We designed and developed the new
website for LabKey, a company that creates leading software for life science labs.
Overview
LabKey is a life-sciences software company. They work with some of the biggest life science labs in the world on very technical and high-stakes applications.
Because their site includes a lot of technical information about their products, we needed a design that could present all that text in spacious, visually compelling and well-organized ways. Otherwise, the website could easily become too heavy with text and turn-off potential clients.
Key Aspects
Speed
Because the business creates software, we knew that the website needed to be lightning fast to convince visitors. We spent a lot of time optimizing the site for speed.
We focused on making sure the site was as fast as possible.
Here’s a speed test that shows that our efforts paid off!
Information Hierarchy
We knew that the site needed to have a very clear and intuitive information hierarchy so as to draw visitors into the granular information they were looking for. With a large site like this with many different product offerings and massive amounts of information accompanying each product, the organization of the whole site becomes crucial.
For example, we built this filtering function into their resources page, in order to give users easy and quick ways of finding the info they are looking for.
White Space
We made sure to keep the design feeling spacious on the page. With more technical information, we found that an approach that uses a lot of white space would be better at holding attention and not tiring the visitor.
Variation
Because the website was text-heavy, we needed to keep presenting the text in various compelling ways. We created a massive number of text modules so that the text could have vibrancy and variation rather than feeling redundant.
For example:
So far we have received lots of positive feedback on the site internally and from prospects we have spoken to. The overall clean and modern feel is on-target for our audience and products. The site is super-fast and we can see the difference when analyzed with various tools as well as in our own interactions with the site. We are also seeing positive increases in our search positioning, user traffic and page views. 
Back End
Approach
On the backend, we wanted to create a user interface that LabKey could use to continue to add content on the site and updates about their products without necessarily getting us involved. For this reason, we used Advanced Custom Fields Pro, a page building tool, to give their team full control of 100% of the content. All the elements can be dragged and dropped on the pages, all the content is customizable, and we also built several custom post types (blogs, webinars, white papers, etc) for their resources library.
Read more about how we create customizable WordPress sites here.Technology Used:
- Advanced Custom Fields
- Hubspot integration
- Creation of 9 custom post types for the Resource library.
- Integration of Yoast SEO
- Integration of WP Forms
Takeaways
Our project with LabKey pushed us to find unique ways to simplify what could be a text-dense site, with a complex product line. We knew that the site would succeed if we could guide the visitor and their eyes effortlessly through these pages, giving all the info they need, without weighing on their experience. Traffic metrics and feedback from the owners indicate that we succeeded. We will be excited to see how the site grows and continues to bring business to this exciting company.