The importance of a company’s web site for sales and marketing is common knowledge. For life science research consumables, online sales and marketing are especially important. Rapid advances in the life science field, as well as the specialization and customization of reagents, kits and consumables used for life science research make purchasing online a natural solution. In 2009, 65% of Life Technologies’ transactions in the Americas and 39% of its transactions in Europe were made online, with 33% of all consumables sales coming from online orders. Sigma-Aldrich reported that company sales through e-commerce channels increased from 42% in 2008 to 45% in the fourth quarter of 2009. Millipore announced that its e-commerce channel is its fastest-growing sales channel, with 2009 revenues of about $250 million. As the Internet has become a larger channel for life science consumables purchases, it is also affecting how such purchases are made and vendors interactions with their customers.

Several features contribute to a web site that attracts customers and keeps them coming back. The web site must be visually engaging, easy to search and navigate, and allow for fast purchasing and checkout. It is also important that products and their information (such as product descriptions, prices and availability) are easy to search for and locate. Furthermore, web pages, graphics and other interactive features must load quickly due to the high expectations of many users when it comes to web site speed. Life science consumables companies that have increased the usability of their web sites recently include Life Technologies and Millipore. Last year, Invitrogen, a Life Technologies business, overhauled its shopping cart system to make it accessible by a scroll-down menu and to offer targeted pricing. In 2008, Millipore completely redesigned its web site and e-commerce system. The web site’s front page now cycles pictures and information of new products at the top, and shows a list of Millipore’s most popular products.

Invitrogen recognizes how important a web site is to life science consumables sales. The company estimates that its web site is visited by one million unique visitors a month. John Roberts, senior director of e-Business at Life Technologies, told IBO: “[Life Technologies] views the web as the primary touch point to our customers because the number of interactions we have with customers every day is fairly sizeable.” Invitrogen supplies gene-based products for cloning, gene expression and gene analysis, such as DNA vectors, clones and libraries. The company also supplies enzymes, proteins, peptides, and other biochemicals and reagents, as well as cell culture products, including sera, cell and tissue culture media.

In mid-2009, the company revamped its web site, organizing its front page into 10 storefronts to cater to specific applications, such as cloning and cell culture. As Mr. Roberts explained, “we made a huge effort to orient relevant content towards the researcher and organize the web site by application, rather than trying to impose our own way of how we organize our divisions. We really tried to organize it around how researchers think and how they want to interact.” The web site’s front page is also equipped with a toolbar at the top, from which specific application segments in the storefronts can be accessed immediately, without having to click through the storefronts.

Business to Business (B2B) connections are becoming increasingly important for life science research consumables web sites. B2B connections enable a direct connection with a company or lab’s automated procurement system (such as PeopleSoft or Ariba). Invitrogen allows B2B purchasing through its eProcurement System. “We integrate our web site with [a lab’s purchasing] systems, and really try to make it easy for them to make orders through their Oracle or SAP system,” explained Mr. Roberts. The eProcurement System’s Supply Center feature allows researchers to set up an on-site Invitrogen Supply Center for large-scale ordering and tracking of Invitrogen products. Based on how researchers order products, Invitrogen devises a stocking plan that can be managed, changed and paid for through Invitrogen’s online Supply Center Management System.

The specialization of life science research reagents makes them highly amenable to online sales. According to Mr. Roberts, the company’s products that are most ordered online are those for gene-based research. In addition, the evolution of web site capabilities often makes it easier to order reagents online. For example, Invitrogen’s LINNEA OligoPerfect Designer allows researchers to design oligonucleotide primers by inputting a sequence name or target sequence. “Sometimes it’s hard to transmit this information via fax or customer service representative,” explained Mr. Roberts. “[Researchers] typically have to put in information, such as a gene or a sequence, which works better online.”

