Biotechs and biopharmas are increasingly relying on their online presence to attract partners, investors, and employees. However, designing a website that effectively communicates your unique value proposition while also communicating the nuances of your novel science can be tricky.
To ensure success, it’s crucial to find a biotech web design agency that understands your business goals and has experience working with biotechs and biopharmas. In this article, we’ll provide tips for vetting potential agencies so you can make an informed decision when choosing a partner for your web makeover project.
Understanding the Importance of a Trustworthy Biotech Web Design Agency
Your website serves as the face of your biotech in the digital world.
Working with an experienced and established biotech web design agency can help you save time, money, and resources simply by virtue of the fact they have depth of knowledge serving biotechs or biopharmas. They will understand the unique goals, audiences, and requirements of seed- and early-stage startups. This understanding allows them to create a custom website design with scientific charts, pipelines and resources optimized for user engagement, search engine visibility, and mobile responsiveness.
Four tips for vetting a trustworthy parter:
- request references from their previous clients
- review their portfolio to see if you like their work
- ask them to describe recent makeover
- analyze their ability to explain their approach/process
The Risks of Working with an Inexperienced Agency
Selecting an agency with little biotech or biopharma experience can lead to a host of risks and pitfalls. For starters, their lack of inexperience may lead to poor quality work that fails to effectively communicate your novel science or your unique value proposition. A lack of biotech or biopharma experience might also translate into subpar marketing strategies that fail to target potential partners and investors effectively.
Taking these risks into account underscores the importance of finding a web design agency with years of experience in biotech and biopharma.
Know this: no matter how much an agency positions itself as top-quality designers/developers or SEO gurus, if they don’t know biotech, you’re going to be funding their learning.
Researching Potential Biotech Web Design Agencies
When searching for a biotech web design agency, Google’s your best friend. Do a few queries like “biotech website design” or “biotech web design agency” and see who’s at the top. Check out each agencies’ website, portfolio, and past clients to get an idea of their capabilities and expertise. And notice whether or not they specialize in biotech or are a general web agency.
Nowadays with Zoom, meeting prospective agencies is in a video chat is key. This allows you to ask questions about their approach and process, as well as gain insights into how well they understand your biotech’s unique needs and challenges. Additionally, don’t be afraid to get into your science. See if their eyes glaze over or – better yet – see if they ask relevant questions to clarify or extend their knowledge about your novel science. The Zoom meeting is a great way to quickly ascertain a person’s knowledge, engagement and “match” potential.
Ultimately, selecting the right biotech web design agency depends on finding a team that shares your vision and values while having the knowledge base to make it happen effectively. By doing due diligence during the vetting process – researching potential firms thoroughly, asking pointed questions during meetings – you can help ensure a successful partnership with a trustworthy provider.
Ensuring an Agency Can Meet Your Budget and Timeline
Let’s be honest here: biotechs are high pressure environments with aggressive milestones with a lot riding on them.
When looking for a biotech web design agency, it’s important to ensure they can meet your specific budget and timeline requirements.
Make sure to discuss budget and timeline upfront with any potential agencies. Ask about their experience and success in coming in on-time and within-budget. Have them give you examples and references so you can keep them honest.
You want to find agencies that are comfortable with aggressive timelines and thrive in high-pressure environments and has the war stories and work to prove it.
Understanding the Design Process and Timeline
Understanding the design process and timeline is essential when working with a web design agency. Many agencies have a tendency to gloss over this, but you need to dig to truly understand if they really do have a process or it they just wing it.
The design process needs to set realistic expectations for website development and ensure they align with your business goals and timelines. Typically, the design process begins with gathering requirements to understand the project objectives from both sides. Once the project is kicked off, it’s followed by conceptualization. This involves creating a site map or wireframes to outline the main sections of your website as well as mockups of the new Home page design. As clients provide feedback on these preliminary designs; revisions are made until a final version is accepted.
Once approved, web designers create other page layouts for About, Technology/Science, Publications, etc. This allows the client and web design agency to collaborate on the different aspects of each page as begin gathering, editing and creating content for the rest of the pages. Once the designs are complete, they are sent off to development to be turned into editable pages.
Collaborating with Your Agency During the Design and Development Phases
Collaborating with your agency during the design and development phases plays a vital role in ensuring that your website effectively communicates your message and aligns with your business objectives. Effective collaboration means providing feedback early and often throughout each phase of design and development to ensure that issues are addressed before they become major roadblocks.
Agencies typically collaborate via weekly Zoom meetings or instant messaging platforms.
In addition to open lines of communication, it’s important to work closely together on defining user personas and creating content that resonates with those users. The biotech industry is highly specialized; therefore, working with an agency experienced in this field can save time by eliminating unnecessary explanations while also improving understanding through shared knowledge.
It’s also critical to understand the level of communication you can expect from an agency when working together. Clear communication is key in ensuring that project timelines are met successfully, so ask about their preferred methods of communication and how often they provide updates on progress. Additionally, make sure both you and your agency define milestones for the project timeline as a way to monitor progress towards meeting your ultimate goals. By finding an agency that understands your unique needs and has proven success in timely delivery within a defined budget, you’ll be well on your way to building an effective online presence for your biotech or biopharma.
Testing and Quality Assurance: Ensuring Your Website Meets Your Standards
A well-crafted website fosters trust and credibility in the eyes of potential partners, investors, and employees. And when it comes to creating a biotech website, testing and quality assurance are critical components in ensuring your new website is pixel-perfect and has no typos.
Testing is the process of identifying issues or errors that prevent your website from working correctly. This assessment includes a series of evaluations using various tools such as code reviews, functional testing, integration testing, and user acceptance tests (UAT). Quality assurance involves assessing all aspects of your website’s performance before it goes live to ensure that it meets industry standards for accessibility, usability and security.
And make sure the agency you choose budgets enough time (typically a week before launch) for your subject matter experts to review the new site to catch any missing references or typos.
Building a Long-Term Partnership with Your Biotech Web Design Agency
Biotech is a super-tough industry to compete in. And having a powerful new website to help you attract potential partners, investors and top talent is great, but you need to maintain and increase your online footprint to stay competitive.
For this reason, building a long-term partnership with an experienced biotech web design agency to help you reach your next milestone is a priority.
Once you find the right web design partner for your biotech and enjoy the shared success of your new website launch, it’s time to look at how to expand your online presence. This goes beyond simply delivering great designs; you need someone who can grasp complex scientific concepts and translate them into messaging that resonates with both scientists and non-scientific audiences on social media or expanding your Careers page with employee video testimonial selfies.
Trust is key when building any long-term partnerships. If you’re looking for a biotech web design agency with experience with over 30+ projects, contact us. We love talking biotech web design.
