Customer Portal Best Practices to Implement This Year
- A customer portal should offer a seamless user experience with easy navigation and a clean design.
- The customer portal should provide valuable insights and analytics to help businesses make informed decisions and improve their services.
- Providing robust security measures, including encryption and two-factor authentication, can help protect sensitive customer data from potential breaches.
Client portals are the lifeline of many businesses, especially those that have streamlined their processes and rely on self-service. Simply setting up a customer portal is not enough though. You’ll need to tweak it to achieve the best possible customer experience.
While customer portals are powerful tools, they do need to be configured. You need to spend some time thinking about ways to guide clients (or leads) without overwhelming them. If you’re not sure where to get started, this post includes customer portal best practices to help you out.
Someone please think of the customers
Before you start configuring the portal to your liking, take a step back and think of what your customers need. Are your customers primarily B2B clients working in teams, or are they individual users? The former would appreciate it if your portal of choice supports teams who can collaborate together (and yes, SPP does support it).
Also keep in mind that someone who’s never used a customer portal like yours before will need some guidance. This can be in the form of an onboarding call, an onboarding page (that you can set up in SPP), or by making the portal incredibly simple. The latter is easier said than done, after all, how many features can you take away without impacting the power users?
Besides your customers, your own team also needs to use the portal. The better the options for customer self-service, the less work your team has to do. Instead of answering the same questions over and over, consolidate them into an FAQ or knowledge base. Embed it into your customer portal or simply link to it.
The role of customer portal tools
Customer portal tools are crucial for enhancing communication, collaboration, and support between customers and agencies.
Two major trends influencing their development include:
No-code platforms: Empowering users to build custom portals without extensive technical expertise, these platforms enable faster deployment and greater flexibility.
Interactive support channels: Allowing customers to engage through chatbots, video conferencing, and other multimedia tools, interactive portals enhance engagement and reduce friction.
By making use of this technology, agencies can improve the user experience, run a more lean business, and build lasting client relationships.
Customer portal design decisions
The best customer portals are not just beautifully designed, it represents your company, is in line with your brand, and guides the user along their customer journey. Ensure actions are clearly labeled and accessible, such as prominently placing buttons for upgrading subscriptions or adding team members.
With that said, portal software like Service Provider Pro allows for advanced customizations. You can make your portal your own by adding custom pages. Those can be anything from an Airtable to a knowledge base or a custom service page like this one from Raxa Design:
Before you go all in on customizations, though, think about the standard customer portal features, and how you can make use of them.
Layout
SPP’s menu editor allows you to add categories and menu items to the sidebar. This works well as long as you keep the number of items reasonable. Otherwise the client will have to scroll to see all your items.
As a graphic design agency, when we started looking into project management tools, it was extremely important to us that the platform we chose had the capability to be customized to our brand. Design matters. Design matters as much on the backend as it does on the front end.
According to Hick’s Law, fewer choices are the best solution if you want to engage a customer. Instead of putting all of your services in the sidebar, it would be easier to create custom pages, and separate them into categories. Even better, use our white label form builder to create an order form. Ask the client what they are looking for, and display relevant services based on their selection thanks to conditional form rules.
Moreover, when implementing the Hick’s Law principles into your website’s user interface, carefully considering the placement and design of key elements like the logo design can contribute to a more intuitive navigation experience for your customers.
Navigation
A good client portal has been designed to provide clients with the best experience. A common mistake is having confusing navigation because nobody has thought about how UI relates to UX. When you link certain things in the sidebar but also the navigation bar, it becomes difficult to understand why they are not all in the same place. Also, keep your CTA buttons consistent across the board, and refrain from using colors that don’t match the action. For instance, a button shouldn’t be red unless it is for deleting something important.
A navigational item you might want to opt for, especially if you create your own custom pages in SPP, are breadcrumbs. They allow users to go back to one of the previous pages easily without having to use the browser’s back button. Plus, they always know where they are inside your portal.
Best customer portal examples
Now that you have a better idea about design decisions you should make, let’s look at the best customer portal examples I’ve come across from SPP clients.
SEO customer portal
Ranked.ai shows that they have a good understanding about UX. They make use of SPP’s onboarding page builder and set it as the default template. This means that, as soon as a client logs in, they are greeted with this page. All the information they need to get started is right on this page, and they can easily navigate to different parts of the client portal.
Ranked.ai improves conversion by simplifying the process for customers to purchase plans or start trials, ensuring all necessary information is easily accessible. No calls are necessary, clients can get started as soon as they feel ready. Ranked.ai also promotes their affiliate program and white label option. The latter is important for other agencies who want to expand their service offering.
Social media management customer portal
Feedbird has gone above and beyond when it comes to their customer portal. They’ve re-designed many elements and shuffled things around compared to SPP’s standard layout. One thing that stands out is that they are focusing heavily on promoting their services. You can see that there are four service links, in the navbar, sidebar and two in the main page.
Another thing Feedbird is promoting are recommended resources under the active services. They’ve recorded multiple videos helping clients understand the next steps they need to complete. By integrating their new client onboarding process into the main page, they can spend less time on repetitive tasks. Clients can simply watch a video to find out how to use the portal.
Digital marketing customer portal
USA Home Listings has really nailed the old-school look the company is going for by adjusting SPP’s native Boostrap design. Compared to the other two companies, they put more effort into onboarding customers manually if they prefer that. While there is an onboarding video they can watch, clients can also book a demo or schedule a call if they have other questions.
Another thing USA Home Listings has done differently is the sidebar: clicking on one of the many options in it will open a sub-menu with multiple service options to choose from. Besides in the sidebar, the services are also accessible from the main onboarding page. Again, it’s clear that the company is making it easy for customers to purchase more services, and therefore increasing the lifetime value.
