What Does Web Portal Mean?
A web portal is a specially designed website that often serves as the single point of access for information. It can also be considered a library of personalized and categorized content. A web portal helps in search navigation, personalization, notification and information integration, and often provides features like task management, collaboration, and business intelligence and application integration.
Web portals are also known simply as portals.
Techopedia Explains Web Portal
Web portals often provide a particular look and feel for organizations and enterprises, and also provide access control and procedures. They are accessible from multiple platforms like personal computers, smartphones and other electronic devices. Prominent features of a web portal are data access, personal content, transactions, security, published content and search. It is capable of presenting information based on the user. It can also allow users to voluntarily personalize the information presented in the portal. There are two types of web portals, namely, horizontal web portals and vertical web portals. The former target large communities of users, whereas the latter are more specific to the contents and objects. Web portals are also classified based on their types, such as market space portals, public web portals, enterprise web portals, knowledge portals, etc.
A web portal is capable of handling both structured and unstructured information. For users, it provides ease of navigation, and for enterprises it provides significant cost savings, improved productivity and a way to establish a long-lasting relationship with users. A web portal can facilitate notification and multi-channel consistency. It enables universal login and provides integration if needed to other applications and systems. It is also capable of integrating and supporting a specific application type like e-commerce support, business intelligence or application service provider application.