https://gbksoft.com/blog/web-portal-development-costs/
One can hardly find a business that won’t benefit from having a web portal. This type of software solution allows organizations to automate numerous processes and significantly increase engagement for employees, customers, and partners. But how much money does a company need to develop a handy web portal that will satisfy its specific needs? And what factors will influence the price?
In this article, we’ll try to answer all these questions as well as provide you with some basic info about web portals, their types, and functionality.
Many confuse a web portal with a website because they have some common features. In particular, both are locations on the internet accessible via a unique web address (i.e. URL). Yet, these web products serve different purposes, have their distinctive characteristics, and are not interchangeable. Let’s look at their differences in greater detail.
To sum up, a website is a platform that helps a business to digitally present itself to the world and convey messages to everyone who might be interested in its products or services. It doesn’t involve active participation from the users’ side. At the same time, web portals have a narrower focus as their main goal is to provide specific people with specific information. Their content changes based on users’ input.
In general, web portals help businesses create a personalized experience, share documents, and streamline communication & processes. Since it’s something every company needs to operate effectively, web portals may be used in numerous different ways. Here are some of the most common examples:
By developing a customer portal, an organization can not only take its customer support and sales process to the next level but it also gets a chance to improve brand loyalty. Users of such a portal have an opportunity to place and track orders themselves, report problems, activate or deactivate services, get personalized recommendations, review the purchase history, and do many other things without the need to contact your company’s reps. This saves their time, increase satisfaction, and helps to build long-term relationships.
This type of web portals will be helpful for any business that offers membership subscription, for example, learning platforms. Besides obvious benefits like self-service, such portals allow for greater accuracy of members’ data since users can update it whenever something changes. In addition, the management of a customer base becomes almost entirely automated. Members receive all materials, build training or any other plans for using a service, monitor the progress, payments, etc. with little to no manual administration efforts from your side.
Building an employee portal should be one of the first steps for companies going through digital transformation. It’s like an internal social network where users can communicate, assign tasks, update each other on important events, leave comments, log timesheets, request vacations, etc. On top of that, employee portals make it easier for new hires to overcome onboarding chaos and become a part of the team. As a result, people collaborate more effectively and stay more engaged.
Companies do not exist in isolation, they need to cooperate with many other businesses on a regular basis. This especially applies to such areas as real estate, travel industry, banking, healthcare, and logistics. To conduct their activity successfully, organizations from these business niches need to ensure an ongoing process of information exchange, two-way communication, and constant involvement of all parties engaged. A partner portal is a great tool to make interactions with other businesses reliable, effective, and results-oriented.
Like with building any other bespoke software solution, there is no fixed price for web portal development. Many aspects may impact the budget that is required for a project. So let’s take a look at the most significant of them.
It’s up to you to decide what functionality to include in your web portal. But, naturally, the more complex you want it to be the more money you’ll need. Here are the most popular features of web portals: