Want to know the different types of web portal?
Let’s start with basics.
What is a Web Portal and Why Do You need one?
A web portal is a web-centric platform that gathers information from multiple sources and combines it into a single user interface. Web portals are also popular as web gateways, portal websites, or portal sites. They represent an organization’s digital capabilities, be it internal or external.
What began as simple web portals in the early 90s have today emerged as platforms supporting digitized customer experience initiatives. A web portal provides at least one or many of these four essential services:
- Search engine
- Links to other related sites
- Personalized content
Web portals are the main hub for communication and information. There are different types of web portals that provide users with the most relevant information for their context. Below we will look at 9 different types of web portals.
Table of Content
- Different Types of Web Portals
- Frequently Asked Questions About Web Portal
- Build a Web Portal for Your Business
Different Types of Web Portals
Most people with access to technology are familiar with the concept of a web portal but are unaware of the types of portals and that they exist in a separate format from that of a website.
The following segment will walk you through the defining features of each.
Customer Portal
Corporate Portal
Education Portal
Informational Portal
HR Portal
eCommerce Portal
Government Portal
Healthcare Portal
Community Portal
A customer portal refers to a self-service web platform that helps your customer with a single point of personalized access to organizational data that is applicable to them. This includes invoices, policies, orders, deliveries, and online payments. You can use customer portals 24/7, 365 days a year, on your desktop or mobile device.
For instance: Clinked is one of the examples of web portals with a business platform that enables focus team collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Features to Integrate with Customer Portal
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Single and Secure Sign-In | The secure and easy sign-in option is a basic customer portal feature. Once the user signs in, the portal can provide a customized dashboard for all other personalized functions. |
| Knowledge Base | This feature allows customers to easily go online, search for their issues, and read related information to solve their problems. |
| Forums | This is where your customers connect with one another and your business. Having custom web portal services like forums makes customers use your portal more. |
| Multi-Language Support | With businesses having a global presence, having multi-language support is essential for your enterprise to grow and allow people from multiple backgrounds to connect with your brand. |
| Real-Time Notifications | Another important feature that allows you to send timely notifications about any new features, videos shared, articles shared, or new service times. |
| Payment Module | Online payments are the new normal. Adding multiple payment modules to your web portal facilitates the customer with multiple paying options. |
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A corportal or corporate portal is a website within the organization that is used for passing information internally to employees, customers, and partners. The web-based platform, an enterprise portal, is used for internal training, knowledge gateway, collaboration on business processes, team engagement, and sharing interfaces. If you are looking to create a corporate portal for your business, tap into expertise of the top web portal development company in Canada who has experience to create custom web portals.
For instance: SharePoint is a Microsoft-based platform for building web applications. The most valuable features of SharePoint Online are content management and document management. With its wide range of capabilities like collaborating data, managing documents, and files, creating websites, managing social networking solutions, and automating workflow, even nontech users can easily navigate the system.
Features to Integrate with Corporate Portal
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Customization | This feature allows your organization to match services and information with the authorized users based on their profile and user rights. |
| Integration Flexibility | In this feature, corporate portals not only integrate information from different sources but can also merge multiple portals and portal pages. |
| Analytics and Reporting | This feature helps managers in tracking user behavior and peruse audit logs. |
| Personalization | This feature allows you to personalize things on enterprise portals based on roles and job functions. |
| Access Controls | Features like two-factor authentication, single sign-on (SSO), and VPN capabilities help in strengthening the secure access of the corporate online platform. |
| Categorization and Collaboration | The internet portal can categorize all information and allow users to collaborate irrespective of their physical location. |
Education or student portals are specially designed websites that allows a host with various educational services. Educational Web Portals provide a variety of eBooks, articles, journals, research papers, online courses, and other educational resources. Providing a user-specific and personalized content are some of the core functionalities of the education portal. If you are looking forward to create an education portal for your business, hire web developers to get custom education portal.
