Observations: Only the Web’s newest convert, Rupert Murdoch is saying that media portals Yahoo! and MSN will disappear as young consumers ignore them and find the content they want elsewhere online.¹ This is an odd declaration as News Corp has invested in a portal, MySpace, and is using it to achieve coverage for a new film from Fox Searchlight studios, part of the parent corporation.

The original idea of the portal was to aggregate discontinuous information and links and works well for the casual online user because there is a ‘place’ they can use to navigate to and from. In the consumer and media marketplace that model may not thrive in the future. In the next 5 years consumer or entertainment portals may lose market share, due to mobile platforms and P2P networks, themselves a type of portal.

However, at present, it should be remembered that most of the top 50 sites in Australia are portals of some type: financial services or entertainment and the viability of the portal was reinforced when Yahoo was refreshed in January 2006 and Seven joined forces with them. For Channel 7 it was yet another incarnation of their portal strategy, presumably to match ninemsn. Consumer portals run by media organisations are modelled after TV stations with several sub-channels dedicate to specific interests and audience markets.

The other major variants of portals, principally, government and industry information portals are massive collections of information and their purpose is different to the consumer portals cited above. Although these portals do not appear to have an overt commercial mandate, for instance there is no advertising; they still serve the organisation’s business objectives. It is that objective which, often, does not translate in the execution of the portal for two reasons: firstly, the information is published because it exists and secondly, the designers and architects’ who own plan for the portal assume that the content will meet the needs of most types of users.

It’s for those two reasons that portals buckle under the weight of their own content. To see how to plan a commercially successful portal, the case study below will describe the preferred approach.

The AZoM Experience

Dr Ian Birkby began AZoM (The A to Z of Materials) portal five years ago when he knew there was a potential market for a materials that manufacturers, scientists, military researchers and others would use. Starting with nothing, and now with nearly a million visits a month AZoM was planned on two guiding strategies: deliver information that users want and give it to them in the way they want. These would cornerstones in publishing.

AZoM built the technology they needed for the site from the ground up because existing systems were too expensive or not appropriate for their needs. Dr Birkby says the first version of the site was a mistake: the search engine bots could not retrieve textual data from it and he allowed software developers to dictate the overall plan of the site, thus losing sight of his own strategy established by years of experience in the materials industry.

In the second version they developed a solution that met the needs of the owner with a focus on what information is likely to be accessed, frequency of access and duration. They also developed a natural language search engine which in conjunction with the customised functions of the portal made it possible to deliver the information users wanted in their own way. The AZoM network now comprises portals on nanotechnology, medical news and building using the same techniques.

The reason for the success is attributable to solid communications planning: give the user what they want and in the way they want it. With these guiding strategies the content management system is an editor, one person creating content other people can use. Traditional but effective.

Next Steps

When planning a portal, or revising one, it’s crucial to consider who will use it and how they will use it. In this sense, audience targeting must be at the centre of any portal plan: without it, a portal is just an aggregate of linked materials.

Secondly, ensure the management of content suits the user; not any and all types of relevant content that may be published, but material that could be expected to appeal to users. To achieve this aim reporting systems which show how often material is accessed is a must.