Most businesses in today’s world will find there are A LOT of moving parts to being successful. Having an organized business flow with a business operating system like Zoho is a must. And though these are great for structuring your internal business practices, how can you deliver a similar experience to your customers, clients, vendors, or distributors? After all, UX and CX are a major part of separating you from your competitors. A client portal bridges the gap between your internal business flow and delivers that experience to your users.
As you read on we will explain what exactly a portal is, the benefits a portal provides, and why we recommend Z Portals over Zoho’s built-in portal. Let’s dive in!
What is a Portal?
Generally speaking, a portal is a website that a customer can log into to provide or access information or services they might need. Most basic portals would give features such as updating your contact information or submitting a support ticket. But, a good portal also has the potential in bringing a customer into your business ecosystem, such as your Zoho ecosystem.
The benefits of a Portal
So, now that we have an understanding of what a Portal is, let us take a look at its benefits.
Increased Effiency
By allowing vendors, customers, affiliates, distributors, etc. access to information across more than 10 Zoho applications, you enable them to interact with your business in a more efficient way. You will find a reduction of emails or phone calls required to handle things such as:
- Dealing with invoices. (Zoho Invoice Integration)
- Submitting support tickets and ensuring they get queued properly. (Zoho Desk Integration)
- Transfering documents. (Zoho WorkDrive Integration)
The overall reduction of time spent on the admin time of your business can be greatly reduced with the proper portal.
SEO With Z Portal
As mentioned, this portal is an online link. And with Z Portals this exists on your website. So how does this benefit your SEO?
- Keep branding unified with your current site
- Building brand awareness to your visitors.
- Resources articles through your portal benefit backlinks and keyphrases.
- Increase traffic to your site, which boosts web visability
- One stop shop for your client base.
- Flexibilty to set up as a sub domain if you want to keep it seperate.
Why Z Portal instead of Zoho Portal
So, you purchased Zoho One for your organization which comes with a Portal, why do you need Z Portals? In short, the one that comes with Zoho has limited functionality and benefits from what is listed above. Here are some key elements which set the two options apart.
- Single Sign-On vs Multiple Sign-On
- With the Zoho portal users have to sign on several times to get to what they need. With Z Portals you only need one set of credentials.
- Multiple portals are combined into one portal with Z Portals.
- Z Portal Hosting
- Zoho doesn’t host the portal on your website. So you lack all the SEO and branding benefits you get with Z Portals.
- Z Portals provides 3rd party integrations.
- Indirect Zoho Applications
- Surprisingly, there are a lack of integrations with the Zoho Portal.
- Z Portal provides nativily 8 different Zoho applications that can integrate with your client portal for an enhanced UX. Which include:
- Zoho CRM
- Zoho Books
- Zoho Desk
- Zoho Sign
- Zoho Subscriptions
- Zoho Vault
- Zoho WorkDrive
- Zoho Inventory
- Permissions
- You will have more control over flexibility of user permissions and roles with Z Portals versus the Zoho Portal.
Seeing is Believing
Sounds great right? Well, we had the pleasure of doing a full overview of Z Portals with its creator John-Mark Bantock. See for yourself how Z Portals works and its overall functionality.
Ready to get started?
There are a ton of use cases for portals, just a few examples include e-commerce, real estate, and service providers. There are a TON of use cases to create a whole new level of automation and ease for pretty much any business model. So what are you waiting for? Reach out to us and we’d be happy to get you started to boost your UX today. Get started today by signing up for a FREE 30-day trial by mentioning you heard about Z Portals through Zenatta.