For instance: EDX This education web portal is founded by Havard University and MIT and is one of the most preferred web portals for students. Considered top global rankers, it offers high-quality courses from the best universities and institutions to learners across the globe.
Features to Integrate in Education Portal
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Unique Account Creation | This entry point feature will help students, parents, or agents access only relevant documentation and features. |
| Custom Field Options | This feature allows you to customize each aspect of your student application fully. |
| Multiple Payment Gateways | Adding multiple payment gateways to your web portal facilitates the customer with multiple paying options and takes care of your business needs. |
| Additional Student Recruitment Tool | This feature helps in streamlining the workflow processes. Also supports another onboarding process. |
| Monitoring Controls | This feature is essential to streamline operations and provide optimum customer engagement from start to finish. |
| Integrate with CRM | This portal feature helps you get information about all registered users, and you can monitor your leads in one place. |
Informational portals usually provide information that is attractive to various recipients. Their workflow management includes providing internal and external access to public information and focuses primarily on designing possible paths and scenarios of user visits to the website.
For instance: The New Yorker is one of the best examples of an informational portal that has informational sections like news, culture, books, and technology. It has a number of stories, news, and articles which leads to high traffic on day-to-day basis.
Features to Integrate with Informational Portal
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Content | This feature provides centralized and easy access to information and documents. Also helps with quick content search and authorization ability. |
| Collaboration | This feature is provided to support a specific piece of work or project. |
| Integration | With the help of this feature, functionality from many portals is brought together into the main portal. |
An HR portal is an internal access point for an organization’s employees to access various HR-related and other information about their workplace. It is also a gateway for potential applicants and external job applicants. HR portals are usually dynamic and interactive web applications and do not restrict themselves as access points to sensitive data and workplace information.
For instance: Monday.com is an HR web portal that enables HR teams to run all the HR processes hassle-free with drag and drop functions. With this tool, hiring managers can track applicants and record all the relevant contact details easily.
Features to Integrate with HR Portal
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Onboarding and Introduction Packets | This feature can help new employees with information on onboarding and other relevant details that HR shares with new employees. It can also be a place for the present employees to refresh themselves. |
| Policies and Procedures | This feature can include company values, handbooks, social media policies, forms, grievance procedures, and diversity policies. |
| Job Description and Recruitment processes | This feature employee portal will include information about employee salary and performance reviews, organizational charts, and internal vacancies. |
| Benefits and Entitlements | A place where all information about benefits, including wellness incentives, insurance, retirement plan information, and annual leave procedures, will be given. |
| Links to Company News and Announcements | This section will publish all news related to the company and other announcements. |
eCommerce portals are business applications where buyers and sellers trade. Manufacturers and distributors launch commerce portals to route their buyers into an online channel. The web portals streamline the purchasing process by facilitating bulk orders and enabling volume-centric pricing depending on the business needs.
Skullcandy sells earbuds, headphones, and accessories that connect people to music. Their website makes it easy to see why they’re so popular. The entire site has its signature black background, contrasted by images full of bright colors.
Features to Integrate with eCommerce Portal
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Pricing and Catalog Personalization | This feature will help with automated pricing rules, custom catalogs with pricing, and minimum and maximum order volume by the customer or store. |
| Corporate Account Management | This feature helps with self-administration, corporate account hierarchy, user logs and permissions, per-user requisition lists, multiple lists of quick orders, and shipment to different locations. |
| Facilitated Ordering Process | This feature helps in bulk ordering, volume-based pricing, order export before submission, and multiple requisition list per customer account. |
| Payment Flexibility | This feature includes payment on account, check or money order, credit card payments, and purchase orders. |
| Analytics | This section would showcase reports for negotiated quotes, sales team performance, sales reports per various criteria, and balance and credit limits per buyer. |
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Government portals help in easy interaction between citizens, enterprises, and the government. These web portals are knowledge management portals that offer multiple contents, such as information on payment for bills and parking tickets and other personalized information based on the citizen’s address.
