Web Portal Development: Benefits and Types

What do you do to make your business stand apart from the crowd?

I am assuming the answer is: evolving the business constantly with the latest technologies and new strategies, right?

So, then you might have heard about the portal for sure! It is popular for being a one-stop solution for all business needs like automating manual work, providing security features, helping everyone to stay on the same page, etc.

Yes, having a web portal for your business is a solution for all your business miseries!

But there are questions to answer like:

What type of web portal do you need?
What should be the cost of a web portal for your business?
What are the benefits of a web portal?

And many more.

For that, we have this article!

It answers all the questions you might have about the web portal.

So, without any further delay, let’s get started from the basics:

What is a Portal?

When I was figuring out what a web portal is, I often misunderstood it with websites, but they are not the same!

You might think that a web portal’s features look similar to those of a website, but let me tell you, their purposes are different. Plus, they are not interchangeable.

A website provides access to users to various information from a single point of access. It includes well-organized content comprising company information, articles, vendors, supplier lists, etc. The website uses web pages that anyone can access. Its purpose is to create a digital presence.

The web portal gathers all the information from various sources (CRM, CMS, etc.) into a centralized system for all the users including employees, partners, customers, and admin. This means that you and your team will not have to juggle multiple systems to fetch user data.

It enables easy document sharing and with collaborative tools enhances the communication between teams and with customers.

The web portal requires login credentials, allowing only authorized users to access it. It provides relevant information to users based on their roles. With many security and streamlining features, a web portal gets the plus points in comparison to a website.

Website provides generic information relevant for all the users. However, the portal enables users to access only the required information.

I will justify my opinion in this article by explaining different details of how a web portal is a one-stop solution for enhancing customers’, partners, and employees’ experience.

Use of Web Portal

Now that you know a web portal is, you might want to know their features and benefits for your business. Here are a few that will end your search for a better business streamlining tool.

Enhanced Collaboration

Numerous times in a day, an employee has to send a document or other data to another employee.

Sharing third-party social spaces make interacting with the team easier, but are they efficient? No, they are not. It takes a chunk of time and effort. To save the extra effort and time, you need a web portal that enables easy information flow. With centralized data, users can get all the data at one place with options to share on multiple channels. And with secure sharing, users can share the documents without worry.

Simplified Operations

A web portal reduces your work by automating some tasks. People can fill their data in the system, and the portal will update accordingly.

For example, insurance agents will not be required to update customers’ documents or details every time; customers can do it by themselves. The support team will not have to waste time updating customers about their ticket status or delivery updates. They just require you to log in to the portal. The portal will fetch the data from the CRM automatically.

This way, your team’s productivity will increase, and they can invest their time and effort in something more fruitful.

Better Security

Data theft is hard to escape; however, our web portal has a solution. You can share limited data with specific members or a team with role-based access features.

With page-view access, you can give access to a few pages of your data and keep other data confidential.

With features like two-factor authentication and multiple-factor authentication, you can provide more security to users and gain their trust.

Original Source: https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/web-portal-benefits-and-types/

11 ‘Must-have’ Features and Functionalities in Your Custom Web Portal

To ensure your project requirements are fulfilled through a web portal, you must have enough features to help you with that. Custom web portals are the best way to have features that suit your business and customer needs, but some features need to be in your custom web portal.

In this blog, I have mentioned some web features that guarantee your niche, business, and customer requirements are fulfilled. These features will ensure security and a top-notch experience.

What Features Does Every Custom Web Portal Need?

Starting from listing down the requirements to actually having them in your portal is a complex process if done without experts.

At CRMJetty, we ensure quality services with suitable guidance from the beginning to serve you the best custom web portal with all features to ensure an excellent customer experience.

Request a Quote

Below are some ‘must-have’ features in your custom web portal curated by the company that aces at portal development:

1. Interactive Dashboard

This comes without saying. The homepage is the first thing a shopper will see when logging into your business’s web portal. Here, you want to ensure that the homepage is neat with smooth navigation, has information in the proper place, and is highly interactive. Keep the contact information properly visible. Keep self-service options constantly visible on the screen. Don’t make your customers work to find the menu or products they want; thus, always include a search bar with a voice input option.

