Life Sciences Websites: 5 Reasons Why it is an Investment Not an Expense
Wondering what the big deal is about having a professionally produced website or what impact it can have on your biotech or healthcare business?
You’re not alone.
Perhaps you are a life sciences business in the early stages of commercialisation or a biotech entrepreneur with the pressure of new funding. Deciding where to spend limited funds can be challenging for any organisation.
Maybe you’re not sure you can justify the investment in a professionally produced website at this stage of the business.
But is a professionally designed website an expense, or is it an investment?
Everyone is online. You can guarantee the first thing someone will do is type into Google to find your company website.
Risk – building a business is all about balancing risk – mitigating risk at every touch point.
So why not minimise the risk of your business not being seen by investors, collaborators, talent, and partners and not being seen for your innovation?
Reduce the risk of not being noticed by investing in an online presence.
- Getting your story and innovation to as many of the right people as possible – risky if you don't do it right.
- Sending the right image and message to investors – risky if you don't get this right
- Attracting the absolute top talent to want to join the team and want to stay – risking if they don't see you as a world leader
5 Reasons to invest in your website
Strategy. The secret sauce that can turn a life sciences website from an expense into an investment. Reasons #1 to #5
As you know, an expense is a cost of doing business, a necessity, something you want to keep as low as possible, e.g., rent on your business premises. An investment is an option, a choice you make, something you hope will quickly pay for itself, helping drive the business forward and make you money.
Your competitors have websites; your customers expect you to have a website. Thus, you need a website. Unsurprisingly, we can consider a website an expense, especially when you constantly see it described as a necessity. But ultimately, you do have a choice.
Life sciences websites are not created equal; some can be a business expense, and some will provide you a return on your investment, making them a valuable business asset.
Your life sciences website has the potential to:
- Establish credibility
- Provide your customers 24/7, 365 access to your business and the solutions/answers you offer
- Increase your visibility, reach new customers anywhere in the world
- Be easily found
- Reflect your professionalism
- Build brand awareness
- Provide you with valuable data about your customers/audience
- Start a conversation
- Showcase your products/services
- Promote you as a thought leader/authority in your sector
- Generate leads/conversions/sales
- Inform investors
- Engage partners
- Attract potential employees
So, you’re ready to take the plunge and get a website for your life sciences business, or perhaps you feel the one you already have needs to work harder.
But what makes the all-important difference as to whether your website will turn out to be a good investment?
Perhaps it's how appealing the design is or how fast the pages load. Then there's the content, which we know plays a crucial role. Oh, but what about usability and responsiveness?
While these are all important factors, strategy is the most significant contributor to website success.
Let’s take a closer look at website strategy and what makes it so successful.
#1 - What is a website strategy?
A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve an overall aim. Business strategies generally include:
• A summary of the current situation: Where are we now?
• Defined objectives: Where do we want to go?
• Key performance indicators: How will we measure success?
• The recommended approach: How do we plan to get there?
All websites should exist for a reason, for example, generating leads or building brand awareness. Each reason is linked to a wider business goal and underpinned by objectives, e.g., reaching a wider audience.
A website strategy is how you create and develop your website to achieve your desired goals.
It is rare to build a website without a plan of some sort. After all, there must be some discussion about design or layout along the way. However, a short chat about how you want your website to look and feel, the navigation, content and messaging is not the same as a clear website strategy.
The former can lead to a generalised approach focussed mainly on visual design, and you may be none the wiser about what your website will or won't achieve.
A detailed website strategy will map a clear path to how your website will help you accomplish your business goals, ensuring that every aspect of the build has a purpose.
Ensuring your website gives you a return on your investment.
#2 - What’s in a website strategy?
A website strategy shares many components as the business strategy listed above.
Your business:
The current situation – where you are now
Your goals – where you want to go
Key performance indicators – how we will measure success
Influencing factors:
Discovery
- target audience analysis
- competitor analysis
- Your goals
The approach:
How we plan to get there
- messaging and content strategy
- tone of voice
- information architecture
- user journeys
- page strategy
- call to action strategy
- technical requirements
- technical requirements
- traffic strategy
Logistics:
- timing
- budget
- availability
#3 - Where you are now
Let’s take a closer look at some of the components of a website strategy.
The current situation
Any route in life or business requires a starting point. It sets the foundation against which we can measure the new website's success.
Your business goals
Defining goals for your website gives it a direction and ensures that all stakeholders are on the same page about what you are trying to accomplish.
Goals should be measurable and, somewhere along the line, lead to a return on your investment.
Do you, for example, want to reach a particular audience, generate leads or increase sales?
Key performance indicators
Each goal should have a key performance indicator (KPI) that allows you to measure whether a goal has been achieved – thus measuring success.
For example, if your goal is to increase leads, the KPI might be the number of leads generated via the website each month tracked against a baseline.
Discovery (influencing factors)
A website strategy is built on facts, and facts come from research.
Your business and, therefore, your website do not sit in isolation. Each link directly to your audience (customers, investors, partners) and the marketplace in which you operate (competitors).
Target audience analysis
Your audience is key to the success of your website. Their expectations, thoughts, feelings, and motivations influence how they interact with your website and your brand.
Understanding your audience informs the choices you make from everything from content to navigation to calls to action and tone of voice.
This step is also essential if you already have a website and are just looking to rebuild or redesign it. You need to identify what currently works well and what doesn't. Perhaps your audience has changed?
Competitor analysis
Your audience will not just be looking at your website, so you must understand what your competitors' sites do well and, in contrast, not so well. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, so if something works well across multiple websites, perhaps you should consider incorporating it into yours. How can you stand out from the crowd?
#4 - The approach
The approach
After identifying what you want out of the site (business goals), how to measure success (KPIs), and critical influencing factors (audience/competitors), it's now time to decide how to design your website to accomplish the defined goals.
A web strategy will influence all aspects of your site, including:
- What content goes where
- How the content is organised
- How visitors will navigate the site
- How pages are structured
- The calls to action
- The look and feel
- How users will get to the site
- How it’s built
#5 - How can we make sure your website is an investment?
Every industry has individual nuances in marketing tactics, techniques and needs. And nearly every market requires industry-specific knowledge to understand the sector, its challenges, opportunities and audiences.
Life sciences businesses can't afford to waste time or money or lose credibility by having a website that doesn't engage with their target markets or deliver on their business goals.
A website that doesn't start a conversation or share your purpose and values ultimately won’t give you a return on your investment.
The Takeaway.
At Arttia Creative, we’ve been creating business-driving websites for over two decades. We know how to create a credible, well-tuned, hard-working marketing website for businesses within the life sciences sphere. We work with you, using our multi-step process to develop a strategy tailored to your needs to ensure that your website looks good, functions well, and delivers on your business goals.
A well-executed website is an investment. Your business deserves nothing less.
Belinda White | Creative Director