Search Engines on Life Science Websites

For the past  6 months, I have been building my new website gatcat.com.  During that process, I have surfed and analyzed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Life Science Vendors' websites looking for product information.  Some are great, but the sad truth is most are ridiculously bad.  As a part of this column, I plan to review some specific sites on a regular basis and to try and offer some suggestions for those looking to improve things.

For this article, I want to focus on your internal search engine.  The internal search engine is a critical tool for your company and you as a sales person.  Why?  Because when you get a scientist to your website, you want them to easily find the right product for the right experiment. The one you just worked so hard to tell them a story about.

Its such a simple tool.  You might get a minute or less of our attention span at a conference or in the lab.  If you can say, "We have a great deal going on this kit, just go to our website and type this in the search box."  Then you have a good chance that a week or month later, I might do so.

It must work though!  It must return exactly the results needed to go to the product page or sale information.

So I challenge you, stop reading this article and go to your companies' website.  Search for 5 products you sell, not the exact product name of course. Search like a customer, the way you do on Amazon.com or other product websites. Better still, ask a colleague or your significant other to perform the same search.

Are the returned results correct?  Is it easy to figure out what is returned?  Is there way to much clutter to easily see where to click through to the product?

If not, change it.  You are losing business. The vast majority of sites have searched fail this test.

Happy Holidays