This year, we are moving forward with a great shift in our day-to-day lives. Your home seems to be a more comfortable workplace and most office buildings wait for their employees to return. The outbreak of the pandemic has given us the biggest business experiment, “Work from Home”, of all time.

One thing that has been made clear during the pandemic is we have entered a time where a click can get things done for you in seconds. But with the strong competition, it is difficult for people to find the right place to avail the services and products they want.

Well, we have a solution for these. You could easily reach a web portal of the domain and find exactly what you are looking for.

Want to monetize this simple solution? Well, then all you need to do is understand how to create a web portal.

Before we start, let’s have a brief on market stats and the meaning of a web portal.

Explore the Market Stats

  • The total number of websites available on the internet is 1.92 billion.
  • The active number of internet users in the world are 4.66B in 2021
  • The average mobile page takes 9.3 seconds to load.
  • With the rise in the internet, more people are choosing to be online, which strikes businesses to stay themselves live all the time over the internet. Websites are the real companion in that advert. North America is at the top of the internet penetration rate with 97% of the population.
  • The social media industry has raised a high bar in recent years. 57.6% of the world population have attentively used social media on an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes in 2021.
  • More than 48.66% of the companies are using online advertising on their channels.
  • Popular social media portals are Facebook (2.7B), Youtube (2B), and WhatsApp (2B).
  • The e-commerce market has a hit of $4.89T in the year 2021 and will continue to raise to $6.38T in the year 2024 with a lift of 14% to 17% in 2020.
  • 95% of the people will trust online for their purchase by the year 2040. The Internet and technology are the next thriving things in the world. People are likely to fall more on the online presence.
  • The above state makes 51% of the online shoppers transit their products online.
  • $4.93B of the global users are internet savvy; which is 63.2% of the total population.
  • Popular domain extensions are .com, .net, .org, .co, .us.

Have you found the above statistics amazing? 2024 is going to be the online technology market, you can’t imagine it without the websites and portals.

What is an Online Portal?

A web portal is your digital identity. It is your store that would take a picture on the screens. If you think you are ready for portal web development then hire the right web portal development team that can help you through your journey. A web portal is a website serving as a single collective source for all information on a particular web domain. A Web portal deals with a wide array of information in a certain way that’s convenient for most users to handle, no matter whether the users have any prior technical knowledge of the subject or not.

That was from the user’s perspective.

If you think like a business owner, a web portal can be the next million-dollar business idea and a profitable venture. In this article, we’ll discuss a few tips and tricks to designing your very own business web portal in 2024.

Before we delve into the tips and tricks of developing a web portal, let’s discuss its types and which of these should you choose for your business.

Building a Web Portal? Not Before You Know the Types:

When you decide on building a web portal for your business, there are a few things that you need to consider. Our experts have been working on various kinds of web portals and understand how significant it is to define the right web portal for your business to make things better for you. You need to have a basic knowledge of how to create a web portal design, what are the types of web portals, how the complete thing functions, and what are the best practices. This would help you choose the right portal that would drive maximum sales for your business without any extra struggles.

Let’s pick one aspect at a time and proceed.

Types of Web Portals

The web portal we would discuss here is basic portals that need to be defined in a way that it is evident how they function. You can choose the one that fits your business model and we would further discuss how things would turn into an impressive reality.

Vertical Web Portals- Vertical web portals are those designed to focus on one specific domain or industry. There are usually two types of portals, in general, which are:

  • Corporate Portals – Made for personalized access to certain information of a particular company.
  • Commerce portals – Made to support B2C & B2B e-commerce portal backend operations.
  • Knowledge Portals – These portals help to enhance the efficiency of employees by providing easy and convenient access to information inside the workplace.

Note: Knowledge portals can usually be found on the business intranet. So keep an eye out for the same.

Horizontal Portals- Horizontal web portal design emphasizes a wide array of topics and interests. These portals target the entire internet community and are hence called “mega portals”. These portals also offer search engine functionalities to improve the user experience.

Enterprise Portals- Enterprise portals provide a relevant range of information about a particular company. If used properly, Enterprise apps may help you improve the performance of your organization.

MarketSpace Web Portals- Marketspace portals endorse B2C and B2B e-commerce portals. Their major functionalities are inclusive of things like:

  • Proper software support for e-commercial transactions.
  • Ability to search and access product information on the Web portal.
  • Ability to share product listings in groups with vendors.

These are some very common kinds of web portals that you can choose from when you want to create a portal website for a profit-generating business.

Aren’t sure what makes a portal website different from the general one? Well, let’s have a quick discussion here.

Difference Between Website and Web Portal

Now that you’re sure about how to create a portal website, understanding what makes it interesting is here. If you are technically naïve, surely you’d find it difficult to find the right website development experts who can help you through. Various aspects of differentiation:

  • Purpose
  • Accessibility
  • Users
  • Content
  • Motives

Purpose

  • The website turns out to be a web-based solution that includes web pages with easily accessible content.
  • The web portal is dedicated to information of a certain domain and at most times requires the user to log in to access the information.