You can even let your customer choose their dashboard theme. Give them a section to have their bookmarked products or wish list. Include such features to make the dashboard exciting and interactive.

This way, you can make an interface suitable for technical and non-technical users.

2. Self-Service Tools

Self-service is a mandatory service to be provided and expected from businesses. Users mostly prefer the luxury and comfort of finding the answers to their questions without waiting for another human to respond to them on business days.

Here, providing self-service is the best option to let customers solve their queries through given resources at their convenience and save your service reps from mundane tasks like explaining ‘how to change password’ multiple times a day to customers. It will boost their productivity too.

Original Source: https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/must-have-features-and-functionalities-in-custom-web-portal/

5 Industries that Benefit from Web Portal Solutions

Portal is a website that provides single-point access to applications and information. It not only helps in selling or ensuring an online presence but with many other purposes. Different websites having different purposes are built with varying approaches. For example, if you need a web portal to help you sort customer queries, you have a support portal. If you want to allow your partners to manage their activities, you have a partner portal. Similarly, the extent and use vary from industry to industry.

However, the best thing is you can approach a custom web portal development company and customize your portal as per your needs.

An online portal can be convenient for different industries.

Let us explore the industries that can benefit from web portal development services.

Education

The education industry has a centralized database that holds information on the teaching staff, administrative staff, students, and everything else. A web portal could give them access to the information to carry out their jobs.

For instance, teaching staff can

Manage various classes
Mark students attendance
Arrange the timetable
Upload important class
Upload marks and grades
Upload documents and details

Students can

Check attendance
Submit medical details
Check marks and grades
Keep up with notices

Admin staff can

Keep the fee records
Consolidate reports
Manage staff and students details
Have an overview of the school’s operations

NonProfit

Portals for nonprofits can help you streamline your organization’s activities, handle donations, manage volunteers and members, track their tasks and schedules, and provide a hassle-free experience so that you can focus on changing the world.

A web portal development services will provide you with features like:

Donation Module
Automated Fund Transfer Module
On-Boarding Volunteers
Volunteers Timesheet Management
Knowledgebase
Live chat
Smart Dashboard

And help you interact, and scale at your own pace.

Medical

A medical portal means doctors would have all the information about the patient. They would have details of patients’ history of diseases and treatments, allergies, and others. Administrative staff would know about the patients’ demographic details along with payments. Patients would be able to contact doctors and the team anytime they need support. They can access their individual files and see their progress.

In addition to this, a medical portal could help streamline the transplant and transfusion process. As hospitals would have all the details of the patients, they can match the recipients’ blood group and match organs promptly.

Pharma

In the pharmaceutical industry, a portal could be a great way for pharmacists to track a patient’s history. A patient can request medicines according to the prescription, and pharmacists can fill them accordingly. Pharmacists can know about the patient’s drug intake and can regulate it. They can even avoid misuse of a particular drug.

A portal will also connect the pharmacist with the patient’s doctor. So they can verify the prescription before approving a patient’s request.

They can also keep track of patient’s allergies and avoid medicines that can cause reactions.

Real-Estate

A real estate industry consists of many stakeholders such as admin, realtor, agent, member, etc. Up of that, agents and admin require streamlined communication and a 360-degree overview to close the deals.

Managing it manually can be tedious, time-consuming, and unorganized. A web portal, on the other hand, can simplify it. It can help you

Manage properties along with your stakeholders
List properties on the website
Enable buyers and sellers to manage their listings, selling, renting
Build transparency by showing details to everyone involved
Generate leads for your properties

And more.

A web portal development company can help you develop a real-estate portal with features like

Broker management
Property management
Seller management
User-centric features
Geo-location
Media

With a real-estate portal, you can automate your tasks and can serve customers in a better way.

Conclusion

Web portals are important for all B2B and B2C businesses. However, choosing the secure one is essential. So, make sure that your portal development company provides a secure gateway and doesn’t store anything on the server.

