How to manage a Web Portal? Part I

What you mean by Web Portal, wiki says “A web portal, also known as a links page, presents information from diverse sources in a unified way.”

As per me if you have a website which has multiple topics covered with huge amount of data and have a particular way of representing a content can called a portal.

These are my View points with a little experience I have :

1. Key ingredients of a portal.
2. Start that counts.
3. How to keep the portal running. keep a eye on competitors.
3. What are do and dont’s
4. Most important how to generate revenue.
5. summery.

So what are the key ingredients of a portal.

a. Most important it need to have a target Audience :

Who will visit your website and why.. this should be your first question. or other way around think of what your portal is all about and then think if who will be your target audience.

You must know what will piss of your target audience and try avoiding it. Also very important for you is to know what kind of impression you want to create about your portal in the minds of your target audience. it’s very important that the target audience not only visit your site again and again but also share with some new target.

E.g : http://www.moneycontrol.com
They not only allow you to create your own portfolio of shares but helps users with some valuable updates on the share market. What can piss of their users is a strong recommendation by the site for purchase of a share made it’s user loose some money.

b. Domain name:

know it’s difficult to get the domain names which you think will be best for the portal but again try out the other options like .in.org etc…

It’s important for you to have a proper domain name as it not only helps you with SEO but also better for the TG to remember and recommend.

c. Content makes the difference :

So some one should read, like (FB), share (SM) your content. It can be a help full tips, reviews, gossips or eventually can be rumors as well.

So you must have a minimum content person checking the content or writing the content for the site. Again the content will be as per your target audience and not very generic.

d. Technology that helps you with updates :

If you are running a portal then it is important that you need a back end system which will help you with quick and regular updates. you can either use word press(wordpress.com), drupal ( http://drupal.org/) and many other open source CMS to build the portal.

e. Design keep it simple.

Design of the portal need to reflect the essence of the portal. Make it sure to keep it simple and well spaced. Don’t try to to put to many links or don’t cramp it to give a portal link. User love to see a simple article deign with related links provided at right place. Use light and fresh colors and generic font for better readability.

Highlights : New or upcoming things on a portal needs a proper highlight to give a user a reason to come back to the site.

f. Newsletter

Weekly newsletter or in some cases daily newsletter is most inessential aspect of the portal. This not only work as a reminder to your register users but also helps in getting required push in the hits to the site.

Please note newsletter need to be a useful peace of mail which will either beneficial to users (like offers, discounts, happenings, trick and tips of the week, joke of the week) or need to be a regular update of the website. Newsletter requires some attractive design to attract uses to click. Mostly newsletter give a brief information and ask use to click to read more. So for a portal newsletter work as a banner.

g. Social Media presence

Portal need to build on it’s social media connects. The most powerful is Facebook and twitter. There is no fix number that you should achieve in respect of followers on both FB and twitter but it’s necessary to have a conversation going between the portal admin and the followers.

Try to get more followers from the target audience rather than the random users.

I will be putting my thoughts on “Start that counts.” soon… keep reading and let me know how did you find it.

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