Accessibility  

  • When talking about a website, it can be accessed via a given URL.
  • The web portal can be accessed only via login credentials.

Users

  • Web portals require you to log in, thus the access is limited to a certain group.
  • Websites have a more public user group where anyone and everyone can access them.

Content

The content of a website can only be modified by the admin whereas the content in the web portal can be modified by the authorized searchers.

Motives

Websites are mostly developed to focus on building a digital presence. When you hire a website development company, you want to mark your presence over the internet.

Developing a portal is to provide a one-stop solution to any query of any domain. It could be that you build a portal that talks about all the grocery services in your locality or about the best app development companies around the world.

Now that we understand the clear difference between a website and a web portal and are more sure than before, let’s now see how to create your team for the web portal.

15+ Tips for Developing Your Own Business Web Portal

If you decide to make a web portal on your own there are a few things that can help you come up with a competent solution. Let’s check here what makes these solutions worth it and how you can come up with an interesting web portal.

Phase 1: Getting Ready!

Before you decide to enter the market with a web portal, you need to conduct diligent research where you need to identify your target audience, their needs, and your purpose for building a web portal. Also, you would need to have a clear picture of your expectations from the portal that needs to get into the picture. If you think there are more things to be discussed our experts are a click away.

Tip #1: Assess Your Goals and Know Your Areas of Interest

The first and most important step is deciding the niche of your business. What kind of Web portal are you building? Does it have enough potential? Will it be regional, personal (like Yahoo!), or a hobby portal? You need to find these answers as soon as possible. Once you assess your goals, developing your business web portal will become as easy as a piece of cake.

Tip #2: Identify and Cater to the Requirements of Your Customers

So you have already assessed your goals and have decided on the features that you are going to have on your portal. Now it’s time for you to identify the requirements of your customers and cater to them according to their needs. If you can personalize your portal to the individual tastes of your clients, they will love it. Big data analysis is the only thing that can help you with that. Hence, make sure you don’t ignore the task of data analysis for any reason whatsoever.

Tip #3: Conduct full research of your competition

It is advisable to stand yourself in the competition, you should keep an eye on the strategies your competitors have followed. Consult with the experts for picking the right tools and compare your site with the competitors in the market.

Some of the best tools in the market are BuzzSumo, SimilarWeb, Semrush, Ahref; which enable keen research of the strategies of your market warriors. For more options, you can go for the premium plans.

Tip #4: Analyze Your Data

Now Research some of the technical parts of SEO. find the current scores (domain score and page score) of your page, bounce rate, real-time traffic, best pages of your site, and the engagement rate of your pages.

The in-depth analysis of your website helps you to place the utmost place in the market.

Tip #5: Know the Standard Features of a Web portal

Do you know the features that your business web portal needs? Some of the most common features of a business web portal include things like:

  • Classifieds
  • Chats
  • Photo Galleries
  • Personal profiles and much more

So what features will you have on your portal? Make your choice wisely.

The feature set of a web portal makes it more accessible and popular among users. It may seem a little difficult to accept but a little investment in your feature set would set you way ahead of your target audience.

Phase 2: Turning Your Vision to Reality

Once you are done with the research part and are clear about what you want and how to create a portal, the next task is to turn your vision into a working reality.

Tip #6: Be Ready with an Action Plan

Once you know the basic requirements of how to create a web portal just be ready with a team that works with you. Have a clear picture of how you would like to proceed and what you want to focus on. Know the team members required and hire a team of experienced performers who can make things easier for you.

Tip #7: Decide on Your Web Portal Software

You would prefer open-source web portal scripts for this purpose of yours. Some of the major web-portal scripts that can come in handy in your situation are:

  • Liferay
  • Dolphin
  • UPortal
  • Osclass
  • DotNetNuke

Tip #8: Upload the Portal Software to Your Site 

Upload the software to the website and install it according to the script-specific directions. You should have a sound knowledge of MySQL for this job because web portals usually run on databases.

Phase 3: The Finances!

Your venture would need a little investment. As you’re investing in the business that is in demand, make sure that you have a clear budget and your web portal development team knows that. Share your budget with the team and let them help you identify what features and functions would be set in your budget. They may also help you get cheaper alternatives for some features making your investments less and returns higher.

Tip #9: Design Your Portal on the Idea of Earning Maximum Revenue 

One should never waiver from the reality that a web portal has the sole purpose of making the maximum profit within a minimum time. Hence, you must ensure that when designing a web portal, the front-end part of your portal (the one that’s presented to customers) is optimized in the best possible manner to minimize the bounce rate and maximize profit in the long run. Also, it’s important to track the results of your website. This will help you determine whether or not you are moving in the right direction.

Tip #10: Determine Which Product or Service You Are Offering

An entrepreneur or startup firm needs to have a clear view of their products or services so that they can have an idea about what the visitors are going to do when they reach the web portal. As a business owner, you need to determine how the information is being provided. This will help the custom web portal development prospective client in getting the service or product delivered.

