Portals are of two types: Horizontals and Verticals better known as Vortals.
For the successful creation of a portal there must be well-formulated objectives, knowledge of the preference and behaviour of the target audience, domain knowledge and understanding of the Internet and broader media experience. Portals are not an unplanned activity to display haphazard content. A portal strategy and siteplan has to be drawn, the content needs for the portal have to bethe portal architecture has to be planned with easy navigation, visual aesthetics to provide the look and feel up and in settingjust about putting various channels or content together. It's the stringing together and the common flavor through all the channels/sections which makes the Portal complete. Also it has to make the visitor feel comfortable and at home.
Understanding user psyche is an important aspect of portal creation. The niche and the target audience has to be kept in focus throughout. Revenue model is a Portal's breath of survival. Unlike times when portals were created left right and centre, with all the venture funding flowing in, portals these days have to be carefully thought of so that they can deliver in the areas in which they commit to.
The Team at Media trails dot com has put its heart and soul in conceptualising, creating and running two of India's best known horizontal portals namely: myindia.com ( Later bought over and integrated with india.com) and 123India.com.
News, Travel, Finance, Stocks, Movies, Greeting Cards, Literature, Food, Yellow Pages, Environment, Horoscopes, Youth, Cricket we've done it all. With hands on experience for each of these channels, we deliver what you want. Whether it may be traffic, revenues or just an online presence, you can bank on us to deliver quality services in time.
There's quite a frenzy today surrounding Internet portals. With all the hoopla, it's easy to forget a few important points:
All Web sites are not portals. A portal is a Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources such as e-mail, forums, search engines and online shopping malls. Although there is no single model for what constitutes a portal, all portals offer at least five core features: Web searching, news, reference tools, access to online shopping venues and some communications capabilities. Few enterprises possess the ability or desire to build portal sites themselves; most enterprises should concentrate on leveraging the marketing benefits of third-party portals.
Not every enterprise needs to be a portal. Although it is trendy to speak of all things Web as part of a portal today, reality requires a more pragmatic approach. Gartner Group has take the wraps off the win/place/show model to describe the options for an enterprise's Internet portal strategy.
The "win" strategy is the most aggressive of the three portal strategies. The competition in this space is fierce, with contenders such as AOL, Yahoo, Netscape, Infoseek and Lycos leading the pack with established brand identity, interactive services, aggregated content and ISP functionality. The enterprise's strategic goal must be to become a "network."
The "place" strategy is to be an element of the content mix within existing portals. The goal is to ride the coattails of the leaders, much the way a studio places a promising broadcast series on a leading network. Enterprises that have compelling content should strike deals with those in the first category.
The "show" strategy is to show up as output in portals' search engines. Most enterprises will find themselves in this category, as companies that do not seek to become a network. These enterprises have a firmly established Internet presence and seek to leverage that investment across a broader audience.
Not all Internet content will be driven by portals. While the buzzword "portal" will likely die in 1999, to be replaced by yet another buzzword describing similar concepts, the ideas behind portals-as access point, branding-will still be important. But enterprises should not overlook the most important tool for a Web presence: the lowly, much maligned URL. Web addresses and the underlying Domain Name System are not broken despite conventional wisdom and political posturing. After all, even the portals themselves have based their strategies on their URLs.