Why Do You Need Web Portal Development

The use of web portals varies according to the industry. For example, a university would have a portal with different access points: One for their students to register for classes and check their schedules. Another access point would be for faculties to manage attendance, submit grades, and so on.

Despite the nature of the industry, they prove useful in every business spectrum. They help businesses, including customers and staff to manage their workflows, contact information, and human resources affairs. That also includes documents, communication, and support.

A web portal, as whole, provides a structure to organize the content. It encourages visitors to engage more through blogs, comments, or social media.

In other words, it’s a bridge that joins customers to businesses. It covers the distance between user expectations and the actual services provided.

This is the reason why many businesses are adopting web portal development. And the sole reason why web portal development services are in huge demand.

Let us find out more about it.

Benefits of Web Portal

Improves Interaction

Customers can use web portals to manage their activities. Instead of providing support through emails and calls that are quite tedious, businesses can help them virtually 24*7 without being present.

As customers can sort the common queries, it would encourage them to engage more, resulting in better interactions. A smooth system like this can delight customers and help bring them back to your business.

Enhance Awareness

The internet is the biggest market for business and updates nowadays. The increase in competition of the business helps to improve strategies. Social media platforms help business organizations to recognize the current market and trends. By providing the latest information about the market, business services, and other knowledge guides, you can create awareness in your customers.

With blogs and guides, you can keep updating them with the latest stuff. By engaging with the features, they can learn about the latest trends and technological advancements.

Offering a single sign-in for a variety of applications

One of the essential business requirements is to have single access to handle entire business operations. Businesses often look for solutions that can sync the information between different modules and applications.

Hence, you should go for web portal development. Portals integrate with different business applications and prove useful in streamlining the process.

They offer you and your customers with ease of services.

Offers improved customization

Web portals are often useful for enhancing personalization. They even help customize various tools. With portals, customers can avail the best of services. They can give feedback on the kind of services they are looking for. This can then help businesses with customization.

For example, if they know what a customer likes or dislikes, or what they mostly order, they can provide personalized recommendations.

Even designs of portals are unique and make the interface user-friendly. Customers can customize their web portal look. If they want a news section on the dashboard, they can add it. If they don’t, they can remove it. This customization services would help customers to avail services in a simple way.

Provides services to a diverse domain

The main benefit of a web portal development is in the domain. The portal is the entry point for your customers to enter your website. And the domain would help customers find you from thousands of similar websites on the internet.

So, use a domain-specific portal. It would enhance your visibility.

Bringing visitors

Development companies implement a high-class web portal development service with specialists in development and technologies. These experts would make sure the portal is perfect to every inch, according to user expectations. This satisfaction would be the key to attract more visitors. It would ensure business with a constant increase in sales and profits.

End Words

Web portal development helps companies to increase visitors and earn profits. It can improve online presence and brand building.

Portal can further aid in improved interaction between customers and businesses. There are numerous benefits of having a portal.

If you don’t have a portal, you must get it developed now.

Partner with a company that provides web portal development services.

Summary

This article provides information about the benefits of a portal and how a custom one made using web portal development service can give you a solution that is worthy of your business.

Get your Customer Service Right with Web Portals

Serving your customers is one of the main aims of any business. Fulfilling their demands, offering them hassle-free solutions, extraordinary customer service, and keeping them happy is the key to run a successful business.

If your customers like your service then they are very likely to come back but if they don’t, there are chances you might lose them.

Let me share with you my personal experience with Pepperfry:

Their marketing strategy is omnichannel which I definitely was not aware about. I had ordered 2 bean bags and 2 pouffe (had no idea it was a pouffe cover) and had paid a good amount of money for those.

After a month when one bean bag and two pouffes came they were not at all good quality and I was not getting value for the money I bought them for. Upon contacting customer service to return the products, they refused by saying that my reasons were not good enough for them.

This is definitely not something you should ever tell your customers. You are very likely to lose them. Even if you cannot take the product back it’s better to end the conversation on a better note rather than implying that their issues aren’t valid when you were the one that made the mistake. Especially when you were the one that made the mistake.