Creating a self-service portal
A thoughtful, sleek design is not the only thing you need to focus on while developing your new customer portal. Modern businesses, especially producitzed ones, put a heavy emphasis on self-service, as seen in the examples above. Direct customer interactions are often kept to a minimum. Instead, a lot of thought goes into developing a portal customers can access at any time, and find any information they need.
In order to accomplish this goal, focus on the following key points to improve the user experience.
Set up an onboarding process
Client onboarding is one of those costs that are very hard to calculate and keep track of. On one hand, you want to get clients quickly set up and make them familiar with your client onboarding portal. On the other hand, spending too many resources will cost money that, depending on your customer lifetime value, you might not recoup.
Streamline & automate your client onboarding.
In order to succeed with your service business, you should think about designing an onboarding process that works well for both your team and your clients. At SPP, we’ve built a simple onboarding page that anyone can edit. It’s a great starter template and includes a section for a welcome video, options to link to blog posts, plus a few elements that link to the client profile.
This is usually enough to make them familiar with the new portal, and improve the portal experience. The next step is to add an FAQ to your portal.
Implement a knowledge base
I’m sure you’ve seen FAQs everywhere online. There’s a good reason for that, if customers ask the same questions over and over, you might want to give them an answer they can look up themselves. The best way to do that is through knowledge base articles which you link to or embed in your portal. Ideally, the knowledge base is searchable, so it’s easier to find the answer to a question. The most frequently asked questions should be highlighted at the top right below the search bar.
In SPP, you can either create your own knowledge base via custom pages (there are Bootstrap components such as the accordion you can use) or you embed an external service via an iFrame.
Add a ticketing system
Even if your onboarding page is solid and your knowledge base answers every question there is, sometimes clients need a bit of personal help. Providing live support via a tool such as Intercom Chat is certainly possible. But again, the resources that need to be invested are seldom worth it unless your profit margin is really high.
A better solution is a ticketing system (you can use our helpdesk module). Set your working hours and answer questions via a ticket-based system during those.
Communicate with leads and clients through our helpdesk.
You can even set up an out-of-office reply that is automatically sent outside working hours. That way, your clients will be aware that they can expect a reply from you soon.
Double down on personalization
A customer who engages with your portal regularly leaves a trail—and you can use it to understand their journey, what they might be interested in. Then it’s up to you to use that information in order to personalize the customer experience.
Event-based triggers
Customer satisfaction is often defined by how personal the experience with a service is. Most have a standard way of doing business: click on the service menu item, add the items you want to your cart, and check out. The crux is that not all customers know what they want or if specific services are the best choice. They might even hesitate to buy because of your pricing.
To solve all this, you could use an event-based system. Let’s say you’ve created custom pages for your services. Every time a customer visits it, gather the events in order to understand the customer journey. If you want to go a step further, you can also trigger events based on items in the cart: let’s say a customer has added a monthly content writing service to their cart. You could also offer to add social media publishing to it.
Simple personalization
If you don’t want to go overboard with tracking and events, you can keep it simple. SPP uses the Twig templating language, so with the template editor, you’re able to show messages based on the available data. For instance: if a client is subscribed to a specific service, show a note inside the portal to purchase something related to it.
This can even work with social proof. Let’s assume you’ve split your clients into three groups, individuals, agencies, resellers. During checkout, you could set up a condition to check which group the customer belongs to, then show different social proof that better fits their needs.
Future trends in customer portals
Looking forward to the next phase of customer portal evolution, three potential key trends emerge: the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) features, the automation of service delivery, and the adoption of voice-activated interfaces.
Integrating AI and machine learning
Artificial intelligence will become more prominent in customer portals, offering personalized and proactive experiences. Future platforms might include AI-powered chatbots that learn user preferences and tailor content accordingly. Machine learning algorithms could analyze user behavior to identify potential issues, such as failing to submit a drafted intake form, before they occur, allowing agencies to take proactive measures.
Some examples of AI-driven features include:
predictive maintenance alerts based on usage patterns
personalized recommendations for service upgrades or support services
automated issue resolution through intelligent routing and prioritization
Automation in service delivery
Automating routine tasks will become increasingly common in customer portals, allowing resources to focus on higher-value activities such as strategic decision-making.
Automation can simplify processes like:
scheduling and appointment management
invoice generation and payment processing
routine reporting and analytics
Voice-activated interfaces
The rise of voice assistants has already transformed how we interact with technology. As a natural progression, future customer portals are expected to incorporate voice-activated interfaces, simplifying the process for clients to access information, track progress, and receive support.
Imagine asking your portal “What's my current project status?” or “How much will this service cost me?” Voice-activated queries would streamline interactions and make customer portals feel more intuitive and human-like.
Customer portal best practices FAQ
What is the best practice of customer portal?
When it comes to best practices, customer portals should follow design guidelines that make them easy to use. While they should represent the brand that is running the portal, clients shouldn’t need a lengthy tutorial to figure it out.
What should a customer portal include?
A customer portal should include self-service options, be secure and make use of 2-factor authentication, have a ticketing system for support, and allow for personalization.
Why is two-factor authentication necessary for customer portals?
2FA adds an extra layer of protection against unauthorized access and data breaches, ensuring sensitive information remains secure.
Can I create custom pages within my customer portal?
Yes, many platforms (such as SPP.co) allow users to add custom pages via their menu editor or iFrame integration, enabling tailored branding and functionality.
The next steps
Now that you’re familiar with customer portal best practices, it’s time to apply your theory. Create a trial account and play around with our software. If you need any help, we’re happy to provide you with the guidance you need.
