5 Essential Things to Know About Customer Portal Development

Why Companies Need Customer Portals in 2025

Customer expectations have shifted. In 2025, people don’t just prefer self-service, they demand it. Whether customers need to check an order status, update account info, or find product details, they want answers fast — and on their own terms.

That’s why customer self-service portals are becoming a must for businesses. Here’s what’s influencing this shift:

• Rising self-service demand. 73% of customers already use self-service at some point in their support journey. And this demand doesn’t seem to decline anytime soon.

• Explosive market growth. The self-service industry is projected to grow from $41 billion in 2025 to almost $60 billion by 2030, which shows a clear need for self-service solutions.

• Around-the-clock accessibility. With global teams and customers across time zones, 24/7 access is critical. Customer service portals keep your support “always on” without stretching your team.

• Priority for support leaders. According to Gartner, 90% of customer service and support leaders say improving self-service success is a significant or moderate priority.

• Real business impact. Customer-centric companies see 41% faster revenue growth, 49% faster profit growth, and 51% better customer retention, as Forrester notes.

• Big gains from small improvements. A 1-point increase in customer experience scores can generate over $1 billion in revenue, thanks to increased loyalty and repeat visits.

“We have a B2B website redesign experience to share — one that went beyond just refreshing the UI. The client needed a more self-service-driven solution — something closer to a customer portal — where buyers could easily explore products and complete actions without relying on sales reps. The result? Engaged customers who could find exactly what they needed, faster.” — Roman Hutnyk, CEO & Co-founder

• Higher engagement and sales. Boosting customer satisfaction by 20% typically leads to 15–25% more cross-sell opportunities, a 5–10% increase in wallet share, and up to 30% higher customer engagement.

5 Things You Need to Know Before Developing a Customer Portal

So, you’ve decided you need a custom customer portal. Great move! But before you begin, there are five things you should get right from the start.

Let’s take a look at the essentials:

1. One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Why Customization Matters

Not all portals are the same, and that’s exactly the problem. Off-the-shelf solutions might be easy to get started with, but they fail at meeting the unique needs of your business and your users.

Generic customer portal features can’t deliver the personalized experience that today’s customers expect. You need more than a login screen and a support form. Think custom dashboards, dynamic user roles, logic-based workflows, branded user experiences, and smart integrations.

Take our client, COREtec Floors, for example. They needed a personalized customer portal where distributors, designers, and end-customers could each:

• Explore product collections.

• Visualize flooring in their own spaces.

• Order with confidence.

And the main thing? They wanted to manage everything without relying on constant developer support. We built a solution tailored to their users and business processes, and it made all the difference.

2. Security Isn’t Optional

Customer portal websites deal with lots of customer data. Keeping it all secure and compliant must be your number one priority. Some core security features to consider are the following:

• End-to-end encryption

• Role-based access control

• Two-factor or multi-factor user authentication

• Secure document sharing

• Audit trails and activity logs

• GDPR, CCPA, ADA, WCAG, and other regulations compliance

Again, let’s go back to COREtec Floors. As their portal development partner, we enhanced their platform’s protection with the following:

• Cybersource for secure payment processing

• OneTrust for privacy and consent management (GDPR & CCPA)

• AudioEye for accessibility and compliance with ADA and WCAG

On top of that, our AI/ML development experts can add extra features like anomaly detection or predictive analytics when security and user experience call for next-level tech.

3. Integration Is Everything

To be truly effective, your customer account portal should communicate with the systems you already use. It may include anything from CRMs and ERPs to payment gateways and support platforms. Without these, even the best portal will eventually lack essential functionality.

That’s why Bits Orchestra takes an API-first approach. We build API-driven portals that connect with third-party integrations and internal platforms easily. This way, we create a smooth workflow for your customers and team.

For example, in our work with COREtec Floors, we built a fully CRM-integrated portal that syncs with:

• Roomvo for visualizing how products look in real spaces

• Genesys Chat for real-time communication and live support

• Bazaarvoice for customers to leave reviews directly on product pages

• SharpSpring to capture form submissions and newsletter sign-ups

• Calendly for scheduling meetings with designers

And yes, it all ties back to support ticket integration, too.

