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CMDS Launches New Dynamic Website for EDRAY to Enhance User Experience

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Building websites for any large company can be a stressful, lengthy process.

Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industry has it harder than most. In addition to all the issues and challenges other companies face when developing a site, pharma websites are saddled with regulatory and technical concerns that need to be overcome.

Pharma and biotech brands must navigate everything, from ADA to the FDA to HIPAA to CCPA, prior to launching any new site or update. The red tape and approval process seems endless.

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Pharma Websites are Different

Traditional websites don’t compare to pharmaceutical sites (federal regulation, accessibility, data handling, safety, etc). To address the pharmaceutical marketing challenges noted above, you need a site developer that understands the pharma industry and knows how to build websites that perform.

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4 Major Factors in Successful Pharma Websites

The pharmaceutical industry is constantly undergoing change. So what can pharmaceutical brands proactively do to expedite the website development process, while minimizing headaches along the way? Here is a short list to get you started:

1. Pick the Right CMS

You’ll find a lot of options out there; but in our opinion, WordPress is by and large the best Content Management System for pharmaceutical websites. Building out a site on WordPress offers numerous advantages: It’s cost-effective, open-source, extremely popular among programmers, and very SEO-friendly.

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Benefits of Using Wordpress

Manage Multiple Sites Simultaneously

Particularly attractive to pharma sites is WordPress Multisite, a feature that is ideal for large pharmaceutical brands that need to support multiple versions of their site. WordPress Multisite allows a single administrator to exert full control over all sites through a single Super Admin login. This includes international brand websites for different countries and different languages, which may have their own unique requirements and messaging. Some pharma and biotech brands may also use WordPress Multisite to manage both HCP (healthcare professionals) and patient-facing sites, as well.

Themes and plugins can be updated and installed across all sites from the same Super Admin account. The simplicity and efficiency of Multisite makes it the ideal choice for pharmaceutical websites.

Expandable

There is a huge community of WordPress developers and designers across the country (and world). Not only does that make it easier to find the support you need, but WordPress developers are constantly innovating and creating new features, plugins, themes and more that can be utilized to continually improve your site. Even where WordPress falls short, like visitor tracking, it easily integrates with other programs like Salesforce, Pardot or Adobe to get the necessary data.

The best pharma websites engage in ongoing enhancements to extend their capabilities and keep their theme updated. The practice of constant maintenance, rather than changes at major interludes, allows any new product to be added to the theme, quickly and with minimal difficulty.

Reduce Regulatory Delays

Every pharma site faces multiple approval checkpoints and revisions in the process of achieving regulatory approvals. Because of this, delays are inevitable. When product managers face the challenge of meeting internal deadlines, while contending with regulatory delays, any little time saver can make a big difference.

WordPress can help save time and reduce delays from the approval process by making the update process faster. Through WordPress, developers have the ability to update multiple website versions at once. Additionally, there may be times when regulations require styling or formatting changes to content. This can become time consuming with hard coding, but with WordPress, it’s a much faster process.

Don’t Be Your Developer’s Learning Curve.

Experience Matters! Choose a developer that knows the Pharma industry and benefit from their existing knowledge.

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2. Prioritize Security

The pharmaceutical industry undergoes more scrutiny and regulation than nearly any other industry. Whether you’re navigating HIPAA regulations or other health privacy laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, digital privacy of all patient and consumer data needs to be the number one priority of pharma websites. Additionally, with the mobilization triggered by COVID-19, the market is experiencing more innovations than ever before: data visualizations, wearable technology, AI, virtual and augmented reality, etc.

Privacy and security are top priority. Not only does the site need to obey all HIPAA laws for medical privacy and confidentiality, but data privacy laws in Europe (GDPR) and California (CCPA) require full disclosure on how you will be using any data collected and who you are sharing it with. The website must be built in a way that expressly notifies visitors of their rights, gives them the ability to opt-out of any data collection and allows easy changes, deletions, and updates to data.

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3. Achieve ADA Compliance

Pharmaceutical website developers need to be skilled in building sites that meet with all ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) accessibility requirements. While ADA website requirements apply to all industries, pharma websites need to be extra mindful, for obvious reasons.

That means pharmaceutical websites need to include maximum flexibility in order to service visitors of all abilities. Experienced ADA compliant web developers need to be involved from the beginning of the process in order to make site builds move seamlessly from the outset. Treating ADA compliance as an afterthought can end up costing pharmaceutical brands significant time and money.

Some examples of ADA compliant website design include:

Provide alternative reading or viewing options, such as alt text on images, transcripts or closed captioning for video and audio
Design the website with an intentional structure using markups
Create text transcripts for video and audio content
Allow for textual resizing
Visitors must be able to manipulate the site through multiple options, including keyboard-only
Ability to pause or deactivate features like timers, animations, audio or video, or other automated functions
Able to be used properly on screen readers

Failure to create an ADA-compliant website could open a business to lawsuits, financial liabilities and damage to your brand reputation.

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4. Consider Marketing and
Functionality Goals Prior to Design

A large portion of building out a pharma website takes place before any coding actually occurs. Knowing possible design, development and approval hiccups in advance helps to avoid bigger delays down the line.
Making these decisions before designing will reduce major last minute changes.

Determine who will be using the site - is it meant to service both HCP and patients?
What is the main goal of the site and how will the brand be using any data collected
(in a HIPAA-approved manner, of course).

Ensuring that a beautiful design is also a functional design is a primary challenge for pharmaceutical brands. That means brand managers need to ensure the designer they are using has the big picture in mind.

Functionality > Appearance (though ideally both are top-notch).

User process and funnel needs to be carefully considered in the design process. Too many site developers get handed a design to develop that lacks in usability or just isn’t programmable.

Pharma sites are trending away from dual version HCP/patient formats, instead becoming two distinct sites. Pharma brands are able to better tailor messaging and target their HCP marketing efforts when they know their visitors are not a mixed audience. Brands can build HCP sites with enhanced analytical and marketing features that set them up for better 1:1 marketing options.

Pharma Experience Matters

Pharmaceutical websites are amongst the most complex sites to develop, so working with an experienced developer is essential to saving both time and money. Talk to your internal IT and product management team to determine how much and what type of help they need in the site development process and get all teams on board from the start.

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Stop wasting time with unnecessary rounds of approval.
Partner with a developer that understands Pharma.

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Featured Article

CMDS Launches New Dynamic Website for EDRAY to Enhance User Experience

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Don’t Be Your Developer’s Learning Curve.

What Pharmaceutical
Brands SHOULD Be Doing
to Deploy Great Websites

Building websites for any large company can be a stressful, lengthy process.

Pharma Websites are Different

4 Major Factors in Successful Pharma Websites