Maximizing Efficiency of Your Enterprise Portal
Having an efficient and well-performing web portal is instrumental in the success of any modern enterprise – which is exactly the reason why it is a good idea to delegate its development to professionals. Not only will you get consistently good results, but dealing with a team that has expertise in the field can do a lot to improve your own understanding of the subject. Today I would like to share how I enriched the understanding of optimizing enterprise portal efficiency.
1. Use Every Opportunity to Centralize Marketing
Running a business is an incredibly complex, time-consuming and work-intensive job – and marketing constitutes a considerable part of this complexity. Having a web portal at your disposal means that you can concentrate all (or the majority) of your marketing tools in a single platform. No more need to synchronize between half a dozen platforms, no need to use different and poorly working together instruments to perform the necessary operations, track campaigns and maintain brand consistency – that is, if the portal is getting created as a universal workplace from the beginning.
2. Optimize Loading Times
People are impatient, and there is hardly anything more trying for one’s patience today than having to wait for a page to load when you are in a hurry. Or even when you are not in a hurry – high-speed broadband Internet has taught most people that reaction to your clicking or tapping should be near instantaneous. Therefore, a conclusion – you should do everything to optimize loading times of your portal across a wide variety of platforms. Statistics show that mobile Internet usage has already exceeded that of desktop, and mobile connections can still be wonky, especially in more remote locations. Your portal should be ready for everything and maintain a healthy balance between beautiful design and loading times.
3. Eliminate 404 Errors
What goes next after long loading times in the list of things that are most annoying for visitors? 404 errors. When a user encounters one, not only does he get annoyed due to lost time, but starts doubting whether this site is worth dealing with at all. Perhaps it is not functional. Or maybe its creators do not bother to check if all its parts work as they are supposed to be working. There are multiple easy ways to check if there are 404 errors on your portal, which means that there cannot be any justification for having them running wild.
4. Be Mobile-Oriented
We have already mentioned this, but this point cannot be stressed enough. If you are not mobile-friendly or even mobile-oriented in today’s world, you are dead in the water. The absolute majority of people use mobile as their primary method of Internet surfing, and there is a growing percentage of those who use it exclusively. Portal development of your enterprise is not an exception. In such circumstances, using responsive design irrespectively of what device is being used to access your portal is a necessity, not an additional item of expenditure.
5. Don’t Use Stock Images
It is often said that one image can replace a thousand words – but only if it is the right image in the right place. The expression is certainly wrong for web portals that are chock full of stock photos and images – apparently in the false belief that it is going to make them look more alive and personable. Not so – modern users are experienced at evaluating websites at a glance, for they have seen thousands of them already and know what to look at. It is very easy to pick out stock photos that you have either already seen somewhere or that simply have a generic, run-of-the-mill look – and there is hardly anything more damaging to a company’s image than being perceived as an organization that doesn’t even bother about placing photos of real people on its web portal.
Hiring professionals to do a job for you is instructive in many ways. Not only do you save time and get better results in the end, but seeing them work and what their work entails gives you many valuable insights you could not have received on your own, as well. Moreover, today I can say with conviction that I know a lot more about portal optimization than I did before this collaboration started.