4. UX Makes or Breaks Adoption

Here’s the thing: even the most feature-rich portal will fail if it’s cluttered or confusing. Instead, your customer portal design must be clean, intuitive, and fast, especially on mobile.

Bad UX leads to frustration. In contrast, good UX builds trust and nudges customers toward self-service. That’s why our UI/UX development services are more than mere aesthetics. We try to make every action feel easy and natural, which includes:

• Mobile-friendly portals with responsive portal interfaces.

• Clean navigation that focuses on what users actually need.

• Fast loading speeds and intuitive interactions.

• Accessibility for everyone.

With COREtec Floors, we created a portal that supports multiple languages and currencies without compromising clarity or ease of use. No matter where users log in from, they get a consistent, accessible experience.

5. Don’t Forget Scalability & Maintenance

Your portal shouldn’t just work today. It should grow with you. Building a static solution that can’t evolve as the business changes is among the most significant mistakes many companies make.

Your team should be able to update content, launch new features, and handle growing traffic without calling in a developer every time.

To tackle that, we build scalable architectures from the outset and offer ongoing support post-launch. Bits Orchestra also sets up performance monitoring tools so you can track usage, catch issues, and optimize continuously.

Consider COREtec again. We designed their customer web portal to support regular updates by their internal team, with no developer bottlenecks. As their product range and regional presence expand, the portal scales along with them. That’s business process optimization in action.

Results That Matter: What COREtec Floors Achieved

The upgraded customer portal we built for COREtec Floors didn’t just look good. It delivered real business results, including the following:

• +23% in website traffic. Improved SEO, accessibility, and performance brought in over 30K additional monthly visits within 6 months.

• +34% in conversion rate. A smoother onboarding workflow and user journey led to a conversion increase, translating to an estimated $2.5–3M in added annual revenue.

• 44% less developer involvement. With Kentico CMS development and reusable components, COREtec’s marketing team took over updates, cutting dev hours nearly in half.

• +20% in customer satisfaction. Faster navigation, live chat, visualizer, and better checkout flow drove a noticeable increase in CSAT scores.

• +15% in retention. Personalized tools and smarter user journey mapping increased customer retention and lifetime value.

• Built for global growth. The multilingual platform now supports sales across North America and Europe — no need for region-specific sites.

Build customer portal that grow as fast as you do!

With flexible architecture, global scalability, and ongoing support, we ensure your portal never holds you back. Ready to see how to build custom CMS solutions that actually work?

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Portal Development

Clearly, client portal development is a huge benefit for your business. But it’s easy to fall into all-too-common traps that might derail the entire project. Here are the biggest mistakes we see and how we help our clients avoid them:

• Building without clear user flows. Starting development without mapping out who your users are and how they’ll move through the portal is a way to confusion and low adoption. We start every project with a discovery phase, considering user roles, needs, and behaviors. That’s how we make sure your login-based client portal feels intuitive.

• Skipping real-user testing. You can’t build a great digital customer experience without testing it with your customers. That’s why we involve real users early through clickable prototypes, beta testing, and feedback loops.

• Neglecting security and compliance. Businesses that roll out portals without basics like data encryption or GDPR consent put themselves and their users at risk. From secure customer document access to audit logs and regulatory compliance, we implement protection into every development layer.

• Relying too heavily on templates or SaaS tools. Ready-made templates and SaaS might help you launch faster. But they rarely offer the flexibility you’ll need as your business grows. Our solutions, in turn, scale and adapt over time.

• Not planning for mobile or future integrations. It’s 2025. Your portal must work on mobile and integrate with future tools your team may not have chosen yet. To handle that, we build mobile-first, integration-ready portals using API-first architecture.

How do we avoid the above mistakes?

Just look at our SaaS development for AI platform case study. The client, serving the fashion, beauty, and jewelry industries, needed a self-service portal to understand consumer preferences better. As expert .NET development partners, we avoided common pitfalls by building clear user flows, focusing on UX, and delivering a secure, scalable solution that lets end users elevate their social media marketing.

Avoid costly mistakes — build it right.

Plan smart, build confidently, and launch a customer portal that works from day one with our team.