5 Types of Business Web Portals for Growth

"Portal" is one of the most buzzed words. You might have read it in your day-to-day life.

But, what is it?

Well, there are many complex meanings of portals, but here we have tried to simplify it for you:

• It’s a gateway or an entrance’.

And from a business angel, a portal or web portal gives your employees, customers,

and suppliers a platform to collaborate with you. This shortens your operations

cycle and provides you with control over your day-to-day processes.

The best part of having a portal is that it is easily accessible from desktops as well as mobile devices.

But wait, developing a portal is a difficult and complex task. You need to consider many things like the purpose of developing it, your business model, etc. Asking these questions, in the beginning, will help you have a clear picture of the type of portal your business requires.

To give you a clear picture, here I have discussed the types of portals:

1. Vertical Portal:

If your company is known for its mastery in one sector like insurance, health care, etc. then you can build vertical portals. They are known as Vortals.

It gives a platform to access information to a certain market niche, industry or unique area of interest. They deal with limited subjects, addresses a single topic like insurance, health care, food manufacturing, etc.

We can also call it an interest-based community website as it brings people of the same interest together by selling, buying or exchanging information about a specific industry. It’s also necessary to understand that there can be multiple vortals for the same subject.

1. Horizontal Portal:

Horizontal portals serve as an entry point for a web surfer into the internet. It provides content on a wide range of topics and directs them towards the right path to get related resources of a particular search.

It provides them with aggregated data from multiple sources in a single view. Users prefer such portals as it does not require them to log in to read, write or amalgamate information.

An exclusively shared horizontal web portal can take the form of a reporting system that collects the Key Performance Indicator (KPIs) information from multiple business systems and shows them in a unified manner.

1. Marketplace Portal:

Marketplace Portals supports B2B and B2C e-commerce. It also provides software support for transactions and the ability to find and access information about the products on sale or involve in discussion groups with vendors or buyers.

1. Knowledge Portals:

It is useful in providing knowledge to employees, customers, and vendors. They are available in different formats like information discovery services, collaboration services, knowledge maps, etc. Hence if your company’s aim is to provide the information to your users then this portal is a perfect choice for you.

1. Intranet/Enterprise Portals:

The purpose of developing an Intranet Portal is to give access to the members of the enterprise network. The most common benefit of it is that it provides data and statistics to the staff in a timely manner. Now, this can make or break an enterprise’s efficiency.

Along with data, it also provides with the document management system, online training courses, availability of applications on-demand, etc.

Now that we understood the types, let’s talk about the benefits of having a portal for your business.

Benefits of Portal:

The major benefit of having a web portal is that it enhances user satisfaction, improves data access and basic login functionality. Other benefits include:

1. Better decision making
2. Scalable IT licensing options
3. Decreases back-office administration
4. Improves communication which results in strong customer and supplier relationships

Not only these, but there are also endless benefits of having web service portals. If you are thinking that the above-mentioned portals might not fit in your business model, then you can invest in a customized solution which exclusively serves your company.

In that case, a web portal development company is the way to go. Such a portal development company can help you in developing a portal keeping your business logic and model in mind. A right web portal development company will make sure that your web portal is serving its purpose and reflects your business model.

If you don’t have a big budget, then you can always hire freelance web portal developers. An option we easily forget. They will help you in developing a customized web portal in your budget.

Wrapping up:

Nothing should stop utilizing the benefits of web portals for your company and users. Get your web portals now and enjoy the undefeatable services it provides.

Mr. Maulik Shah is the founder & CEO of CRMJetty, a hub of innovative customer relationship solutions, provides ready to CMS integrate portal solutions for SuiteCRM, Sugar CRM, Salesforce, and Dynamics CRM including WordPress Customer Portal.