their expertise in the field.
Yet, your development partner must know all the popular front-end technologies. But we should also remember that creating website software is not a one-size-fits-all approach. You require a solution uniquely suited to your business and target market.
Much like a business, a web developer only becomes an expert in some fields because learning new technologies and proficiency in them is expensive in many ways. Moreover, dedicated developers can give more effective results.
As a result, you must find out what skill sets your chosen web development businesses must have and match them to the specifications of your project.
The candidates’ experiences are a significant element in choosing; the more seasoned and experienced developers you discover in the organization, the better it may be for your projects and long-term relationships.
Other than these 5 factors, you should confirm two more essential points before employing any professional. Those are:
How much support & maintenance will you get after project completion?
The job of your web programming company does not finish with publishing your website. A live website could have issues as time goes on. With the development of web tools and technologies, it might not work properly.
In future, your company may grow, which raises several concerns that need to be handled. For instance, rising traffic, the need for personalization, expanding databases, hosting-related problems, performance regression, marketing-related problems, SEO problems, and many others.
Hence confirm with your web development partner how much support they provide, or do you have to pay monthly or yearly to get assistance after project completion?
How much will it cost to develop a web portal for your enterprise?
We are aware that good things are always expensive. But getting clarity on costing parts at the earlier phase will help you check your budget.
You should first request rough estimates and a list of all the essential tasks from each of the businesses you’ve chosen. Based on that, start a conversation with selected companies and request a thorough estimate, payment terms, procedures, and a timeframe.
It helps you choose the best option so that you can base your selection on those documents with full knowledge. Complete the project and sign an NDA before beginning it. Well done, you did it!
EPILOGUE
With the aid of the right web portal development business, you can construct a web portal with plenty of features. We hope this blog proves helpful to find the right talent, we would be happy to expand our guide if you still require assistance.
We at eluminous technologies offer free portal Development Consultancy Services and dedicate highly skilled and knowledgeable web developers to the cause.
Take advantage of our free consultants and technical expertise to produce high-end web development projects for you at incredibly reasonable prices. Get in touch with us to learn more about this.
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.”
