Community portals: functionality, benefits & best practices
Key functionality of community portals
Based on the type and purpose of a community, we equip the portal with different combinations of community management and engagement features to meet customers’ specific needs.
Community membership
- User registration
- Profile creation
- Membership programs
- Role distribution with relevant permissions and privileges
- Admin dashboard
Social engagement
- Group discussions and forum
- Private and public chats
- Video chats
- Comments
- Social sharing, including to social media platforms
Content 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
- Notifications for upcoming events
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 web portals that meet specific needs of different types of 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 customer 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 improved portal performance and seamless UX helped our client streamline workflows and increase productivity.
For people with shared interests
For people with shared interests
Itransition creates community portals suitable for any community, including fan clubs, parent groups, and local neighborhoods. 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 a robust solution in line with your business needs.
Consulting
Our team carries out an in-depth analysis of your community portal requirements, business processes, and end-users’ needs to map out the future solution. We select the best-fitting technologies and tools, draw up a project roadmap, and guide you throughout the implementation, helping minimize technical risks and ensure successful portal implementation and adoption.
Development
- Custom community portals
Itransition creates community solutions from scratch, covering the full cycle of software development, including solution and UX/UI design, back-end and front-end development, system integration, end-to-end testing, deployment, and post-release support. You get a proprietary community hub fully tailored with your brand and community aims.
- Platform-based community portals
We build portals on top of market-leading 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 add new features or upgrade the UX/UI design while preserving the solution’s core functionality.
Drive community engagement with an effective portal
Community portal integrations
Itransition connects your community portal to enterprise or third-party systems, helping you ensure seamless data exchange.
Core integrations
CRM
ERP
PIM
Data analytics software
Ticketing system
CRM
We integrate community portals with CRM systems, enabling companies to utilize comprehensive data about community members, their behavior, preferences, and expectations for building more personalized experiences.
ERP
We connect ERP software to community portals so that companies can automatically synchronize information about product orders or service requests from the portal while providing customers with real-time visibility into their order statuses.
PIM
Our team integrates community portals with product information management systems to ensure accurate, up-to-date product data is consistently available in the portal, helping users make informed product decisions.
Data analytics software
We connect data analytics tools to community portals to help organizations capture relevant customer data and track the portal’s performance for more personalized services, data-driven decisions, and effective business risk mitigation.
Ticketing system
We connect community portals to ticketing systems to help customer service reps manage user requests, consolidate all user interactions into a single thread, preserve communication context, and improve overall customer experience.
Community portal development roadmap
1
Discovery
Business needs analysis
Development strategy creation
2
Design & planning
Portal architecture design
UX/UI design and prototyping
Project plan creation
3
Development
Front-end and back-end development
Integration with other corporate systems
4
Testing
Functional testing
Unit and integration testing
Load testing
5
Deployment
Product release
Post-release testing
6
Maintenance & support
Performance monitoring
Bug fixes
Software updates
On-demand training
Tech stack
We employ an optimal set of 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
Adobe Commerce (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 helps keep community members loyal and engaged.
Audience growth
An engaging portal stimulates customer retention and drives 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 with the help of other community members without turning to support.
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 portals equipped with discussion forums and messaging tools streamline member communication.
Reliable knowledge source
Searching through other members’ discussions, users 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
When designed and developed with a mobile-first approach in mind, community portals allow users to 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 & intuitive UI
We build online 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 mechanisms, we ensure safe 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- & ML-based analytics
We implement data analytics features powered by AI and ML models to 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 deliver personalized customer experiences.
Develop your community portal with Itransition
Related services
Data analytics services
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 number and complexity of features, required integrations with other systems, use of advanced technologies, and development team composition.
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.
Can I build a community portal using a no-code portal builder?
No-code platforms enable users to create branded community portals without coding by providing drag-and-drop configuration tools and customizable templates. These builders also provide out-of-the-box APIs with popular systems, like CRMs, customer support platforms, and others. However, because no-code community portal builders rely on ready-made templates and pre-built components, the portals built on top of them have limited customization potentials. Therefore, organizations that have unique design, feature, or integration requirements should consider building a community portal from scratch.
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