A promo site for a pharmaceutical product is the core of any internet marketing strategy for pharmaceutical companies. This tool is widely used by market leaders to promote and sell medicines, proving its effectiveness.

Why create a separate product website

Corporate websites of pharmaceutical companies usually contain a catalog, where product and medicine cards are categorized.

corparate site pharm company A website for a pharmaceutical product

The product card in the pharmaceutical website catalog contains detailed information about the composition, active substances of the drug, possible side effects, as well as a photo of the packaging and a link to download the full text of the leaflet.

It might seem that this is enough, so why create a separate promo site for the product? Our experience and numerous digital marketer studies show that creating separate landing pages for key products (or for each product of a pharmaceutical company) generates more sales than if products are only presented in catalog product cards on the corporate website. Among pharmaceutical products, there are one or more that are in the highest demand. It is for them that it is best to create landing pages that will receive both organic and advertising traffic.

Advantages of a promo site for promoting a product

  1. Full-fledged and brighter presentation of the product for the target audience. A separate site can be fully styled and customized to present the pharmaceutical product in a unique website design.
  2. Targeted disclosure of product benefits for a narrow segment of the interested audience. The corporate website of a pharmaceutical company is usually aimed at specialists in the field of medicine and related industries. However, on a product promo site, information can be presented in a form understandable to a specific group of its direct consumers: doctors of a certain specialty, managers of pharmacy chains and private clinics, end consumers.
  3. Centralized receipt and processing of feedback from consumers of a specific product is another reason to create landing pages for each product. Questions and feedback from the feedback form, consultant chat, and other contact tools from site visitors are a valuable source of information for the marketer who is positioning the product on the market.
  4. The ability to organize direct online sales on the site (in the case of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs).
  5. Focusing attention on a specific product, rather than on a general list where it is easy to get lost and hard to concentrate on the benefits of a single product.

A medical product promo site for a pharmaceutical company is also a kind of insurance against reputational risks and PR crises.

In case of unfair competition aimed at discrediting the reputation of specific drugs, having a separate site helps to divert the wave of negativity from the manufacturer while choosing a strategy to refute the attacks and restore the image.
At the same time, it is important to note that the development of a product promo site is an additional cost for a pharmaceutical company, so it is advisable to invest in landing pages and sites only for promising drugs with high sales potential and margin.

What are the differences in creating and promoting sites for RX and OTC drugs

Before considering the differences and features of site development and promotion for RX and OTC drugs, let’s find out what they have in common.

Pharmaceuticals are the leader in mobile traffic on the internet. 73.8% of users visit pharma sites from mobile phones.

mobail traffic on pharma 2020 min A website for a pharmaceutical product

Most likely, people search for information about drugs more often using their mobile phones because they do it on the go: on the way to the doctor or from the doctor to the pharmacy with a prescription sheet.

From the above, it can be concluded that the convenience of the mobile version of the site for RX and OTC drugs is more important than the desktop version. This once again confirms the importance of following mobile-first principles in website development, especially when it comes to pages with a large amount of information that is studied carefully – as is the case with pharmaceuticals.

The BUSINESS SITE team relies on mobile-first principles in development. The essence of this approach is that the design and functional capabilities of the site are built around the implementation of the mobile version. Usually, making something convenient on a mobile touch screen is more difficult than on a computer or laptop monitor, so building a desktop version based on the mobile one is more convenient and faster. Read more about mobile-first in this article.

Features of creating a site for OTC drugs

OTC drugs are a category of medicines sold in pharmacies without a prescription. According to the legislation, their sale on the internet can be carried out without any restrictions, provided the appropriate license is available.

From the definition of the category of medicines, it follows that for their marketing promotion and sales, a promo site with a classic structure is suitable: description of the offer, designation of benefits, closing objections, providing interactive opportunities for feedback with the seller, and placing an order.

Most often, the OTC drug site includes:

  • Description of indications for use and the mechanism of action of the drug components, adapted for a user not connected with medicine and pharmaceuticals;
  • Pharmaceutical-grade description for specialists with the ability to download the leaflet for careful study;
  • Photos of the product and its packaging;
  • Data on points of sale, such as maps of pharmacies where it is supplied;
  • Order form or link to a pharmaceutical marketplace where the drug can be ordered with delivery;
  • Contacts for feedback and consultations.
It is mandatory to publish warnings about the dangers of self-medication on the promo site of any medicine, advise to buy the drug only on the recommendation of a doctor and to follow the dosage.

Features of developing a site for RX-group drugs

RX drugs are a group of medicines dispensed only by prescription and not available for direct order on the internet. The circulation of RX drugs is strictly controlled, and they are prescribed only for serious diseases and exclusively under the condition of medical supervision of the patient’s reaction to the drug.

