How to create a biotech website
Tips to Create a Website for a Biotech Company
It’s fun to make a new website, right? Maybe a little hard, or daunting even because of the technical aspects. Whatever your feelings about creating a new website, one thing’s for sure: if you do it right, it can boost your inbound leads, present you optimally to new investors or candidates, you name it. But where to start? In this blog, we share best practices for you to keep in mind while creating a website for a biotech company.
Defining goals for your biotech website
Before jumping right into specifics, it makes to determine what you want to get from your website. For some, a website serves as a fancy digital business card while for others it’s to actively attract new leads, candidates or whatever.
Why is it important to determine in advance what purpose your biotech website has? Well, they have their own benefits and approach. For example, you can go all out on the design if you don’t need to attract many visitors. A biotech website can be full of cool design and graphics but that slows down your website usually. But if you’re certain people are willing to spend a little time waiting for your website to load, that can work for you. Just make sure it’s worth the wait though. On the other hand, let’s say you need to crank up traffic and you’re generating a startling amount of content, you want your biotech website to be fast. Really, really, fast.
What are original themes for biotech websites?
Dinosaurs, dragons, wizards. All good ideas if you ask us. Sadly, none have these have made the cut in our website creation assignments. Jokes aside, it makes sense to have a clear picture of your branding or at least decide on it while create a new website for a biotech company. By working on your branding or theme, you take an additional step towards differentiating yourself from the competition. In the past, we’ve made many different themes work for companies; night skies, water colour painting, completely graphical, hiking. Heck, we even made colouring pencils work (very well if we may say so).
So, how do you determine what kind of branding suits you?
It’s not as hard as you think. Do a brainstorming with your team and see where you can find common ground or look at metaphors that relate to your product of solutions. What you don’t want to do is be the next person who thinks standard stock photos from labs or rendered images of antibodies will do the trick. Try harder than that.
Short note though. We’re not saying there shouldn’t be science related imagery on your website. Of course, there should be because you’re a biotech company after all. But don’t let that lead your branding.
Here’s some questions / ideas to get you started:
- What landscape do you find inspiring?
- What’s your favorite animal?
- Are you making impact or a sense of serenity?
- Will you be black and white or colourful and splashy?
How many pages do you need for a biotech website?
There’s no real limit to how many pages you can add to your website but keep in mind that every page takes time to create and to update every now and then. Of course, there’s the usual suspects that you’ll need and we’ll discuss in detail:
- Home
- About Us / Company
- Products / Solutions
- Technology / Pipeline
- Careers
- Insights (Blog, News, Events)
- Contact
What to include on the homepage of a biotech company’s website?
We get this question a lot. Especially since the rise of the ever-so-popular one-page website. The homepage is usually the most visited and most common entry point for your audience. So, it makes sense to spend a lot of time on this one. It’s the place where you can really tell your company’s story (you probably thought that would be the about us didn’t you?) from A to Z.
If you want to skip ahead in this example for a website for a biotech company:
- Header + Value proposition / promise
- Introduction
- Problem & Solution(s)
- About
- Content feed
- Contact
Header of your homepage
Let’s start at the top. Specifically, above the fold. Translated into non-developer human that means: the first thing that people see. This needs to be great. Even it takes you hours. It’s worth it.
What should be here? Your slogan a.k.a. the cheesy line, your value proposition or attention-grabbing CTA, and awe-inspiring artwork. The menu should also be apparent here so your visitors can navigate to information they’re looking for, instantly. Let’s say we’re a startup biotech company that’s developing an innovative treatment against boredom. Our name? Just Therapeutics or JustTx! Our product? PushiMab. Our homepage could start out like this:
Hi there! We’re.. (introduction)
After you make a striking introduction visually, it makes sense to introduce yourself properly. Share some information on what your visitors just googled themselves into. This can be the introduction to the story you’re about to tell them and to share your ‘why’.
Something like:
JustTx is a biotechnology scale-up that makes a difference through unprecedented, draconic innovation happiness generation for use in humans. Our lead candidate PushiMab has proven efficacy in animals, and we are currently rounding up a series B financing to advance to the clinic. Bringing our product to the market means bringing smiles to those in need of a laugh.
Problem & Solution
The next thing to consider is amplifying your product’s impact by introducing an emotive element or a quantification. Storylines work very well to evoke emotion where statistics and big numbers can do the trick for quantification. And make sure to include a visual again.
The problem should include things like:
- Your target group
- Unmet needs
- Market size
Kind of a no brainer but after you state the problem, it’s a great time to propose the solutions you offer to help. Whether you are providing a state-of-the-art ATMP or a repurposed drug, you are filling a gap and helping the industry meet unmet patient needs.
In case you’re competing, it makes great sense to re-state your value proposition. More so to elaborate on how you differ from the competition.
Something like:
Across the globe there are people who lack a good laugh every day. You problem know one yourself. A lack of joy is shown to significantly ruin days and cause missed opportunities to make the best of life. Our product can change that. With 7 billion possible users, PushiMab can be the next blockbuster.
About
After making sure that it’s clear what kind of problem your treatment is tackling it makes sense to share some information about the people who are the driving force behind the company and the company structure. The usual way to go is to share some pictures of the core team. You want to invest some time in making sure these are professional photographs.
Don’t go overboard on the amount of text here. Simply creating follow-up pages or lightbox for team members can relieve you of having to put bio-text there at all.
Content feed
No matter if you’re still looking to reel in your first investor or well underway with making your milestones, it pays off to share content every now and then; limited to a certain extent, of course. Most of the content should be located on your Insights page but also on the homepage. On your biotech website’s homepage you’ll want to share your important news and activities, publications or press releases, or simply want to share knowledge with your audience. Some of these highlights can be presented on your homepage through a feed. It’s easy to set up and can trigger your visitor’s interest.
Contact
At the bottom of your biotech website, you need to share your contact details or even better, a form, to get in touch. Although your online story might be great, nothing beats human interaction. After all, you need to be able to ask questions to find out how you can interest others to partner with you.
Tip: The easiest way to do this is to create a biotech website-broad footer including your contact details / form.
