Headline: Developing the ultimate portal

It wouldn’t be mere speculation to say that the World Wide Web has revolutionized the lives of the civilized world. Amongst the reasons it has grown to become a staple feature in every household is the ease at which information can be accessed. This has been made possible by the creation of web portals, existence of which dates back to almost the beginning of the Internet revolution.

A portal into cyberspace
For the benefit of the uninitiated (if any), a web portal can be described as your navigational start point into the myriad passage ways of the Internet. For a better understanding, take the front door of your home. Once you open the door and enter, you will gain entry into various other rooms, all of which you have customized to work towards your convenience. Every room will have an accessory that has been selected to make your life more comfortable. Your front door is your gateway to all that you need to make life simplistic. A portal, famous ones being Yahoo!, MSN, iGoogle, AOL, to name a few, functions in a similar manner. It serves as your gateway into the web. What makes portals much more than just a front door is the fact that they can be customized to suit your needs. While being a search engine is a given, web portals also provide for email, customized news updates, stock watches, entertainment, sports updates, blogs, book searches and even shopping. Each user can manipulate these and so many other features to research, navigate and receive information of his choice.

Web portals can be categorized widely on its usage. Those such as iGoogle, MSN, Yahoo are horizontal simply because they are a one-stop shop to a variety of informational needs. Corporate portals, which are more linear, cater to a limited audience and are specific to the informational needs of the particular business. The Intranet, an offspring of corporate portals was rejected in its original avatar simply because it lacked interactive features. Corporates now work towards a comprehensive Intranet set-up as well, in their scheme of web portal development.

In the scheme of things
Almost every entity that would like to make an emphatic presence on the online world has understood the potential that web portal development holds. While international personal portals such as Yahoo and iGoogle don’t need introductions, there are also regional portals such as India’s Rediff, Korea’s Naver, China’s Sina.com and so many others. USA led the pack in the development of governmental portals that are engineered to bring the administration within the reach and comprehension sphere of the masses.

In today’s world, with almost everyone heading to the Internet in search of information on everything from pimples to advice on child rearing, it was but natural for the development of portals that were domain specific. This heralded the advent of sports portals, real estate portals, medical portals and many more.

Rising up to the challenge
With time, portals have become increasingly niche or domain-specific. With several portals offering the same services, it all boils down who has a one-up. For example, with a kyazoonga.com advertising itself as the one-stop-shop for tickets of every sort, it would be able to up its game if it gave out an offer such as buy one ticket get one free. An added twist would be if they further announced that this was for one hour only. Every portal that makes its debut on the WWW will have to rise up to the challenge of not only attracting users but also retaining them. They have to keep a constant tab on rivals and will have to constantly innovate. If you are in the market for portal development consider this:

Seek and find: The bottom-line to any portal is its capacity to generate interest in its information, through its navigational capabilities. This generally is done by throwing up information relevant to key words of the search. An added benefit would be if related subjects are also listed. And a further add-on would be if the user could customize this information to his needs.

All about ‘me’: Personalization is the name of the game. Providing your end-user with every conceivable means of customizing his browser makes him a very happy man. This could be in the forms of navigation, tailoring of information that he would like to see and style of presentation. Providing a user with several options or even the option to create their own interfaces could earn you a lot of brownie points.

Do they have what it takes?
When you wade through the market in search of the right portal development company you will be faced with a multitude of capabilities thrown your way, all in the hope of securing elusive business. What you should look for, is someone who innovately can think out-of-the-box, keeping your portal in perspective. This they should be able to pair well with technological superiority. Presentation of your portal is of vital importance since you are dealing attention spans of a finger snap.

After technological prowess it is creative presentation that combines ease of navigation with that of getting all you want, plus enticements thrown in. This is where graphics, colour scheme, placement of tabs, speed all make a huge difference.

Among certain other factors that you should consider is the turnaround time. Having just a static home page up would do you no good. Instead, check on how good the company is on fast deadlines and further still, on implementation of changes. A check on the in-house staff strength, the number of projects currently in hand, technologies the company is versatile in, could stand you in good stead in ascertaining company competence. Also important is the security of your data as well as that of your potential clients. Ascertain the standards followed by the prospective company.

Once you zero in on a company that you feel can deliver on all these counts, it then comes down to monetary debates. While rates have to be in tandem with industry standards, it would be wise to compare costs of all the companies you have narrowed down. Select the company that most suits your wallet without, if possible, too much of a compromise on deliverables.

India in the forefrontThe economics of any business runs on the premise – more for less. Of course, business ethics demands that quality not be compromised. India, for a long while now has been an economically feasible option for most foreign countries in terms of IT back-end services. Companies across the world come to India for two main reasons – we have no dearth of skilled labour and our costs are comparatively lesser. Considering that we also live in a polar opposite time zone as that of western countries, we tend to deliver faster.

Having a huge labour force that is well versed in open source technologies like PHP, .NET, Java makes India an ideal country to take on web portal development as well as the creation of applications for them. With the constant need to retain eyeballs and increase clicks, India has proved its mettle in terms of quality at an economic price.

Linus Orakles
http://www.authorclub.info/