It does not end here. After a few days my other bean bag came and this time instead of one, I got two bean bags. When I told them I don’t want another one they said, “ Ma’am just keep it if the company is giving it for free.”

The free bean bag is lying somewhere in my store room for the time being. The solution to customer problems is not free stuff. It is solving them.

Now a question comes, how can you serve your customers better and provide them with good quality products?

Web Portal!

A Web Portal bridges the gap between you and your customers.

Let’s see how:

Increase customer retention:

Web portal solutions will help you with creating support tickets, live chat, and schedule appointments with customers. It will streamline operations for your support staff and in turn help, you retain more than 33% of customers. In short, your support team can work productively, provide better customer service, and fulfill customer needs.

Security:

Security of your customers’ data is the most important part and most businesses work hard to make sure it stays secure. Most of the web portals developed today use the latest security standards. Additionally, while purchasing web portals you can make sure that it follows the latest market standards to keep the data secure and your customers safe.

Payment gateways, Invoices, and Accounting:

You cannot imagine web portals without payment gateways. Web portals help you by providing payment gateways which makes it easy for your customers to pay directly from the portal itself. Additionally, in some of the vendor portals they can generate invoices, accounts and pay their required amount.

You can use web portals in more than one way. But, rather than purchasing ready made web portals it’s better to opt for custom portal development.

Why?

Custom features:

Custom portal development helps you with adding features according to your business plan. You can sit with your web portal development company and together on the basis of your business model and customers’ needs ask them to create features. Not only this, but you can also carry out customer surveys and ask them for any specific features they would like to have in web portals.

Better branding:

With the help of a custom web portal you can make sure that UI/UX, logo, theme of your website, look, and feel is consistent. These things will help your user to get better with portals and also help you to keep up with your reputation. So, make sure to have consistency throughout your web portal and website.

Easily integrate with custom CRM:

There might be chances that your company is using a custom CRM. In such scenarios having a developed web portal is not a good solution. It becomes very difficult to integrate that with your custom CRM. Thus you can solve this issue with the help of a custom built web portal. The company which provides you with web portal development services can help you with integrating your custom web portal with your custom CRM.

Wrapping it up:

Connect with our experts and let us help you walk through the entire process of developing a custom web portal for your company. Don’t let your customers have a bad experience and let us help you serve your customers in a better way. I am sure you don’t like displeased customers tweeting!

Top Ten Benefits of Using A Web Portal

One common word you will be seeing everywhere is “Web Portals.” It is a web based platform. It provides employees, customers and suppliers with a single access point of information.

It provides users with personal information i.e. employee training, safety manuals, or customer profile.

It collaborates information and improves the way employees, customers and suppliers interact.

Let’s look at some of the examples of a web portal:

Portal software brings data from many sources in one place. Then it shares it with different departments, customers, and suppliers. Below are some of the common examples of web portals:

Sales Portal
Job Portal
Customer Portal Solution
HR Portal
Project Management Portal
Matrimony Portal
CRM Portal

And many more.

Each of these portals brings some or the other merits to the table. It eases business operations and interaction with customers.

Thousands of companies have chosen portals as their go-to solution and provide a lot of benefits to them.

Following are the benefits of a web portal:

The focus of web portal development is to upgrade websites as it helps in easing communication. The components of such developments are shell, desktop, menu, page, layout, and placeholder.

This component helps companies to improve the capability of the web page and provides quality information.

Once the company helps you build a custom portal, you can create an online community and boost your revenue.
If there is a company which develops portals then they can help you rebrand your existing website. This rebranding will help you with an opportunity to interact with visitors via a new webpage/website.
A company that provides web portal development services has a dedicated team. They help you in designing, developing and maintaining the web portals. So that the web page of business yields visitors and expands sales as well as profits of the company.
Web portal development helps in achieving a professional look, loads fast, and is SEO friendly. The portal developer works as a step by step process to achieve the business objectives.
The implementation of B2B and B2C models perform a vital role and creates awareness which concerns business growth. The internet has become a useful platform on which any individual can communicate with customers.

