How Power Pages is making website development cheaper and faster

Now consider the words of Rajesh Kandaswamy upon the release of the Gartner Trend Insight report Tech Providers 2025: Strategic Responses to Challenges from New (and Old) Entrants.

“Digital business is treated as a team sport by CEOs and no longer the sole domain of the IT department,” said Gartner’s research vice president^[1]. “Growth in digital data, low-code development tools and artificial intelligence-assisted development are among the many factors that enable the democratisation of technology beyond IT professionals.”

Reinforcing that point was Gartner’s prediction that 80% of technology products and services will be built by people who are not technology professionals by 2024, with business-led IT spend averaging only 36% of formal IT budgets^[2]. While Kandaswamy highlighted several reasons for the evolution, there is no doubt that the rise of low-code development tools has rewritten the rules of IT engagement.

A catch-all phrase to describe development platforms focused on simplicity and ease of use^[3], ‘low-code’ development tools have proven a blessing for businesses wanting to create websites and apps faster, more efficiently and at significant cost savings. Their ability to be used by staff with little to no coding experience has not only eased pressure on IT budgets at large organisations but helped small and medium-sized businesses compete in an increasingly digital environment.

Among many tech firms keen to sate the public’s thirst for no-code/low-code solutions, Microsoft has upped the ante in recent years with the launch of Power Pages, a standalone product for creating business websites. With a promise to “make authoring simple for everyone”, the secure, enterprise-grade, low-code platform empowers developers and non-technical users alike to rapidly design, configure and publish websites that work across web browsers and devices.

Having previously shone a spotlight on other members of the Microsoft Power Platform portfolio, we now turn our attention to the what, when and how of Power Pages to ensure that all comers have the chance to benefit from this game-changing tool.

What is Power Platform?

Microsoft Power Platform is a line of applications that promotes no-code to low-code technology for organisations to quickly automate processes, build websites and apps, analyse data and create other end-to-end business solutions. Able to be used by even the most non-technical of team members, the suite’s five components can be used individually or together to boost innovation and deliver efficient, cost-effective and flexible solutions. In addition to Power Pages, Power Platform’s products include:

• Power Automate - a powerful workflow automation tool that allows users to easily automate, integrate and accelerate business processes.
• Power BI – visualise and analyse your data in order to gain valuable insights rapidly so you make informed decisions and implement business process changes.
• Power Virtual Agents – create chatbots without the help of developers or knowledge of complex code.
• Power Apps – build custom applications quickly, easily and without prior knowledge of code.
• Dataverse – secure store to manage data used by business applications and Power Pages sites.

What is Power Pages?

Power Pages provides a low-code opportunity for businesses to create, host and manage process-driven secure websites. Supporting all levels of tech fluency, the solution provides rich, customisable templates and a design studio boasting a fluid visual experience that enables organisations to respond rapidly to the needs of their customers, partners and other external users. An integrated learning hub is another key feature, while websites can be built using the same shared business data that is stored in Microsoft Dataverse and used for creating other Power Platform components.

When was Power Pages released?

Power Pages was launched as a standalone product in 2021, with Microsoft declaring: “(It) empowers anyone, regardless of their technical background, with an effective platform to create data-powered, modern and secure websites.”^[4] Having previously existed as ‘Power Apps Portals’ - a component within Power Apps – it was redesigned with a new user experience and extended capabilities to capitalise on increasing demand from businesses to create websites faster and at reduced cost.

How does Power Pages work?

Power Pages provides a drag-and-drop interface for users to add and customise components such as text, images, forms, buttons, maps and charts. They can also add functionality and logic to their pages by employing formulas and expressions (eg: inputs, calculations, conditional content) and access, display and manipulate data in real-time by connecting their pages to data sources and other services including Microsoft Dataverse, Excel, Outlook, SharePoint and Teams.

Enhancing web pages is also simple via Power Pages’ integration with other Power Platform products, while it can use the overarching solution’s connectors to integrate pages with hundreds of external services and applications such as Facebook, Salesforce and Mailchimp.

What are the benefits of Power Pages?

Power Pages allows businesses to lower development costs and increase flexibility by facilitating the rapid and simple building of websites.

• Create engaging experiences: external-facing web pages need to be responsive, interactive and personalised and Power Pages puts all that within reach. Choose from various templates and themes or start from scratch before adding rich media such as images, videos and maps to not only attract the eye but keep website visitors better informed.
• Rapid development: remember the days when building a website was a gruelling and time-consuming process? Power Pages has banished such memories to the past by not only putting the power in the hands of non-technical users but ensuring they have a very small learning curve for building sites. The ability to quickly develop and deploy web solutions means organisations can be more agile and responsive to both internal and market demands.
• Access to Design Studio: one of the prime features of Power Pages is its easy-to-use Design Studio, which allows users to create immersive websites without needing to write a single line of code. Home to ‘workspaces’ including Pages, Styling, Set Up (administration control) and Data (create and modify tables), the studio offers a single control centre for the management of all aspects of website design and development.
• Security and Governance: Inbuilt security in Power Pages allows organisations to secure their data through authorisation rules. Organisations can use various authentication providers or allow anonymous access. Power Pages support TLS crypto standards and have built-in Azure DDoS protection. Edge caching and web application firewall (WAF) capabilities are also available.

Why it pays to partner with Power Platform experts

Power Pages may be one of the best low-code development tools on the market but there is a lot more to website excellence than uploading a template and using drop-and-drag to populate it. True digital transformation is built on the foundations of strategy, governance and collaboration and that is why more and more businesses are turning to Innovior for guidance across all Microsoft products.

Our expertise ranges from identifying best uses for the technology to ensuring any investment in apps, automation or virtual agents is not only sustainable but scalable. Backed by highly qualified staff who boast years of experience working with Microsoft Power Platform across various industries, we have a hard-earned reputation for helping clients enjoy the benefits of the technology sooner and reap the rewards for longer.

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