The Problem
Real science. Free template website. That's the gap investors saw first.
Researchers, investors, partners — all arriving at a site that looked made in an afternoon. Slow. Generic. No clear action to take.
Every day the site stayed up, it cost them credibility they couldn't see.
The Approach
Three audiences. Three sets of questions. One site to answer all of them.
Researchers want proof. Investors want confidence. Partners want clarity. The old site gave none of the above.
- Mapped what each audience needs to trust first
- Built credibility before the scroll
- One goal per page. One action per section
- Custom-coded in Next.js. Sub-1.5s load. No templates
- SEO foundations built in, not bolted on
What We Built
The homepage leads with the science, not the company story. Hero anchored on the core research claim. Credibility visible before any scroll: university affiliations, published research count, key institutional partners.
Three separate audience sections, one site. Researchers get methodology and peer-reviewed citations. Investors get traction metrics and market context. Partners get integration pathways and contact routes. Same domain. Three entry points.
Mobile load time was the first fix. The original site loaded at 8.3 seconds on mobile. Not a UX problem. A first impression problem. Most investors open links on their phone.
Credibility is not just design. It is signal density. How many reasons to trust appear in the first viewport? For Microbiome Design: research institution name, publication count, a photo of the actual lab, and a headline that states the real claim. Four trust signals before the scroll.
SEO foundations built into the structure, not added after. Meta descriptions written for each page. Schema markup for the organisation and research context. Internal links between the science pages, the team page, and investor materials.
What Changed
Before: a template site that looked like a student project. After: a site that looked like serious science.
The science did not change. The way the world sees it did.
The site now matches the science.
First click: confidence. Next step: clear. Every audience gets what they came for.
“The site finally represents who we actually are. It's the first thing we send to potential investors now.”