Prescription drug sites never contain simple order forms and lists of pharmacy addresses where they can be purchased. Usually, the doctor who prescribes the prescription informs the patient or his representative about which pharmacy is best to contact to buy an RX-group drug.

It is common for RX drug promo sites to separate content for doctors and patients. An example of such a separation is the site u-port.ua. Content for patients and their relatives is presented in a simpler and more accessible form so that people can understand what the drug is, in which cases it is used, how it affects the body, and what side effects it can cause.

website for rx item A website for a pharmaceutical product

The section for doctors contains more precise data, information about conducted studies and their results, the drug’s effect on the body at different stages of disease progression, and other information that helps the specialist form an idea of the advisability of prescribing the drug to a specific patient.

Because direct advertising of RX drugs is impractical, promoting products online is somewhat more difficult than OTC drugs. However, our recent case of effective promotion of an RX drug proves that a comprehensive approach to promotion is very effective.

Stages of creating a product website

The development of a promo site for a pharmaceutical product or medicine is a phased process involving a team of specialists from different fields. After the project manager discusses the client’s wishes and, together with the marketer, analyzes the business needs, a technical task is written based on the collected data, and specialists are engaged in the work.

  1. Development of a prototype. The site prototype is a visual representation of how the information will be organized on the pages, what features will be implemented on them, and how they will work. The designer creates a prototype based on UI/UX principles – considering the user experience of the target audience, their habits, and needs. We have already written about the principles of UI/UX and their application. Site prototyping is an important stage that will save money that would otherwise be spent on endless edits and changes. The absence of a prototype is when the customer and the contractor cannot fully see the same picture of the future site, and different visions result in making changes to the layout, sections, design, etc.
  2. Programming capabilities. Most websites on the internet are built on content management systems (CMS). While basic features are already built into CMS, site functionality usually has to be expanded by connecting plugins and editing the site’s program code. Programmers work on this in parallel with the designer creating a complete design for the mobile and desktop versions of the site based on the prototype.
  3. Layout. At the layout stage, the design that the designer prepares as a graphic file becomes interactive. The layout designer ensures that the site not only looks as the designer intended but also supports all the features described in the technical task: working buttons, forms, search strings, filters, etc.
  4. Content filling. The laid-out site is filled with content, which is written by the copywriter. To ensure that the texts are not only useful and informative, it is worth involving an SEO specialist. He optimizes the texts according to the algorithms of search engines so that the site appears in the search results for target queries.
  5. Testing. Before the site is uploaded to hosting, it goes through several stages of testing. Testing is needed to ensure the buttons work, the contact details are correctly placed, external integrations work, and the pages are displayed correctly on different devices and in different browsers.

DSC 8055 min 684x1024 A website for a pharmaceutical product

Once the fully finished and tested site is transferred to hosting, it becomes available to all internet users.

But this does not mean that users will immediately find it. To attract the target audience, it is necessary to conduct search engine promotion of the site or use other traffic acquisition methods: SMM, contextual advertising, etc.

Examples of promo sites for medical and pharmaceutical products

In this article, we reviewed the features and stages of creating promo sites for pharmaceutical products and medicines. To consolidate theoretical knowledge, I offer several examples of product sites developed by our team.

  1. The promo site for Aquila eye drops is an example of a site for promoting an OTC drug. Its structure is built around the idea of introducing the audience to the new product through published information and the ability to order a free sample of drops by mail.
    site preparata aqila A website for a pharmaceutical product
  2. Business card site for the line of hemostatic medical devices REVUL is another example of an effective pharmaceutical product promo site. Our studio redesigned the existing site, which allowed us to increase sales through structural changes and the use of more modern visual tools.
    site madical preparata reul A website for a pharmaceutical product
  3. The business card site for the original medical product for the treatment of thrombocytopenia EMAPLAG is also developed with an emphasis on promoting the drug, but due to its specificity, the key segment of the target audience is doctors. Thanks to the site, end consumers of the drug get an idea of the active substances, possible side effects, data on effectiveness, and, most importantly, points of sale.
    preparatniy site emaplug A website for a pharmaceutical product
  4. Multi-landing for a medicine for the treatment of the central nervous system by “Yuria-Pharm” is structured in such a way that the user can learn about the drug, its possibilities, and chemical-biological properties within one site and find the nearest point of sale. The content and design of the site were created at the intersection of marketing data on the target audience’s preferences, the use of branded symbols, and the client’s wishes.
    site medicinskogo preparata A website for a pharmaceutical product