Team members: David, Lian and Amy
Indoor Biotechnologies (InBio) is a world leader in environmental allergen detection systems. They work with academic researchers, government researchers and Fortune 500 companies in the industry of air quality, allergy vaccines and biopharmaceuticals. Their website, while it met all of their needs, (Birch overhauled their site in 2010. Read about it here.) needed some necessary updates to the shopping cart and content management system (CMS).
Since they do business in locations around the world, they needed a website that seamlessly integrated orders from various regions, and made it easy for non-technical users to update changing rates. Our goal was not only to integrate their shopping cart into their website, but to also customize it to allow multiple currencies in a user-friendly interface.
We approached this from two perspectives – the design side and the technology side. Lian researched current trends of websites in the biotech field and familiarized herself with the current content on InBio’s site. Amy and David decided that switching to a different CMS and shopping cart was the best solution for the upgrade.
When refreshing an identity or marketing tool, such as a website, we start with functionality and overall user interface. Lian first set off working on some mock-ups and a fresh new color palette, and then worked on adding navigation that would allow non-scientific users to find products more easily. The results were the addition of a custom left-sidebar of allergen categories on the home page, as well as on product pages and consumer pages. We also provided separate feature sections to help guide users that are looking for scientific and research products, and users that are looking for home consumer products.
On the back end, Amy used OpenCart for the CMS and Sage Pay for the secure online shopping cart to solve the issue of integrating content from their current site, including order and shipping information. The switch to OpenCart allowed for a more user-friendly and customizable content updating experience.
Overall, InBio’s new site is ready to compete in the world of biotech and the upgrades to the CMS streamline the information updating process for InBio staff.
