Community portals - success criteria.

Touch plc

Before we can look at and establish the success for a community portal it's important to understand just what a community portal is. Portals have become the buzzword and the 'must have' 2nd generation website. After the 'dot bombs' of the year 2000, caused mainly by an expectation, or even greed, that the online transaction would change the way business was done for a time, e- commerce has very quickly come off the menu. And this is right The expectation that everyone would trawl the internet to find the goods they required, pay by credit card and wait for the delivery--always assuming that someone would be available to receive those goods really didn't stack up. The vain hope of building a row of shops in the middle of a field and waiting for the housing estate to be built around them, is not realistic, but that was exactly what we were all doing. Surely. the houses come first, then, when the community is established and of sufficient size in number, the shops and facilities of all kinds will arrive. The com munity portal is just that. A polarisation of like minded people in one area, using the portal, or as defined in the dictionary: 'a gateway', as the interface between one place and another. It is not only the gateway to the internet, but also the portal content, which attracts a select community into one area, saving any one individual to search the universe that is the intemet. The bees go straight to the information honeypot.

The success or otherwise of a community portal depends on the interests of the community itself. A large company may have a community portal and the community, or staff associated with that company, already form a tightly welded user group with a focussed and common interest. Widening that thought, the skiing enthusiast is also a member of a like-minded community, as are climbers and mountaineers, football fans or perhaps associations or clubs of any kind. The 'not for profit' charity organisations usually have a readymade group who will probably be communicating regularly offline and to some extent online via email. How then do all these groups benefit from community portals and enrich the communication experience with likeminded people?

Touch (GoE) plc, LJK distributors of one of the portal enabling software applications, Dynaportal , has experience of communities that have been built around the world and recognise how this second generation software has enabled many organisations to enjoy the benefit of the interactive portal--something that would have been impossible only a year ago. The key is affordabifity, this second generation software allows portal building within a website budget. So what are those items that are essential to making a community portal successful? We asked the company to list those items that their clients have found to be the foundation of their success the following are the steps to making a community portal a success:

Content comes before commerce, therefore, to enter content, the portal has to be built first. This is not an issue, a portal is turned on for a new customer and this can be within minutes of a licence agreement being signed.

So first comes speed of deployment which is virtually instant,

Second is the content itself, together with the ability for people to become stakeholders in their community portal. Many communities already have a database of information and this can be bulk uploaded into the portal database. Ease of adding content by simply filling in forms with no technical skills is high on the list so that anyone in the organisation can do it. Also in the top flight of needs is the ability for anyone to add content ie. self publishing, allowing users to update and manage their own site. This is key to the growth of a community portal. Touch has many portals for Cities, Associations, Clubs and Businesses where one person is running the portal as an editor.

Third is the ability to self publish so that the portal can grow organically. The portal is in effect the property of the user who become stakeholders in content management.

Whether adding own details, joining email lists, writing articles, displaying a personal CV or even publishing a website as part of that portal, all is part of being a stakeholder in the the community portal. This grows organically and doesn't rely on one person adding content, everyone does. The portal can also be used to publicise a users business or interest, and to publish information in your own website, the portal or both.

Fourth is the personalisation of the portal which is the ability to deliver, to a users personal pages, only content that they want to see. I a vast community portal it is likely that much of it has little to interest a specific user. The power of the portal is the filtering of much of the internet's material, personalisation is a personal filter so the user gains information on his specific needs.

Fifth is stickiness or the ability of compelling visitors to return again and again.

Modules or channels that create 'stickiness' provide a compelling reason for visitors to return to the portal on a regular basis. Adding news items or announcements, posting special offers for prospective customers or, finding special offers that appeal to the user.

The Sixth is availability of flexibility and scalability from the software.

Whilst speed of portal deployment is important so is flexibility and scalability of the software. Dynaportal has over 25 separate modules in the software and initially a user might not want to use them all. In the future, however, they may be needed, in which case the ability to switch modules on or off and rename them to suit new needs should be retained. Equally, the ability to scale from a simply functioning portal to something that uses all modules is very important.

www.touchplc.com