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

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.

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

Turn to Itransition

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

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)

Customer communication

Social contact layer Implemented with the help of messaging and forum solution integration

Zendesk

Live chat (Drift, Intercom, etc.)

Customer satisfaction and behavior

Feedback and behavior analytics layer Implemented with various analytics methods

Feedback forms

Google Analytics and Social Tracking

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

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.

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.