Factors Affecting Portal Design

The word portal has been citied in the literature as one of the most popular terms. A Google search on the Web for the word revealed 25.6 million entries in December 2003. Due to a considerable degree of overuse and overlap, portals are seen everywhere and it would be difficult to make any use of the Web without encountering one (Tatnall, 2004). According to White (2000), a portal provides user-customizable access to information and applications through a Web browser. Tatnall (2004) specifies that a portal aggregates information from multiple sources and makes that information available to various users. In other words, a portal can be defined as an integrated and personalized Web-based application that provides the end user with a single point of access to a wide variety of aggregated content anytime and from anywhere using any Web-enabled client device. From a technical point of view, utilizing portals based on Internet technology is a new approach to facilitate information management including information dissemination, information access, information share, and information exchange. Due to the expansion of the Internet, portal users might spread all over the world. In a global environment, there are a number of differences from country to country. Some of those differences could tremendously influence portal design, portal implementation, as well as portal application in a global context. In this short article, the effort will be put on studying several influential factors that could affect portal design from a global point of view. The study results should benefit information technology managers, educators, and students involved in business intelligence, information systems management, information resource management, and knowledge management. Particularly, the discussions about influential factors could contribute further to portal design, portal implementation, and portal utilization for various international, transnational, and multinational businesses. Background