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Learn moreNew Website Brings Clarity to the Complex Life Sciences Landscape
BMG LABTECH is a life sciences company that has been a leader in the development and production of microplate readers for 25 years. Its analytical instruments are used in drug development, the biotechnology industry, and academic research institutions. The company operates internationally, with over 100 employees at locations in Germany, France, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the United States. All products are manufactured at the headquarters in Ortenberg near Offenburg and are subject to strict quality controls. BMG LABTECH applies these same quality standards to its external communications as well. Accordingly, the company places great importance on a modern website that presents its complex and diverse content in a user-friendly manner. In collaboration with punkt.de, the company completed a full relaunch of its website in July 2017, featuring improved functionality tailored to a discerning clientele.
BMG LABTECH’s website was redesigned back in 2013. However, it quickly became apparent that the “homemade” content management system—developed by the agency that implemented the site—was not user-friendly enough for maintaining the website. In particular, publishing multilingual content was very time-consuming for the team. The website’s structure also had significant room for improvement, and the Google ranking suffered noticeably after the relaunch. This made it harder for potential customers to find the site. Furthermore, there was still no suitable solution for managing the scientific documents that BMG LABTECH provides as supplementary information for interested parties and customers.
Over 4,000 application notes, scientific posters, and technical articles needed to be accessible and easily searchable by users. Additionally, automatic links from the scientific documents were to lead to the corresponding microplate readers. In the past, BMG LABTECH performed all these imports and linkings manually, with editors having to enter every single Excel database and PDF into the system by hand. Given the volume of documents, this was almost a lifelong task. To improve online discoverability, the company also wanted to enhance its mobile website and reduce loading times. In addition to these search engine optimization measures, another key priority for BMG LABTECH was optimizing customer support. The new website was designed to allow customers to quickly and securely send even large file attachments to BMG LABTECH’s customer service team.
Once BMG LABTECH had identified all these requirements, they found the perfect partner in punkt.de to implement their new, modern website.
punkt.de. developed the new website using the open-source content management system TYPO3, version 8. Thanks to their many years of experience with TYPO3 projects, the developers were able to quickly find solutions to BMG LABTECH’s specific challenges. “It was clear to us from the very beginning that we wanted to work with TYPO3,” says Lisa Schmidt, press officer at BMG LABTECH. “Our team’s initial experiences and additional recommendations confirmed our choice of content management system. Furthermore, our experience over the past few years with an inflexible closed-source system showed us the value that a community and a system’s good extensibility can provide. That’s why we turned to punkt.de —not least because of their impressive references and our geographical proximity.”
We were also particularly impressed by the no-obligation workshop at the start of our collaboration. It allowed us to quickly get a good sense of whether we were even a good fit for each other.
“In addition, thanks in part to the input from the design agency made in, the workshop prompted us to give more careful thought to a number of issues before the project began—issues we had neglected up to that point. The workshop was therefore the perfect kickoff for our collaboration.”
An important factor in improving the website’s usability is the cloud-based file-sharing system Nextcloud. “The large number of documents can be managed more effectively via the cloud. And BMG LABTECH’s support team can also process inquiries directly through the cloud, regardless of the size of the attachments sent,” says Sebastian Helzle, Product Owner at punkt.de. “We were also able to implement the automatic import and linking of all scientific documents, as well as optimal searchability of the vast scientific database.”
Following the relaunch, the search field is prominently linked on the homepage so that users can search for the right product for them without any detours. In addition, BMG LABTECH can create custom quick links on subpages to draw attention to current events or prominent landing pages. A comparison tool allows potential customers to directly compare two different readers side by side to better evaluate their features and capabilities. To ensure the greatest possible protection of sensitive customer data, BMG LABTECH also partners with punkt.de for hosting. punkt.de, the specialist for custom web applications, operates its own data center in Karlsruhe, meaning all data is subject to German data protection laws.
“A major relaunch like this is, of course, practically a full-time job on top of our regular work,” says Markus Hartmann, online marketing specialist at BMG LABTECH and project manager for the website relaunch. “Especially in the beginning, however, the bulk of the work was handled by punkt.de. That took a lot off our plate. Even later, when we were adding content and questions came up, communicating with punkt.de was always very easy.”
“As a standard practice, we use the Confluence wiki and the Jira project management tool for every project. This ensures maximum transparency and allows us to exchange information quickly with our clients. As a result, BMG LABTECH knew exactly where the implementation stood at all times,” says Sebastian Helzle.
“Thanks to the many automation features and improved usability for multilingual content, we’re sure to save about 20 percent of the time we previously needed for content maintenance,” says Lisa Schmidt of BMG LABTECH. This is particularly interesting because, until now, all content—including that from the international branches—was created, managed, and published at the German headquarters by a team of two. Now, thanks to this newfound efficiency, this task can be handled much more effectively by a smaller team. Plans for additional features are already in the works. As part of the “Continuous Relaunch”—a process in which the website is continuously optimized and expanded with new features—geolocation, for example, will enable the individual international pages to be further customized with country-specific events and information. In addition, a product advisor is planned to complement the comparison tool. By asking users specific questions, this tool can then recommend the perfect microplate reader for every need. This further simplifies the search for the right device, and BMG LABTECH has achieved its goal: the best products combined with the best support on a modern platform that can be expanded at any time using the open-source content management system TYPO3.
