Once your business reaches a certain size, it’s likely you’ll need a client portal to keep things running smoothly. There are plenty of reasons to make a client portal part of your business strategy, they’re convenient and can reduce overhead for your human support agents. But should you have a standalone client portal, or integrate the portal into your website?

Client Portals: What Are They?

In short, a client portal is a centralised location where visitors can find out more about your products or services. It’s also a place where sensitive information gets stored — either your company’s, or that of your clients. It’s meant to be a one-stop solution for customers looking for more information.

Standalone Or Integrated?

When it comes to setting up a client portal, you have two choices: set up a standalone portal separate from your website, or integrate it fully into your existing site. Here are some of the advantages and drawbacks of each approach.

Standalone — Pros and Cons

A standalone client portal is just that — customer portal software separate from your company or client-facing website, with the sole purpose of acting as a client portal and nothing else.

On the plus side, a standalone portal will generally have better security, which reduces the risk of vulnerabilities from the main website. It’s not that your website is likely to be insecure, merely that integration provides more vectors of attack for possible data breaches or other problems. Also, since it’s a standalone customer portal, the user experience can be more easily customised and improved, and it won’t slow down your main website if it happens to draw a lot of traffic at once.

The downsides of having a standalone client portal include:

• Extra cost. Development will cost a good chunk up front, and web hosting and maintenance will be ongoing costs once you have things properly set up.
• Risk of brand inconsistency — you may not be able to customise the look and feel of your portal, and it may not fit with your chosen brand identity.
• Customer friction. Having a standalone portal means users must log into an additional site — meaning another username and password to set up and remember. It could be a potential source of displeasure for your customers.

Integrated — Pros and Cons

The other type of client portal is one you integrate directly into your customer website. Just as with a standalone portal, there are some pros and cons.

On the pro side, you get a seamless user experience — clients only need one login to access all the functions of your website, including the portal. This also allows you to control the aesthetics and brand identity of the portal, making it contiguous with the rest of the website. A single unified platform is also more cost-effective, since it won’t require extra maintenance apart from the rest of your client website. Finally, there’s the issue of SEO — if you have lots of publicly available content on your portal, that can help with search results.

On the con side, possible drawbacks include reduced security — an integrated portal is exposed to greater website threats, which could potentially compromise your customer data. There’s also the issue of traffic and overload: if your client portal is integrated, it’s likely to bring a lot of new visitors to your website, which could potentially slow it down or even make it temporarily unavailable. Finally, while integrated client portals are more cost-effective in the long run, the integration process is likely to be more expensive in the short term.

Things To Consider

Whether to have a standalone or integrated portal is just one of the decisions you’ll face when you decide to set one up — and there is plenty of customer portal software out there to choose from. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

For one, consider your business type and what sort of industry you’re in. For example, if you’re in legal or financial services, or your business otherwise stores sensitive client data such as medical records or other personal information, you may want to choose a portal that prioritises security over other concerns.

Consider the user experience and accessibility needs — which, again, may vary depending on who your customer base is. If your business caters to an older demographic, for example, you may want to focus on certain accessibility features.

There are also the issues of budget — some client portal software is more affordable than others, and it’s something to keep in mind before you commit to a particular solution. Gravitate toward software with a free trial period if possible, so you can “try before you buy.”

Finally, there are the technical considerations — integration with other tools and platforms will be particularly important if you choose an integrated solution. You should also think about internal technical and maintenance capacity if you choose an integrated solution.