Businesses provide a chance to recognize current market trends. Further, on the basis of this they can develop and enhance their marketing policies.

Web portals provide a single sign on option for one common application to use in a simple manner.
There are a lot of people who search for the best possible settings for developing an online business. It integrates with different applications, and can be useful to create a particular source system for a wide range of web portals.

Additionally, it even offers an integration layer to the end users as well as a source system to create a single click.

Web portals make better personalization and even customize various tools to create with ease. Portals let people render the customization process. This intake with different web portal development processes to do it in a simple manner.
Data plays a major role in modern marketing and customer service strategies for companies. Hence, it must be secured against potential breaches which prevents harm to companies and people who trust them with their sensitive information. Additionally, users generate larger amounts of data than before. It is useful for increasing specific target marketing and customer experience strategies. Hence, with the help of portals you can easily secure all sensitive information of your organization and users.

Conclusion:

Over the past decade, growth in the field of web portal development is immense. These web portals can assist businesses in many ways. It helps businesses to have an online presence and rebrand them. It also provides support to customer queries and helps in achieving customer satisfaction.

Summary: This article gives insights into the benefits of having web portals and ways it can help businesses grow their business, user base and serve their users better. Read more…

Job Portal and All Its Must-have Features Explained!

Nowadays everything and every business we interact with is through portals. Be it searching something via web or app. Your users’ first medium of interaction is a portal.

There are various types of portals available like self-service portal, web portal, knowledge portal and many more. Many companies are growing solely by providing portals to businesses. In the current times they are very powerful tools to get users and interact with them effectively.

Talking about web portal; let’s first know what web portals are?

According to LifeRay, “A portal is a web-based platform that collects information from different sources into a single user interface and presents users with the most relevant information for their context. Over time, simple web portals have evolved into portal platforms that support digital customer experience initiatives.”

In simpler terms we can say, portals provide users with easy and curated access to company’s information. There are various types of web portal solutions available like:

Employee portal
Job portal
Partner portal
Knowledge portal
Vendor management portal

And many more.

Here, we are going to talk about recruitment web portal or job portal. We will discuss how it helps recruitment firms, HRs, employers, and people looking for jobs. Additionally, we’ll talk about the features an ideal job portal should have.

What is a Job Portal?

The simplest example of a job portal is LinkedIn. Well, a part of it, actually.

Job portal is a platform where everyone who is looking for a job and people who are hiring come together to find the right job or the right candidate for the job. Both the parties, job seekers and employers, have their own logins and dashboards and features.

So let’s look at some of the must have features and aspects of job portals and what are its advantages.

UI/UX:

It is very important to have a visually appealing and easy to navigate portal. Make sure that the UI/UX of your portal is representing your company’s brand. Having good UI/UX will make sure your users return to your site for their job seeking or hiring.

Going one step further, if you are a recruitment firm and looking for web portal development services, then you can hire a company which helps you to create a custom job portal and add features according to your business processes. With easy and simple UI/UX.

Multi language support:

Just imagine, you are a firm operating from Canada then any person staying in another country who is looking for a job in Canada is very likely to come to your website, create their account and start looking for job opportunities.

Looking at another side of the coin, let’s say your recruitment firm has a tie up with different companies in different countries then it is okay to say that you have global presence and global user base.

In both the scenarios, you need to make sure that language is not becoming a barrier for your users to interact with your web portal. Hence, make sure that your portal is supporting multiple languages. Build your portal in such a way that your user can interact with it in any language they are comfortable with.

This will help you increase your user base and leave a good impact on your users as they’ll know that you care about them.

Easy to Navigate:

Easy navigation in your web portal plays a very vital role in retaining your customers. Make sure that your users understand your portal, are getting clear instructions about the next steps and are not getting lost on your website.

Features:

Firstly, make sure to not bombard your users with long questions while building their profile. According to the current market trends, users don’t like it and are likely to leave your website. Instead ask them crisp, clear, and precise questions. Short questions save time for your users and they don’t leave the website halfway.

