Often you might have come across the term Web Portal and it may have made you wonder what it is? And how it is different from a website? Or needed the best Web Portal Development Service. Worry not. Because this article covers all of it. So, read on to find out.
What is Web Portal?
Web portals are web-based platforms that present the most relevant information to users who have access to it. It is a single point to collect data from various sources to allow employees, customers, suppliers to access it. Web-based portals solve the problem of content delivery in the easiest way possible for an average user. Over time, web-based portals have evolved and transformed into a portal platform to provide a personalized experience.
For instance, Intranet, Extranet, Government, Patients, Vendor, etc. are a few examples of web-based portals. An online portal provides you with great control over day-to-day processes. They replicate the look and feel of your business to provide a custom experience to users. Web portals can be quickly accessed on mobile and desktops, regardless of the time and user’s location.
Difference between Web Portal and Website:
A website is a simple collection of web pages accessible on an online network with a unique URL. URL organizes the web pages into a hierarchical form which helps users to navigate through it. Typically, a website consists of a Homepage, which is the starting point for any interaction with other pages like About Us, Contact Us, etc. Generally, websites are of two types, static and dynamic.
Web portals on the other hand are customized websites that need a unique username and password credentials to access it. The users do not need login to websites to access content whereas the web portal requires users to log in to access the content. A web-based portal can become part of the website. E.g., any eCommerce store is a website but users need to login to perform activities such as buying, paying, seeing order history, etc.
Does My Business Need Web Portal Development Service?
The advent of the internet allowed businesses to rapidly adopt new technologies. And web-based portals become vital parts of the online ecosystem. This created a huge demand for web portal development services that got fulfilled by web portal development companies.
There are many reasons even for SMEs to have a web-based portal built into their systems. And the web portal development process resolves the pain a business might be facing. The main aspect to build a web-based portal for any enterprise is to allow streamlined access to multi-location based teams or offices. Also, it can work as a single point for a business and its supplier to access the information.
Of course, the web portal development service requirement can vary depending on how an organization conducts its workflow. Here are a few indicators of why you need a web portal development company.
- Multi-location teams/offices
- To improve the interaction among the home, office, or field-based teams
- To enhance the information visibility
- Need support for different portlets
- Require to scale the IT licensing
- Need new digital touchpoints for business agility
Web Portal Development Process:
The development of web portals consists of planning, designing, developing, testing stages. The development of web portals starts with accumulating all the requirements, then designing it in a way that aligns with your business requirements. Here’re steps for web portal development.
Step-1: Planning:
The planning step is a crucial one as it involves accumulating the requirement for the development. Few important things to note are the purpose of the web-based portal development, target audience, and how it’ll benefit the target audience.
The features and functions of a web portal can vary according to the needs of the business but it should have responsiveness, intuitive navigation, personalized experience, and others.
Step-2: Design:
The design part for the web-based portal consists of architecting the look and feel of it. The design of a web-based portal should be simple yet elegant. And thus, you should hire a web portal development company which can build attractive and appealing portals. Still, here’re a few points that you should take care of.
- Use decent and alluring color palettes for portal design.
- Images should appear neat and clean.
- The fonts used should be the same on every page of the portal.
Effectively designed portals give a great first impression to your clients. Thus, it becomes important to have an appealing portal designed by a Web portal development company.
Step-3: Development:
The next step in the web portal development process is developing the structure of the web-based portal. It requires expert coders and programmers with dexterous skills to handle your web portal development project.
This is the step where your ideas get implemented. The developers of the web portal development company will make sure that your portal is developed with proper UI/UX, user-friendliness, content, and other things. Based on your requirement, the developer may use pre-built templates or systems or built a custom one just for you.
Step-4: Testing & Launching:
Once everything is put into place, the testing stage begins before the launch of the portal. This step is essential as the testing of aspects like compatibility, responsiveness, UI/UX, Mobile-friendliness, and others take place. Errors and bugs get resolved if found in the web portal development process.
So, these were the steps for web portal development. Now, let’s look at the benefits of web-based portals.
Benefits of Web Portal Development
Developing a web-based portal as per your custom requirement has many benefits and a robust web portal development service can take your portal to a next level. The role of portals can vary from business to business. However, they have a key role to improve the sales and manage your clients or suppliers.
Below are a few benefits of web portals.
1. Helps to Reach a Massive Audience in Less Time:
Web-based portals help you to reach a great number of customers or a relevant audience. These customers will be interested in buying what you are offering. Web-based portals help to build your brand identity in less time. Also, the ubiquity of the internet will make it easy for users to find your brand and buy your products or get in touch.
2. Personalized Content Delivery Experience:
As mentioned earlier, web-based portals solve the problem of content delivery the internet had in the early days. The human-curated portals help display the selected content to users for a personalized experience. Based on the user role assigned or assumed, each type of portal can provide personalized access which is the basic concept of web portal development.
3. Improves Business Efficiency:
The web portal development technologies can make your organization and business more efficient. They help you to enhance productivity, save money, update your clients and employees, and streamline the communication by allowing one-stop access. With forms and other workflows digitized, it reduces the paper processes. Information centralization and sharing through APIs and other out-of-the-box features help you to utilize the true power of portals.
4. Effective Data Management:
Web portals allow corporates to update, manage, store, and access the numerous documents, protocols, guidelines, and other data in one place in a simple and effective way. Web portals can act as a single point or place to host and serve content to users as per their request. And a diligent web portal development service providers can help reduce your print and distribution costs significantly.
5. Security:
Security is imperative for web-based portals as portals are evolving to support a widening user base and increase business content. And a dynamic web portal development company can build portals with excellent security so that you can only share the information with the right people.
Web Portal Development Technologies
The modern-day web portal development service providers offer technically sound solutions using various tools and technologies. And a web portal development company should use the below technologies.
Front-end Web Portal Development Technologies:
JS, Bootstrap , CSS, HTML, React JS and JavaScript
Back-end Web Portal Development Technologies:
CakePHP, C++, .Net, Golang, Java, JS, PHP and Python
Summing Up
A skilful web portal development service provider should have apt coders, developers, designers, SEO analysts, and others that help accomplish your goals by providing performance-oriented portal solutions. And with the help of this blog, you have now understood the difference between a web portal and a website. Also, the web portal development process and its benefits provide an overview of web-based portals and its importance.
Need your own portal developed by experts? Contact us with your queries and requirements and our expert portal developers will get in touch with you immediately. We provide web and mobile responsive portal development solutions to fulfil your custom needs and catapult your business toward success.
About Hemant Parmar
Hemant Parmar is an eCommerce expert and a keen Magento consultant who specializes in meeting the needs of businesses in the e-commerce space. Years in the eCommerce market make him a perfect choice for sharing his expertise on eCommerce and Magento 2 development. He believes that customers need to be met no matter how challenging it might be.
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