For instance: India.gov.in is an Indian government’s web portal that provides information and online services from government sources. This website is accessible from a single point and is also known as the National port of India.
Features to Integrate with Government Portal
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| A Prominently Displayed Search Function | This feature will include a proper search bar on every page of the particular domain, making it quick and easy for the users to find what they are looking for. |
| A Blog and Social Media Integration | This feature is great for disseminating emergency information. It also acts as a community portal where the audience can talk back to you easily. |
| Contact Information | This feature is an important aspect of government web portal development. It will have emergency phone numbers for users to quickly get in touch with the agency. |
| Events Calender | This feature will help keep residents updated on upcoming events and meetings within the agency and the community. |
A healthcare portal, also known as the patient portal, is an online platform for your health care. The online web tools help track prescriptions, health care provider visits, test results, and billing. You can also seek information about health-related issues from a healthcare portal.
For instance: Regional One Health is one of the best healthcare websites that showcases a variety of video storytelling. Through this web portal, the patients can get facility tours and treatment videos to heal the pain.
Features to Integrate with Healthcare Portal
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Doctor Visit Arrangement | This feature includes scheduling appointments online, a detailed history view, an upcoming appointments view, and automated appointment reminders. |
| Patient Access to Health Information | This feature has encrypted and password-protected login, health history, lab test results, discharge summaries, treatment, procedures, and medication plan view. |
| Secure Doctor-Patient Communication | In this feature, messaging between a doctor and patient, video consultations, and after-visit patient surveys are all secure. |
| Payment and Insurance Management for Patients | This feature gives access to bills and online bill payments. Also includes an insurance coverage cases list. |
| Portal Administration | This feature allows portal access to new users and helps edit patients’ health and contact information. Also helps in uploading patient information from vendor portals. |
A community portal is a centralized online platform that engages with selected community members and generates powerful insights based on their opinions and feedback on a particular issue. You can achieve this by using several quantitative and qualitative market research methods across different websites, such as ideaboard, surveys, polls, discussions, and topics.
For instance: MTI is a community platform that empowers members to connect and engage across different generations. Community users can check the content and expertise when they don’t attend personal meetings.
Features to Integrate with Community Portal
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Community Membership | This feature includes user self-registration, community membership programs, user profile storage, and rules for automated membership. |
| Social Engagement | Under this feature comes personal chats, video chats, online blogs, online polls, social media sharing tools, and topically structured online forums. |
| Knowledge Transfer and Training | This feature includes employee onboarding, professional development training, partner training programs and certifications, and marketing material for partners. |
| Event Management | Under this feature, there are video streaming services to hold online events and user personal calendars to schedule event participation. |
Want to know in-depth about web portal features and benefits? Check this blog about – what is web portal to get a detailed idea.
Still, have questions? Check the frequently asked questions to know more.
Frequently Asked Questions About Web Portal
Why is a web portal useful?
Web portals are essentially websites that provide access to several applications and information available over the internet in an easy way.
Which are the examples of top web portals?
Examples of top web portals are employee web portals, partner portals, intranet portals, financial portals, e-commerce portals, and others.
What are the types of web portals?
There are two essentially two types of web portals: Vertical portals and horizontal portals.
What is a partner web portal?
A partner web portal is a custom web portal that organizations create to engage with their existing partners.
Is Google an example of a web portal?
Yes, Google is a service-based portal.
What is a vertical portal?
A vertical portal is a unique access point to a specific industry, area of interest, or niche market.
What are employee web portals?
Employee portals as a form of web development include web-based tools through which employees can access relevant information and conduct transactions from a central gateway.
Build a Web Portal for Your Business
Now that you have read the types of web portals with examples, you can understand that not all websites are portals, but all portals are websites. The benefit of a portal is that it takes care of related tasks all in the same corner of the internet. A web portal will always help your enterprise become more professional.
You will make it easier for your customers and partners to have a better business experience if you create a custom web portal. It becomes simpler for you to organize your site to enhance your search engine optimization and sales. Get in touch with us to build a custom web portal solution.