In your job portal you can provide your users with features like resume building, importing resume, or uploading from computer. Make sure to keep resume building feature easy to understand, hassle free and dynamic.

Going ahead, you can provide your users with keyword search options, filter search, location based search, education based, part-time, full-time, and many more. This makes it easy for them to search the opportunities they are looking for. Additionally, they can also easily apply for it if they like it.

Final words:

Being a recruitment firm, it is better to have a job portal as it brings all your users at one place and provides them with necessary information. Rather than going for pre-developed portals, it is better to have a company which helps you with web portal development. They will understand your requirements specifically and develop features that are centered around your business logic.

Web Portal: A Solution Every Startup Should Have

Startup is the new way to do business across the globe. Governments are pushing and promoting young minds to start their own companies. From making special policies to organizing hackathons, funding to setting up incubation centers, organizing business meetups, government bodies are backing innovative ideas and businesses led by young entrepreneurs. In fact, big tech companies are also investing in small scale startup companies which help them to promote themselves better.

Helping startups is a must as they face lots of challenges in setting up their businesses. But, there is one forever issue which these companies face and i.e. to gain and retain customers. We all know customers are king. Happy and satisfied customers help you bring more customers and grow your business. Remember, getting customers is not just about contacting them; it’s about connecting with them.

There are many ways of getting customers but having a web portal is the new way for upscaling, enhancing, and growing your business.

Let’s understand how a web portal can help you as a startup company for gaining and retaining customers even during the pandemic.

What is a web portal?

According to Liferay, “A portal is a web-based platform that collects information from different sources into a single user interface and presents users with the most relevant information for their context. Over time, simple web portals have evolved into portal platforms that support digital customer experience initiatives.”

And here’s how it helps a startup likes yours grow:

Simplified Management

This is one of the major issues most of the startups are facing. Many of them don’t know the key of management. But, with the help of a single portal, you can manage your company, employees, and customers all in one place. Web portals can also work as an internal employee portal. Here, your employees can collaborate with each other and streamline internal operations. Not only this but with the help of a web portal it becomes easy for your customers to reach out to you. This not only reduces a lot of miscommunication and management mishaps but also simplifies internal processes.

Flexible and User-friendly

Digital is the new normal. From purchasing hairpins to big electronic items or even paying for everything is now online. Today more than half of the population of the world is dependent on the internet. In such a rat race, having a good, user friendly, and easy to navigate UI/UX is necessary. If your customers are facing difficulty in navigating through your web portal or even your website then it is likely that they will drop the idea of doing business with you.

Bad UI/UX is one of the major issues why your customers don’t come back to your website. In this scenario, developing a custom web portal is the key. You can have complete control over these things and create a portal that lives up to your customers’ expectations helping you create a brand name.

Secure Channel

Security is an essential part of any online product today. Having a secure portal means your clients’ data is safe and they trust you with it. Your clients will also have individual login credentials using which they can log in their accounts and have access to their documents only. It works as a secure channel for your clients to communicate with you.

Custom Solution

There are thousands of web portals available in the market and looking at the different options with myriad features might confuse you. This is why a customized portal is the way to go. There are lots of web portal development companies out there that can help you to create a portal of your choice according to your business logic.

Having a custom portal means it can have the features and functionalities of your choice, you can also develop a custom theme based on your website’s design language. Additionally, having a custom portal also gives you an opportunity to integrate features based on your clients’ feedback as well.

In short, having a custom web portal is a win-win situation for you as well as your customers.

Single Sign-in Option

Once the web portal integrates with your website then it becomes very easy for your customers to sign in to your portal. They can easily access the technical documents, generate tickets for their issues, access user manuals, understand your company’s products, services, and many such things. Additionally, integrating web portals helps even your support team member in solving your customers’ issues efficiently.

Creating a Brand

If your company requires a strong social media presence then you can integrate the same in your web portal which makes it easier for you to interact with your customers. And get new customers as well. Not only communicating but you can also come to know their issues directly through social media platforms. We all know how powerful social media is. Big tech companies have dedicated support pages that help their customers to easily solve the issues round the clock.

