Should you make your customer portal on Laravel?
We love the open-source PHP framework Laravel for its clean, robust and developer-friendly features. From Eloquent ORM to Laravel Mix, there are many reasons why we choose it for our web app projects and are even on the advisory board. But if you’re thinking of having a customer portal on your website, is it really the best choice? Today, we’re answering the question, “Should you make your customer portal on Laravel?” and highlighting the many benefits of this versatile platform.
What do your customers expect from a portal?
When creating a customer portal, they’ll want a fast and smooth experience, first off. Login should be easy and support platforms they already have accounts with, like Facebook or Google. It should also be secure. Password hashing, two-factor authentication (2FA) and CSRF/XSS protection should come as standard, and every step on their journey should be bug-free. Your customers want intuitive dashboards, real-time notifications and mobile-responsive layouts; all things that are possible with Laravel. And when they take the time to login, they need to be able to do everything in one place. This includes looking at their billing history, submitting support tickets, managing their orders and more.
Benefits of Laravel customer portals
Lower costs
Since Laravel has a huge ecosystem and loads of built-in tools, the cost of operating a web portal built on this PHP framework is cheaper than a lot of other options. You’ll also need less custom development to have essential functions like authentication, notifications or user roles. It’s also a clean framework to work on, so if you do want to add features or functions in the future, the backend isn’t bloated with garbage.
Faster launch
Unlike other platforms, Laravel’s scaffolding tools like Laravel Jetstream and Nova mean overall quicker development. This means you’ll spend less time in the early dev stages and get to the rollout and adoption much faster. We find that using frontend frameworks like Bootstrap or Tailwind CSS with Laravel can help you create rapid-launch mobile responsive applications in weeks, not months.
Customer retention
And lastly, it’s important to make sure everything just works. As a functionality-forward Laravel development agency, you’ll get a customer portal that does everything you need it to. Just look at what we did for the Commonwealth Blue Charter website. Our work made it so portal users can see the available funds either by location on a visual map, view and bookmark those funds and get assistance in the application process. When they register, they’re given access to further information and details on the individual funds, as well. This is the sort of operability that your customers expect, and it’s possible with Laravel. When your site does what your customer needs it to, without bugs or faff? They come back.
So, should you make your customer portal on Laravel? We think so! We’re ready to help you build something made to delight your customers, today.
