Community portals: functionality, benefits, and best practices
Key functionality of community portals
Based on the type and purpose of a community, we equip the portal with different feature combinations to meet customers’ specific needs.
Community membership
- User registration
- Profile creation
- Membership programs
- Role distribution with relevant privileges
Social engagement
- Group discussions and forum
- Private and public chats
- Video chats
- Comments
- Social sharing
Content creation and management
- Content templates
- Easy search with tagging
- Widgets for trendy topics
- Discussion moderation tools
Knowledge transfer and training
- Professional trainings
- Partner certifications
- Customer knowledge base
- Learning management
Gamification
- Likes and dislikes
- Awards for active participation
- Reputational badges
- User ranking
Event management
- Video streaming and recording
- Personal user calendars
- Event submission form
- Calendar filter
Ad enablement
- Ad templates
- Banner, button and pop-up ads
- Different ad placement options
- Ad scheduling
Self-service
- Ticketing system
- Search widget
- Automated chatbots
- Interactive library of self-help materials
We deliver community portals for any audience
Itransition creates robust portals that meet the specific needs of online communities based on their size, demographics, or common interests.
For customers
For customers
We build customer portals as a powerful self-service tool and a reliable source of knowledge, helping you grow a dedicated community around your brand. Customers can find information on various topics, manage orders and payments, submit claims, and communicate with the brand team and other users.
Case study
Core app
intuitive, attractive, and speedy
Internet portal for a large bank
Itransition created a banking portal for Rietumu Banka to align their digital strategy to their clients’ expectations.
For employees
For employees
We develop employee portals for effective professional communication and networking with diverse tools for professional growth. Users can discuss different topics in chats, discussion boards, and forums, search for information in the knowledge base, receive newsletters, hold online conferences, and take career training courses.
Case study
Several hundred
everyday users
Employee collaboration space
Itransition created a portal for centralized document and project management and enterprise-wide collaboration.
For partners
For partners
With a partner portal in place, businesses can establish new contacts with vendors, dealers, and partners, attract more new customers, and, ultimately, increase sales. We equip our portals with features for self-service, partner onboarding, and data analysis, creating a valuable collaboration space for businesses.
Case study
Instant access
to 10 GB of documents
Partner portal for Xerox
Itransition performed maintenance and support of the Xerox partner portal. The impeccable portal operation together with seamless UX streamlined workflows and improved productivity.
For people with shared interests
For people with shared interests
Itransition creates community portals suitable for any community, be it a fan club, parent group, or local neighborhood. Users can discuss matters, share knowledge, and get notified of community events for effective engagement.
Case study
100,000+
registered users
Wellness community platform
Itransition built a SaaS platform for wellness enthusiasts with multiple messaging and video chat options and a media library with self-help and educational materials.
Our community portal development services
Itransition provides a full range of community portal development services to deliver the best solution for your business needs.
Consulting
Our team can carry out an in-depth analysis of your community portal requirements, business processes, and end users’ needs to map out the future solution. We can also help you choose the software delivery model and decide on additional features to add.
Development
- Custom community portals
Itransition creates community solutions from scratch, covering the full cycle of software development including prototyping, UX/UI design, back-end and front-end development, system integration, end-to-end testing, and post-release support. You get a proprietary community hub consistent with your brand and community aims.
- Platform-based community portals
We build portals on top of best-in-class platforms, aligning the end solution with your requirements and objectives. We implement the necessary features and tweak the design to ensure the portal’s UX/UI is coherent with your brand. In the end, with lower upfront costs and shorter implementation time, you get a fully-fledged solution customized specifically for your business.
Migration
We can move your portal to a modern higher-capacity environment if your legacy solution no longer meets your needs. We offer safe portal data migration, destination platform set-up, and comprehensive testing for error-free operation.
Modernization
We can revamp your community portal to improve its performance and align it with your current needs. Our team can eliminate outdated features and add new ones while preserving the solution’s core functionality. Modernization can also include the creation of an engaging user interface to fuel community involvement.
Drive community engagement with an effective portal
Community portal integrations
Connecting your community portal to enterprise or third-party systems allows you to build a single digital ecosystem and reap more benefits from seamless data exchange.
Core integrations
CRM
ERP
PIM
Data analytics software
Ticketing system
CRM
The access to comprehensive data about community members, their behavior, preferences, and expectations stored in CRM allows companies to build a more personalized user experience.
ERP
With an ERP connected to your portal, you can provide customers with real-time inventory information and make data exchange automated and error-free.
PIM
An integration with a product information management system ensures the consistency and visibility of information across your community portal and other business systems.
Data analytics software
We can integrate data analytics tools to help you capture relevant customer data and track your portal’s performance for more personalized services, data-driven decisions, and accurate business risk mitigation.
Ticketing system
We can connect your portal to a ticketing system to help you manage user requests, combine interactions into a single thread, preserve communication context, and improve overall customer experience.
