Balancing Functionality and Aesthetics in Your PRM Portal

“Design is a balance between form and function….it takes two.” – Seesaw

Getting the most from your Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solution involves balancing portal functionality and aesthetics. The primary goal of your PRM portal should be functional, but the aesthetics of your portal also play a vital role in keeping your partner program cohesive with your brand.

The main purpose of your partner portal is having content and functionality that help your partners do their jobs. A PRM portal is a place where your partners register deals, access marketing collateral and training content, create co-branded materials, and accomplish any other tasks related to your partner program.

To make all this easy, your partner portal requires a clean user interface that is intuitive and makes it simple for your partners to complete their objectives. Ideally, your PRM portal should be so easy to use that partners can take advantage of all functionality without any training or documentation.

Besides functionality and usability, aesthetics play an important role within your PRM portal. If the portal design is consistent with your brand and evokes positive emotions in its users this will increase cohesion between your company and its partners. Additionally, good design within your portal results in good communication with your partners and makes your message more effective.

Based on our experience working with over a hundred successful channel programs, there are two areas where spending extra time thinking about the design of your PRM portal is beneficial:

Overall portal design

Aesthetics and design in your portal start with the overall look and feel your partners experience when they log in. Customize the shared components of your portal, such as navigation, header, logo, and color scheme to align them with your brand’s style guide and maximize impact. Get creative with the design of your portal, but do it without jeopardizing simplicity and functionality.

A common mistake is wanting your PRM portal to match your company website. Keeping portal design and aesthetics different orients your partners and helps them distinguish between public information listed on your website and private information housed in the portal.

Home page design

The second area of your partner portal where you want to emphasize design is the portal home page. This is the main landing page for your partners as they enter the partner portal and so it is vital to ensure that you provide your partners with what they need in a visually organized and appealing way. Use functional and design elements to guide partners and highlight the actions you want them to take. Use graphics to engage and drive messaging. Most importantly, be concise. Your channel partners rarely spend more than a few seconds on the home page, so your content needs to quickly provide them with the information they need to market and sell your products or services.

To recap, functionality and content should be the primary focus of your PRM portal, but the aesthetic features are important to build higher partner engagement as well as cohesion with your brand.

You can easily create balanced partner portals with Channeltivity, a PRM designed to offer your partners the important functionality for your program with the customizable aesthetics to personalize the partner experience. Talk to us to learn how Channeltivity can help you get the most out of your channel program.