The Covid-19 outbreak and its aftermath have changed our world beyond recognition. It follows that businesses should use all the tools available today and go online. Even in 2017, 90% of clients agreed that an online service portal is a need for modern organizations.
Since every business has specific needs, it is important to have the exact portal that will definitely meet them. How to choose the most efficient web portal? In this article, we cover the most prevalent, advantageous, and demanded types based on the experience of Emerline, a technology partner with extensive expertise in web portal development.
Your Guide to the Most Common Types of Web Portals
Web portals differ from one another in terms of purposes (for example, B2C portals, B2B portals, service portals, customer portals, vendor portals, e-learning portals, etc.). We will focus mainly on those web portals that may be of interest to businesses aiming to attract new customers, improve interaction with partners, increase profits, and promote their brand.
B2C portals
If your company is developing in the retail or commerce industry, and you want to provide your customers with the opportunity to make purchases on the Internet, a B2C portal will be the best solution for you. With the help of B2C portals, you will be able to manage the full cycle of making a purchase, from a client’s sparked interest in a product to the final stage ? purchasing a product.
Customers who use a B2C solution for shopping have complete freedom to choose how to buy products. In addition, regular customers often receive additional benefits, such as discounts. What is behind a B2C portal?
The freedom of choice is as follows: the client can make purchases using both a registered account and an unregistered one. At the same time, registered users receive additional benefits, such as personalized and special offers, as well as discounts. Moreover, if the client uses a registered account, all the data necessary for quick entry, payment, and delivery are saved in his personal account, which significantly shortens time
B2B portals
B2B portals are the next solution for businesses. While it’s still designed for eCommerce needs, the talk is usually about more complex and expensive products. Furthermore, the portal itself is of much greater complexity, bringing together three solutions: a buyer-owned portal, a supplier-owned portal, and independent marketplaces.
A B2B portal will help you effectively manage clients, sales, loyalty programs and provide high-quality customer support. Since the structure of B2B portals is much more complex than those of B2C, it is essential to build a platform that will be as personalized and easy to navigate as possible, as well as provide stable and user-friendly collaboration tools.
Community portals
A community web portal is a tool for online community management. The platform can be used to collect information to help businesses improve their business processes.
For example, e-commerce businesses can use community portals to make in-depth market research studies to collect insights about existing products and services, market launches, product and service tweaks, and other information that indirectly influences their bottom line. Businesses can also encourage users to take part in various opinion polls, rewarding them with special discounts, thereby increasing customer engagement and boosting sales. Furthermore, companies in various other industries, such as healthcare or education, can also leverage community portals.
e-Learning portals
An e-learning portal is something that any company in any industry will find useful to provide continuous education for its employees. The Covid-19 pandemic and the global lockdown, which have led more and more processes to go online, have become a driver for many businesses to introduce an e-learning portal into their organization to make it easier for employees to gain new knowledge and improve skills.
Still, digitalization of educational processes is more than transferring learning materials online. It is also about the establishment of good communication between tutors and their students and providing ways to stay motivated to obtain new information. So when planning to develop an e-learning portal, it’s critical to ensure interaction with customers by the creation of audio, visual, and textual materials or the inclusion of gamification elements.
Partner portals
The partner portal is a web platform for companies designed to ensure close cooperation with each other. ?onnecting existing partners is the key for partner portals
The solution will be beneficial for businesses focused on indirect sales, as it offers efficient and convenient partner relations management. Partner portals, in addition to providing management tools, also enable organizations to persuade their partners to sell more with the help of tools for marketing, training, and sales.
Service portals
Service portals are special platforms created to provide users with the necessary information and to help clients take certain actions. Various companies of a variety of industries can implement service portals into their business processes to achieve better efficiency
For example, healthcare organizations can use service platforms to provide patients with the opportunity to make appointments, send messages to healthcare workers, and order prescriptions.
A sales analytics platform developed by Emerline for a firm that works with beverage distributors is an example of such a portal. The platform includes all necessary tools for centralized data management and mobile accessibility to comprehensive analytics, facilitating interaction with partners. Thanks to their vast experience, Emerline experts can develop any web portal that will meet all the requirements of your business. In case of any questions, book a free consultation.
