Are you thinking of building a new web portal or website for your business? Upgrading an old website and wondering if you should build a customer-centered web portal instead? These are critical decisions when considering where to invest your IT dollars. When it comes to any investment, you are expecting a return. Sometimes these decisions are far more than the technology. Companies want to encourage their consumers to interact, be involved, and invest their hard-earned dollars in their products or services. If communication is always difficult – customers shy away.
Portals offer something more. When you go online and want to check your bank balance – you want access, now. You also want to be able to make changes, say move some money to your savings or pay a bill. Do you want to drive to the branch or spend time with customer service on the phone to get any of this done? Likely not. Customers want to feel like they, too, are in control. Giving customers more access to their accounts for products and services encourages sales. It also helps to develop long-term, positive, two-way relationships with your customer. Read on to learn about web portals, the benefits of customizing, and where to hire top coders.
Table of Contents:
- What is a Web Portal?
- The Difference Between a Web Portal and a Website
- Benefits of a Custom Web Portal
- Hiring Elite Developers in a World of Competition
What is a Web Portal?
A web portal is a website. However, all websites are not web portals. Imagine if you could take a basic informative website and supercharge it with customer data, products, and service options. A web portal brings data into a single dashboard and includes information sources like emails, forums, or search options. To be more specific, a web portal is a complex website that delivers an access point to data.
A portlet is a component of a portal website that creates dynamic content in response to process requests. As the user becomes accustomed to the use of the portlet, they will become confident about where to get specific information. A portlet could deliver information like travel details, transaction information, news, stock quotes, and local weather. Users find value in it and return often for information. Users can even customize the appearance or location on the screen of the portlet.
Most portals divide needed information or displays into separate areas. The user can often choose which ones to display, but each section of the page displays its specified data. These sections are aligned portlets. Portals allow a diversity of content to be displayed in a visually pleasing and highly understandable way.
When you build your portal, the design or layout can be customized which then is displayed on a dashboard or map. It means that the graphics and display of your dashboard can be fully customized based on how you want to display the content. A portal can also include APIs or application programming interfaces to permit users to search localized content. This is done by restriction of domains. Portals can also access databases to deliver specified information to the user. User abilities can be restricted to allow access through authorized users, but still display a working website to anonymous users. Yahoo, Google, and other comprehensive resources online are built as a portal.
The Difference Between a Web Portal and a Website
If a portal is a website but a website is not always a portal, then what is the difference? How can you tell them apart?
Website: A website references a specific address on the internet. It is generally comprised of pages, images, videos, or other content. All content is specifically noted to be addressed to the URL or Uniform Resource Location.
Web Portal: While a web portal can be found at a specified URL the same way as a website, the difference is the service. It is a gateway that allows information to be interacted with and presented. It delivers a consistent appearance but allows users access to various databases or other applications. Portals can deliver services like forums or online shopping experiences.
Benefits of a Custom Web Portal
One area in which custom web portals have made a significant difference in people’s lives is in the medical industry. Patient portals deliver on-demand information about health, test results, appointments, and more to users on demand. Patients put their trust into the service so when building a web portal it should be able to deliver relevant information in a usable way, in a language understood by the user.
As users of patient portals become more accustomed to accessing their health information, they improve overall. Diabetic patients have noted an increased understanding of their illness and how to control it. For business enterprises, investing in building a well-designed, custom web portal delivers consistently high returns and also manages some business processes.
Other benefits of a custom web portal:
- Web portals can be used to collaborate with staff, share documents and be better organized.
- Since all users must provide login credentials, there is increased security for the data.
- Branding can be synced and customized to promote products consistently to users based on available data.
- Back-end applications are consolidated with a single access point.
- Increased returns from both product sales and services. Increased consumer confidence.
Hiring Elite Developers in a World of Competition
Getting started on building an integrated platform that includes a custom web portal requires hiring qualified staff. Today’s top coders are hard to hire because the competition is fierce. You do have a couple of choices. You can see if your current IT team can handle it, but likely the answer is that they are far too busy with other necessary IT tasks. You could build your own team; this would mean hiring multiple individuals with $110k a year and more salaries along with their additional staff needs. Don’t forget the cost of benefits.
Building your own team can take up to nine months of just hiring the right staff for the job if you can find them. Time is also one of the most valuable commodities to you, your business, and your employees. The other method that most enterprises take when deciding to build a custom web portal is to contract it out to a readily available team. The overall costs are lower, you get certified, qualified experts and you save on time. You can get started right away.
DataCose specializes in building custom web portals. We have our Tech Team in a Box service in which you can be assured of an entire team of qualified experts to build your new portal. You can get started immediately and save on development costs. DataCose has teams of elite coders who can customize all the features of your new web portal according to your unique needs and your customer’s expectations. If you are trying to weigh these important decisions about the future of your business, fill out the form below. We will get back to you, listen to your company’s needs, and help you choose the best solution for your needs.
Our teams can make your next web addition a true success. Check out the form, there is no obligation. We’d like to show you the path to success!