Providing round the clock support on a platform of your customers’ choice will not only help you in getting new customers but will also build up the reputation of your company.

Being an entrepreneur has its own difficulties but with the help of the technology and correct tools you can surely make your name in the market. Business is all about taking risks, sometimes there are profits, sometimes there are losses. But keeping up with the market trends is the key to success.

Consumer Goods Portal For Selling in Post COVID World

Consumer goods have a huge range of products. From clothing, household appliances, to perishable goods like food, everything falls under this category. Ordering all of these things online is not exactly new. Ecommerce is not at all new. From online stores that at one point delivered goods at slow intervals, can now deliver within the hour (provided the service is offered in your city.

When social distancing, and lockdowns across cities and countries were not a thing, there was never any shortage of stores that we could shop from. Department stores like Target, Walmart, grocery stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, were often frequented. It was only obvious to go to another store if what you wanted was not available there. And this is not even counting the smaller, more local stores for a number of things.

Now, however, things have changed. Over the last couple of months, going out to buy groceries, clothes, or electronics has been difficult. Out of these three categories, the last thing that people may have found a need of, is new clothes. Everyone needs food every day, and since everyone is trying to work from home, we also need electronic supplies, like external monitors, webcams, etc. Apart from that, as cooking at home is the safest way to eat, we are also buying more kitchen appliances like a mixer, which we might not have bought before.

As a local store, the best way to maintain your customers right now is by providing an ecommerce platform and no-contact deliveries.

Let’s dive into the benefits of having an online web portal solution for this:

No special equipment (for the customer):

If your customer has to download one more app, that can cause some friction to get them on board, but a web portal is available with a browser, no need for an app. This way, your local customers can shop from your store over a bigger department store, because after all, you provide equal service while keeping it simpler for them to shop. It gives you an edge.

Database creation:

When customers sign on to this portal for the first time, they get added to your database, or CRM. Now you can use these details to offer them discount coupons, communicate e-bills, and also offer special subscriptions on regular products. Overall, you can use this database for future marketing campaigns.

Payment options:

When you get a custom web portal development company to make a portal for you, you can choose the payment options that you want to integrate. Keep more payment options so that your customers can choose whatever they are comfortable with.

Vendor management:

When your vendors are managed directly from this portal, there are a lot of operations that you can manage from one place. When a product inventory dips under a certain number, you can notify your vendor to replenish your stock immediately. You can also give access to certain purchase statistics and product feedback to the vendors so it can help them refine their products.

Alerts and notifications:

You can notify your customers for upcoming offers, in case of low stock and abandoned carts and even order processing updates.

Online support:

When your customers need you, they will be able to contact you. More importantly, you will be able to help them without having to suddenly hire a special staff for it.

Most importantly, if you already use an inhouse retail portal, then this will reduce your effort significantly. You can turn it into an ecommerce store with very little effort. You already have your catalog prepared, your inventory, and vendor information in place. You just have to take it online, and provide sign up links to your customers.

COVID-19 is not changing the shopping experience just because huge parts of the world have closed down. While the world may slowly open up, certain patterns of living are permanent now. More and more companies will continue to work from home, if not entirely, at least some of it. Large gatherings in places like shopping malls will decrease. The most convenient time to shop for groceries is on the way back from work, but if work is home, those outings are going to decrease. People will still need groceries. They will need to replace the headphones they broke.

But it is not going to be as casual as just stopping on the way. People are more likely to turn to stores that offer online shopping and home deliveries. When it comes to home deliveries, you can offer them with time slots. Customers can choose when they can take the delivery. That way you also save on back and forths of a missed delivery.

Everyone has to adapt for the world that has changed and is still changing. A web portal solution is how you can adapt to it.

6 Integral Features To Make Your Web Portal a Success

When you visit any website as a customer, you must have come across several statements like below:

“To submit any product related query, you can contact our support team on this email id.”

“If you need any additional information about our product, you can check out the FAQs page.”

“Our support staff operates between business hours only.”

In such scenarios, you might have felt overwhelmed. Because there were a number of ways to contact for a single query.

