| Along
with specialized content your portal should offer:
A quality search engine
General information areas such as news, weather and map information
Extensive and comprehensive Help, FAQ and Feedback areas
Personalized services such as email, calendars and community forums |
Give
your audience an environment of informative and fresh content, personalized
services and a sense of belonging, and you're well on your way to creating a community
portal.
 
Aim to make your portal the user's home page
The internet is overwhelming
for many users. Give them a starting point where they feel in control, then let
them ride the data waves. At anytime they can click the browser's home button
and return to their comfort zone - your portal. This will build a sense of trust
and security between you and your users. Trust and security - those are good words
to associate with a website. |
There
are many ways to design a portal, from a pared down text-intensive directory
to a full-blown 'experience' site. As with all designs, it depends on your organization,
your product and your audience.
Technically,
combining static and dynamic pages may be the most appropriate design structure.
Static pages generate rankings in the search engines. Dynamic pages, generated
on the fly, are a very efficient way to serve content from databases to the web.
Generating
dynamic pages with databases and templates may also allow people not familiar
with html coding to create and update content within a form framework. Sales people
can enter information from locations on the road, office workers can design within
templates, clients can update their own data. It's an accessible way to manage
large quantities of content.
As
with the design steps set out on the Ecommerce
page, a Requirements
Document is the initial step in the development process. A effective
portal is an all-inclusive site and will incorporate many different and converging
technologies (search, ecommerce, dynamic page generation, news and information
areas, forums, email and calendars, just to name a few). Time to research and
develop a comprehensive Requirements Document is vital to the success of any community
portal.
 Webtide
believes in incorporating the technologies you need and none that you don't
need. Technologies change so quickly that adding something now that you won't
use immediately could be a costly mistake. Start with the essentials; a visually
attractive and easily navigable site rich in content and unique personal touches.
See what works, what your audience responds to and would like more of. Then, add
those features.
Always
remember the big three. Develop your portal as required by:
1. Your Organization
2. Your Product
3. Your Audience
Keep the site manageable for your users. They want a reprieve from the
world wide web not a copy of it. |
