Your website is an excellent resource for potential customers to learn more about your company. But what happens if that visitor turns into a consumer, client, or member?
That new relationship brings new expectations. How will you provide your new customers with the essential information they need? How will you keep them engaged so that you have the opportunity to offer them new services? How will you ensure that they can find answers easily and immediately? A member portal is a vital tool for keeping members happy, staff informed, and your company on track.
The advantages of a member portal are many, but choosing between off-the-shelf software and custom software can be difficult for many business owners.
The best option considers a number of factors, including your company's size and structure, your budget, and the capabilities of existing off-the-shelf member portal software. Many organizations, whether large, small, or new, realize that the advantages of a custom-built member portal greatly outweigh the disadvantages of the alternatives.
Why Build Custom Software for Your Membership Portal?
Designed specifically for your company's needs.
Though there are solutions for specialized industries or business types (for example, one software package may help the restaurant industry while another supports medical companies), off-the-shelf software is created to fulfill generic demands. Unfortunately, this forces many firms to scramble to adapt their procedures and goals to software constraints. On the other hand, your membership site should fit into your company strategy, not the other way around. Therefore, you may customize a unique membership portal's functionality, user experience, and aesthetics to meet your specific organizational needs.
Customers will enjoy a more cohesive, efficient, and delightful experience. Custom-built software gives employees and back-end administrators more control and customization options, leading to improved data collecting, processes, and strategic planning.
Easily create and manage user profiles.
The creation and management of user accounts would seem simple:
- Set up the account.
- Collect the data.
- Store the data.
- Secure the data.
- Integrate the data.
But these are actually the most time-consuming and effort-intensive components of user and membership administration. Consider the questions to be answered for each of these steps:
- Set up the account. Can the users do it themselves? What information do we need to identify and verify them?
- Collect the data. How much information do we need to give them a productive experience? Which pieces of data should be required? How will we encourage them to give us enough information to curate their experience? How long will we retain the information? How often will we ask them to update it? How easy will it be for them to update it?
- Store the data. Will we keep this information in the web database, or send it to another system? What will we do to avoid duplicate data? How will we know whether the data is outdated? If the data is stored in more than one place, what will we do to keep it synchronized? Do we have enough storage for the amount of data we need to retain?
- Secure the data. Is the data transmission encrypted? At what level of encryption? Is the database encrypted? What security policies are in place to prevent the user from unintentionally exposing their data? Are we doing penetration testing? Do we require multifactor authentication? Are we storing any unnecessary confidential data? Are we compliant with security standards? Are there any regional security standards that affect our customers?
- Integrate the data. Do we have backend systems that need this information? Can we connect the website to those systems? Can we optimize operations by automatically updating backend software?
Off-the-shelf software may meet those objectives, but its functionality is rarely aligned with your company's internal structure and resources.
When you utilize bespoke software to create a membership portal, you can automate the entire process by creating customized logins for your users and linking them to the functionality and access they require, all while securely keeping and controlling data.
Because you're building your portal from the ground up, it can be designed to work smoothly with existing internal systems.
Simplify legacy account management.
Creating new member accounts is easy, but what about existing members? If your company is already established, you may have many current or legacy accounts. In addition, migrating data, whether it's membership or not, from one system to another can be a time-consuming process at best.
Many of our clients, for example, are typically frustrated when dealing with off-the-shelf software compatibility difficulties, discovering that the new software does not integrate well with old CRMs, databases, or apps. This can result in misplaced membership information, excessive lag times, bad client experiences, and, ultimately, a lot of work for your personnel.
It's easy to spot any potential legacy account migration difficulties and address them before or during the construction stage if you build your membership site. As a result, there are few, if any, difficulties with data integrity or membership account disruptions.
Specific content, billing, subscription, and account services are all available with secure access.
Many of today's most popular off-the-shelf customer portal solutions provide some level of protection, but in a world where data breaches and theft are becoming more frequent, relying on third-party security might leave your brand susceptible. You have more control over the security provisions included during development if you design and maintain your unique membership portal. It also makes it easy to comply with any industry-specific or special regulations or compliance needs.
Support when and where your members require it.
Your product or service may generate initial cash and brand recognition, but lousy customer service is typically the stumbling block to its long-term success. Even once-loyal customers may seek a different product or service due to a terrible customer experience. As a result, firms that reduce assistance barriers can help customers feel less frustrated. Using third-party software for help can make the experience feel impersonal or fragmented, which can frustrate both customers and your customer service team.
Customers can manage all their needs in one place with in-portal customer care. Your support team will be more likely to resolve issues quickly and efficiently since client data can be securely saved in the portal, and the portal can be effortlessly integrated with internal solutions. However, in-portal assistance isn't confined to client and representative interactions. Your unique membership site can include user documentation and FAQ’s that help users find answers to some of their questions, empowering them and relieving the pressure on your customer support team.
Create a natural opportunity for upselling and marketing.
Your membership portal is a great asset when it comes to retention. However, a custom membership portal can help you engage with clients and give them relevant and timely upsell chances at numerous touchpoints. In addition, you have more control over where, when, and how you use those upsell and marketing campaigns within the portal when you pick custom software over off-the-shelf choices. Limitations imposed by off-the-shelf portals can make sales and marketing opportunities feel forced, especially since you won't have complete development control over how they're integrated into the customer journey – for example, you'll have to work with the functionality that's already there, even if it's not ideal for your users or goals.
A custom portal makes it easy to create a more organic sales and marketing experience that is less likely to alienate customers and instead serves them what they need at any point during their portal journey.
Your membership site serves as more than just a hub for services, communications, and engagement. It's a value statement that demonstrates why your company is the best option for customers. Don't let off-the-shelf software detract from your company's image. At Provisio, we have extensive experience creating custom portals for our clients.
To explore how a custom-built membership portal may help you develop your business and enhance membership retention, schedule a free consultation with us now.
PORTAL CASE STUDIES
Automotive Logistics Executive Committee