Tip #11: Financial Aspects to Be Taken Care of When Developing a Web Portal

The other important aspect when developing a business web portal in 2024 is to know about the costs involved in developing and designing the web portal. The use of technology is what matters the most in determining the cost of online portal development. To make the right decisions, you must master the art of using technology.

For instance, low-cost or open-source technology can be used when developing the web portal to lower the financial burden in the case of start-ups to gain the financial edge over their competitors. Such a step would also help in achieving sustainable project development.

Phase 4: Build Something Your Customers Love

Now that you have a web portal ready with all its features and other aspects, it may still not convert; the reason being the aesthetics and engagement factors. No matter how good your portal is if it isn’t eye-pleasing and easy to navigate you’re surely losing a great customer batch. Your web portal would only prosper if your customers show some love to it. Let them explore the various aspects and be attracted to your portal with its looks and aesthetics.

Tip #12: Don’t Go for the Looks – Go for the Feel

Today, web portal designing is all about improving “user experience” on the whole. Your portal can have good looks, but if its access to web portability and comprehensive web portability raise issues among your customers, your revenue is bound to suffer in the long run.

For example, if a web portal looks brilliant on the desktop but takes a whole lot of time to load on the mobile internet, it becomes a liability to your business growth.

Do you think your audience would love that? No. Your user interaction rate is bound to decrease as a result of that. You will also be missing out on a whole lot of business (from your mobile customers, in particular). Hence, it is always advisable to stress more on UX than looks. Work hard to increase the page loading speed of your website.

Trust me, it works!

Tip #13: Re-live the pages with content

A bare web page could not grab the attention of anyone. Use enriched analytics and details in the miniature of the web pages, to make it unique from the rest of the market. If you are the owner of the business or planning to open up something, having a strong web presence is the all critical move for you.

The pages are the identity of your work culture, your services, and your ethics. They should be neat, clean, transparent, responsive, and most importantly unique content-rich.

Place specific triggers or call to action like download now, buy now, or contact us, etc.

Use CMS for the speedy improvement of the website. This contains plugins, extensions, speed controllers, and other APIs important for the website.

For example, WP super cache allows to compress the file and make it more responsive for the website.

Tip #14: Last but Never the Least, Market Your Web Portal

Promote your portal on the internet through content marketing, social blogging, social media marketing, Google AdWords, and various other SEO practices or tools to gain profitability over time. Though it’s a time-consuming process, if done the right way, an entrepreneur will always be a benefit for sure.

Tip #15: Have a word of mouth!

Social media is an all-in-one platform for all of us. You can find plenty of niche areas to promote what you have different from others. Care for others, ask their options, they start to trust in you and help you to channel your ideas to the platform. In 2024 , Instagram is one such great platform to reach wider audiences genuinely and non-promotional engagement.  Place sorted links on your channel and websites to mark them into the wider outreach.

Marketers place such Cathy links and tags at the most visited places or the footer.

Phase 5: Mark your Post Presence

Only creation is not the end of the task. You should connect with our audiences even afterward. Keep aware of the latest modifications that happen in the world and update your site according to that. To maintain in the market for long, you should focus on a low-cost investment approach to reach the larger customer base. So avail top of the latest market ethics in your platform to rectify any of the technical issues.

Tip #16: Ensure everything is working and updated

Add on the crucial software and the security terminals to avoid the entry of any hacker. Use the new digital technology paradigms to idealize your website with the current market trends.

To make your website compatible with the current technicalities in 2024, apply these methods;

  • Find out that the website is up to date
  • Plugins or themes are well updated
  • Rectify the poor quality of images, broken links
  • Improvise the outdated data
  • Find out of date content
  • Do manual or A/B testing
  • Lets your customers give feedback to you
  • Research everything about your competition
  • Plug the right keywords are the place
  • Prepare the fresh content

Recommend Read: Best Web Developers in USA

Building the web portal at your comfort is all we need. Some of the quick glitchy web portal developer sites available in the market cost you minimum using the website builders.

  • WordPress
  • Wix
  • Squarespace
  • Shopify

For small and medium-sized businesses, these are the best to pick and explore more with the customizable options.

Wrapping It All!

So now you are all set to design a web portal for your business. You are quite sure about the types, various aspects, and the best tips to build the best web portal. The tips shared here are curated by the experts and if followed in totality, would help in your business development endeavors. Just stick to these tips and get going!

If you think it is difficult for you to build a web portal on your own, hire the best development team in the market and let them help you with your business needs. We have been delivering A-class products over the years and have helped several industries survive the story.

THE AUTHOR
Project Manager
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Priyank Sharma is a tech blogger with a passion for exploring the intersection of technology and everyday life. With a diverse background in technology and a love for storytelling, Priyank brings a unique perspective to his blog, making complex concepts accessible and relatable.

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