Community portal development roadmap
1
Planning
Business needs analysis
Development strategy
Step-by-step project plan with deadlines
2
Design
Portal architecture
Visual style selection
UI mapping
Prototyping with formatted content
3
Development
Front-end and back-end development
Integration with other corporate systems
Risk mitigation
4
Testing
Functional testing
Unit and integration testing
Load testing
5
Deployment
Product release
Post-release testing
Staff training
6
Maintenance and support
Performance monitoring
Bug fixes
Software updates
On-demand training
Tech stack
We employ top-notch technologies and tools to build a secure and reliable community portal that will help you establish a strong online presence and grow an engaged community.
5 layers of community portal development
1
Customer experience
1
Customer experience
Visible layer
Implemented with the help of a CMS platform
WordPress, Drupal Orchard, Umbraco, Sitecore
Headless CMS (Strapi, Directus, Contentful) + Jamstack (Next.JS, Gatsby)
2
Customer communication
2
Customer communication
Social contact layer
Implemented with the help of messaging and forum solution integration
Zendesk
Live chat (Drift, Intercom, etc.)
3
Customer satisfaction and behavior
3
Customer satisfaction and behavior
Feedback and behavior analytics layer
Implemented with various analytics methods
Feedback forms
Google Analytics and Social Tracking
4
Customer support
4
Customer support
Self-service layer
Implemented with the help of platform module integration or third-party solutions
Zendesk Service Now
Live chat (Drift, Intercom, etc.) CRM integration
5
Customer engagement
5
Customer engagement
Selling layer
Contact form or online quote, implemented with custom development, ecommerce module, or CRM integration
Magento Hybris
CRM integration
Benefits of community portals
Community portals provide a digital environment for effective interactions between community members, bringing multiple benefits to the audience and portal owners.
Enhanced community engagement
A community portal can keep community members loyal and engaged.
Audience growth
An engaging portal can stimulate customer retention and drive user growth.
Data accumulation and analytics
User data accumulated over time helps understand your audience and its needs.
Improvement ideas
Businesses can get helpful insights from user behavior and communications.
Increased brand awareness
An active portal helps the brand gain more visibility.
Lower customer support costs
Users can solve their problems without turning to support with the help of other community members.
Positive brand association
Communicating with single-minded people on a brand’s community portal, a user gets positive associations with the company.
Better communication
Community portal is equipped with a forum and messaging tools for streamlined member communication.
Reliable knowledge source
Searching through other members’ discussions, a user can find valuable insights on a topic they are interested in.
Flexible self-service
Self-service features, such as a knowledge base or FAQ section, enable community members to solve their problems easier and faster.
Community support
Portal forums offer a collaborative space for community members to connect and share experiences.
Device-agnostic experience
Most community portals are mobile-friendly, meaning users can access them from desktops, tablets, or smartphones.
How we build top-performing community portals
Itransition applies best practices for community software development to provide users with the necessary resources and ensure their seamless communication with each other.
Simple and intuitive UI
We build portals with user-friendly interfaces and intuitive navigation to facilitate seamless customer interaction with the portal and reduce search time.
User information privacy and security
We develop our portals with a focus on user data protection. Implementing multi-step authentication as well as data backup and encryption technologies, we ensure the safe collection and storage of the data your users share.
Mobile responsiveness
We develop mobile-responsive user interfaces for our community portals, re-aligning asset hierarchy, resizing images, and adapting text and other elements to fit the mobile device screen in both portrait and landscape modes.
Cyberbullying prevention
We enable the moderator role in chats and forums to check conversations for hate speech, toxic comments, and aggressive statements. We can also implement a complaint button to enable users to report disrespectful behavior, helping moderators block abusive users.
AI- and ML-based analytics
AI analytics can help you discover insights, detect patterns, correlate different types of portal data, and perform root-cause analysis. You can analyze large amounts of user data more accurately to promote a personalized customer experience.
Develop your community portal with Itransition
Related services
Data analytics
Itransition offers solutions to process and interpret your data and clarify key business dynamics for your data-driven decisions.
QA testing
We provide quality assurance consulting and testing services to detect and fix software vulnerabilities and ensure product security and efficiency.
Cloud consulting
Our team helps seamlessly migrate software to a cloud platform and provides cloud development, integration, and redesign services.
Salesforce consulting
We offer consulting, migration, and customization services for companies to boost their community efficiency with Salesforce Service Cloud.
Community portals: popular questions answered
What is community portal development?
Community portal development is the creation of a virtual hub for knowledge sharing and communication among community members.
How much does it cost to build a community portal?
The cost of community portal development mainly depends on the complexity of the solution and can be affected by the scope of preliminary research, mobile and AI development, portal integrations, content management, and engagement features.
Can you create a portal that will precisely fit my community?
We tailor our solutions to the type and shared interests of your online community, adding the best-fitting functionality to meet the target audience’s expectations and your business needs.
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