The Portals app in the Widen Collective® allows users to easily present and share curated sets of assets with specific audiences.
They can be used to share all kinds of content...brand guidelines, media kits, training content, HR resources, sales materials, product information, you name it! Our customers even rely on portals to distribute content that changes quickly, such as COVID-19 resources.
With Portals, your teams or partners are able to access content without logging into the digital asset management (DAM) system. All asset activity is tracked to capture who is using which files, and how. And every portal can be customized to provide a fully-branded experience.
What does Portals do?
There are two types of portals in the Collective: Standard and Brand. While Brand Portals offer enhanced design features and functionality, all portals allow users to:
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- Customize the design to reflect their brand
- Bypass HTML through a live editor and design templates
- Embed them in other websites
- Translate the copy into a variety of languages
- Control access, with the option of using an access code or login settings
- Capture performance analytics with the Insights app
Ultimately, each portal is a personalized experience to showcase your visual content.
How teams are using Portals
There are endless ways that organizations can use portals to promote their digital assets and marketing initiatives:
San Francisco International Airport (SFO) used portals to help with the launch of their new terminal. Their brand manager, Robin Brown, shared, “We created a curated collection of photos and videos for media and international marketing partners. Instead of playing catchup and scrambling, we delivered a well-thought-out collection in front of the opening. Team members, stakeholders, and media had access to the photos and video they needed to showcase our new terminal.”
American Society for Quality (ASQ) built their ASQ Brand Express portal to give both internal and external users access to essential brand assets. Their project manager, Barb Mitrovic, said, “We have our logos on there and a link to our brand pages. We also have our stock photography on there, email signatures. People are using it, so it’s been wonderful.”
Citizen Watch uses portals to push their advertising priorities and bundle everything related to the product. This includes web banners, billboards, commercials, and print ads. Their art director, Brenda Abbott, shared, “It’s an easier way to group it all together and make it visually pleasing.”
Portals examples
Portals can be customized through various display options, including columns, links, asset groups, and more. The examples below showcase how customers have leveraged these features to reflect their unique brand style and design aesthetic.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite, a social media platform, has built several portals for specific audiences. Their Brand Assets portal is used by internal teams across 12 international offices. It contains their brand assets, or the raw material used to build marketing materials, and includes everything from logos and icons to illustrations and photography.
The portal is linked within their brand guidelines and their Google Slides templates to make it easy for teams to access the brand assets they need when they need them.
Boston Ballet
The Boston Ballet uses Portals to give the general public access to a selection of videos from their performances of “The Nutcracker.” This portal also includes a link to the e-commerce portion of their website, where visitors can purchase tickets.
The design consists of a featured video and a playlist of additional videos, within a thoughtful, branded experience. See it for yourself!
NKT
Based in Copenhagen, NKT is an international cable supplier in the energy sector. With the help of Widen’s design services, they developed a portal for their most important brand resources. It’s a condensed version of their full brand style guide, in a completely branded environment.
The portal allows NKT to track asset downloads, views, and shares to understand how the files are being used. It's easy to navigate, easy to update, and easily shared with stakeholders who need to deliver the NKT brand consistently to the world.
Eudaimonia
Eudaimonia is a fictitious brand that Widen created to give widen.com visitors an opportunity to try a Collective site on their own. And because every brand needs guidelines, we built a portal to organize and share all aspects of the Eudaimonia tone, voice, and style.
Widen is here to help
If you're inspired to build outstanding portals, but don’t have the time or resources to make it happen, let us help.
Widen design services is comprised of talented creatives that can:
- Discuss uses cases, paths to execution, and delivery methods
- Strategize contents and the makeup of your brand toolkit portal
- Design your portal from scratch based on your design concepts
- Apply finishing touches to a portal you create
If you’re interested in exploring how Portals can support your marketing and brand management efforts, just 
! We’d be happy to set up a time to talk, or give you 
to the Collective — so you can take Portals for a test drive.
Note: This article was originally published in July 2017 and has been updated to include new examples and content.