In e-business when it comes to customer interaction, it is important to have an efficient and proper flow that helps the user navigate your e-store. And I am sure that you don’t want all the product, contact, services, and other new queries being flooded on single email id.

The best solution for this problem is web customer portals. The portals help you to get rid of this chaotic jumble. They are the single click destination for all types of customer queries. When you consider any of the web portal solutions for your business, it becomes important to solve the real-life problems of your customers exclusive to your industry and build the portal around it only.

And we promise you, a custom made portal can and will make all the difference!

If you are also considering web customer portal for your business, then it’s going to be one of the best decisions you ever made.

But make sure to include below mentioned essential features in it:

Interactive Dashboards:

A dashboard is the first thing that your customer will see after logging in the portal. So, it is wise to provide a quick recap of all the important things right on the dashboard. You can also categorize the major tasks according to their activity history & display them for convenience.

One more thing, when you integrate a dashboard into the portal, make sure that you don’t end up making a complicated hierarchy which might perplex the user. A dashboard means a quick summary of all the important tasks with a simple visual representation. Therefore, ensure that you include the following things to your dashboard functionalities:

List the overdue and urgent tasks that need important actions
Ability to mark the tasks as complete or resolve them
Provide quick links of routine tasks and content

Additionally, make sure that your dashboard looks tidy and clean. Try to avoid displaying lengthy messages and content at the front door of your portal. It might distract your customers from more important tasks.

Tracking:

We all know the importance of tracking. Whether it’s about tracking orders, shipments or support tickets, it is an integral part of customer service. Providing them with the ability to track their things or tickets, adds positively to their experience. Hence it becomes necessary with customer portals as well, to provide them with updates about their support tickets or appointments.

It is all about making your customers feel like they are your priority when they interact with you through portals.

By proving tracking functions, your customers would be able to track their status updates in no time. You can even send them important messages of due tasks and other things via email. And then they will be able to plan their schedules for the next tasks to organize their workflow.

Self Service:

According to a study by Salesforce, 89 percent of millennials use a search engine to find answers before making a call to get customer service. And not only millennials but each of us is obsessed with mobile phones and technology. As a result of it, we expect fast results from all the business brands we interact with.

But when it comes to providing support, the best way of improving customer experience is to provide essential support through knowledge base and resources. And minimal direct interaction. Currently, they might have to contact the support team when they face any inconvenience during the installation or usage of your product.

But with exhaustive knowledge resources, they get one type of freedom. They can freely lookout for the queries they have regarding the product and can solve them to some extent by themselves.

This way, the burden of your support team gets decreased and they can invest the time in more productive work.

Multi-Device Accessibility:

It is simple. Today’s workforce needs mobility. They cannot afford to stick to their desk for the whole day as they need to manage other activities simultaneously. They should be able to access their data from their phones to handle critical business communications from anywhere and at any time.

After all mobile responsiveness is a number one priority for almost each and every industry in order to improve customer interaction. The same way the portal that you will build should also support the other frequently used devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets, iPad and so on.

Business Logic:

If you opt to buy a readymade portal solution available in the market, the overall workflow will be pre-decided. Whereas, when you have a diverse business flow and want the portal to blend with your business logic then you might need customization in the readymade portal.

But when you go for the custom portal development, you have all the control over the build and application of the product. You can get it made from scratch according to your business logic and add a streamlined flow of activities which is crafted according to your users’ requirements.

Reporting:

For most of the vendors, this feature is the key functionality that is a must. To implement a comprehensive business process which is well organized, it is important for organizations to provide effective reporting and analysis reports to their customers.

There should be an option available for your account holders to create interactive reports which give them an idea about the current business affairs and their interactions.

In a Nutshell

Web portal development is a widespread phenomenon and when getting a custom web portal developed it will vary from industry to industry and business logic. What matters the most is to make a scalable web customer portal that supports your customer requirements and makes their tasks easy. Ultimately it makes your business grow.

Do you want to create your own custom web customer portal? Get in touch with us today and we would be happy to assist!

View Source:

https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/features-web-portal-success/