Many life science companies are also differentiating their web sites by making them resources for designing experiments. In early 2009, with the input of more than 700 scientists, Invitrogen launched the Cellular Resource Center on its web site. In addition to technical resources containing third-party video protocols and published research, the Cellular Resource Center contains interactive features, such as a Technology Chalkboard rendered in Flash that allows researchers to click through animated options to find relevant products. The Center is emblematic of another part of the company’s web site strategy: catering to specific customers. “The Cell Resource Center is a really good example of how we developed a very focused part of the site for a particular customer segment,” said Mr. Roberts. “We’re going to be focusing even more on that throughout 2010 and 2011. We’re going to be really identifying how we can target and support a more segmented set of customers versus a one size fits all web site.”

Smaller life science consumables companies, such as Gene Link, are also taking advantage of the visibility offered by the Internet. Gene Link provides a number of gene-based products including custom oligonucleotides, siRNA, fluorescent molecular probes and primers, DNA purification tools and detection probes. In addition, Gene Link provides custom DNA construction services. “Web-based sales have made the simultaneous marketing of Gene Link’s products to researchers worldwide possible. For a small company like us, this would have been inconceivable just a few years ago,” said Dr. Arthur Johnson, manager of Operations and Business Development for Gene Link.

One way in which companies can better lay out information and interact with customers on the Internet is with images, which include pictures, graphs and animations. Gene Link’s front-page design is uncluttered, yet allows for researchers to gather large amounts of information, including information conveyed by images, about product segments. A toolbar at the top of the company’s web site graphically depicts its product segments, such as Oligonucelotide Synthesis and Tools & Reagents. “As our customers become more familiar with and more comfortable using image-based product information, Gene Link is looking at ways to both incorporate additional imagery and, when appropriate, even replace text with imagery on our web site,” said Dr. Johnson. By placing the mouse over each segment, a mouseover event is triggered, displaying text and images related to the segment under the toolbar, allowing researchers to view more detailed information without leaving the page. This feature demonstrates how a large amount of information can be fit into a small and easy-to-view space when displayed on a web site. A basic product listing on the front page also allows researchers to find products without having to mouse over or click through to the product segments.

Even though e-commerce has changed how researchers communicate with Gene Link, it has not affected their purchasing decisions. “On the whole, we have not seen a lot of difference in customer preference for ordering certain product types online versus by other means,” said Dr. Johnson. “In large part, this is not accidental. Gene Link has made a sustained effort over the past several years to actively encourage both our new and existing customers to order online instead of by fax, phone or e-mail.” Nevertheless, the level of specificity that some orders require for purchasing oligonucleotides can lead to some difficulties with online sales. When describing products that customers still have problems ordering online, Dr. Johnson pointed to “highly specialized oligos, which either contain complex combinations of modified bases, or unusual or unique modifications.” When ordering such specialized oligos, customers still use the web for purchasing, but e-mail their orders instead.

Because the Internet has reduced on the number of personal interactions Gene Link has with its customers, customers are less likely to go out of their way to interact with the company if they are unsatisfied with or confused by information on the web site. “Consequently, the up-front quality of the product information the customer sees on the web site, and the intuitiveness/user-friendliness of the web site itself, especially the online ordering system, need to be extremely reliable and robust at all times,” said Dr. Johnson. “Unlike before, a company usually only has one opportunity to get it right, so the quality of the web site must be closely supervised.”

Gene Link’s web site contains a wide variety of technical manuals, interactive design tools (such as the web site’s Single Oligo Design tool) and biocalculators. The company’s OligoExplorer design tool, which can be downloaded from the web site, determines primer properties and can find primer pairs. Because such features eliminate some of the questions researchers can have, the questions that are asked are more technical. “Technical support questions asked of us now often involve larger, more strategic issues related to oligo design and usage, such as ‘I want to answer question X about my experimental system. What kind of experimental strategy involving oligos might help me do this, and what kinds of oligos do I need?’ Fielding such questions is a great opportunity for us to assist the customer,” said Dr. Johnson.