The most effective websites in the global life sciences sector revealed

June 21, 2013 - PRLog -- Ensuring stakeholders can get the information they need and at the same time keeping the highest standards and exceeding compliance has to be the target for anyone taking the web seriously, so to score eight or above in the Sitemorse website Index rating really demonstrates that a company is leading the field.

Our Q2 2013 Global Life Science Index finds the most efficient sites in the sector are those of Swiss-based Galenica AG, Idenix Pharmaceuticals, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Prostrakan, UK subsidiary of Japan’s Kyowa Kirin pharmaceutical company.

Bern-based Galenica is a diversified group active throughout the healthcare market which, among other things, develops, manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products, and runs pharmacies. We rated their website an overall score of 8.2 of a possible ten marks with key criteria including site performance, function, code quality and accessibility. The aggregate score means Galenica has, in our view, the most efficient site in the sector.

Second place goes to Idenix Pharmaceuticals, Inc. which is engaged in the discovery and development of drugs for the treatment of human viral and other infectious diseases. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, Its clinical development operations and drug discovery operations are conducted in the USA and the company’s European laboratories in Montpellier, France. We scored the Idenix site 8.1/10 overall.

Just behind Idenix and in third place this time with a score of 7.9 in our automated testing is the site of ProStrakan Group PLC, which is owned by Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Ltd (KHK) of Japan and is one of Europe’s fastest growing specialty pharmaceutical companies. Taking fourth and fifth place in this quarter’s Index are the sites of Renovo and Mylan UK.

Sitemorse surveys the websites of businesses and organisations in a number of sectors, and has been benchmarking and publishing the detailed results for a decade. The full results from this and other recent surveys can be seen on our website. Testing is undertaken using automated software that reads the first 125 pages of each site to generate a ranked table.

Top climbers include Ferozsons Laboratories (up 54 to 94th overall), UCB (+52), Ferring (+46), Bosnalijek (+29), and Debiopharm (+28). Websites moving down the ranking this time include GlaxoSmithKline (-79 to 223rd place), Johnson & Johnson (-81 to 251st place), Actavis (-110), Gilead Sciences (-127) and Hospira (-180).

Accessibility is an important criteria for websites and we would expect companies focusing on healthcare to score highly on ensuring their sites are navigable by disabled users. This is not the case however, and the highest score recorded for the 255 sites tested this time is 8/10 for Apotex of Canada and Japan’s Eisai.  

Sitemorse concluded:  Our testing bears out the fact that the best websites from a user experience perspective often belong to smaller, more focused companies. However, it’s perfectly possible to run large websites making sure they are error-free, scoring well on accessibility and in other areas that impact user experience, and we are always happy to share our expertise and best practice on how this can be achieved.

About the Index

The quarterly Index Website Review, powered by the Sitemorse software platform, is an important independent benchmark that clearly shows how websites are performing, meeting compliance levels and satisfying their users. It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience.

Sitemorse services such as Governisation and the Web Management Toolkit immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, help demonstrate real improvement and ensure you have control and confidence in your web presence.

They will help you minimise unnecessary risk, issues covering everything from compliance with web standards to helping you deal with malware, protect your brand across even a large web presence, and enhance search engine optimisation to help more potential customers find you. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management.