Finding the needle in the haystack

Published: 3-Feb-2010

Manufacturing Chemist launches an integrated website that goes far beyond the traditional model of reproducing a printed product in electronic format.


Over the past decade business-to-business websites have gone from being a novel way of presenting information in a non-printed format to an everyday tool for sourcing products, suppliers, employment opportunities, technical articles and simply keeping up to date with what is going on in the industry on a daily or even hourly basis.

But in many cases the functionality of websites has failed to keep up with changing working practices and the needs of those using the Internet as a primary business resource.

The problem with many sites is that navigating around them is seldom intuitive. Even if you know exactly what you are looking for, the construction of the site may cause a search to yield some surprising and completely unexpected results. And if you don"t know exactly what you are looking for, the chances of finding something useful and relevant are significantly reduced.

In building its new site, Manufacturing Chemist has moved away from the traditional model of reproducing a printed product in electronic format. Instead, we have created a fully integrated information resource organised around a comprehensive list of categories, market sectors and topics covering the entire pharmaceutical manufacturing supply chain.

As well as providing a conventional navigation to give immediate access to the latest news and technical articles, the content on the new Manufacturing Chemist site is linked by means of this taxonomy, with the most popular topics listed on the left hand side of the page. Clicking on one of these will bring create a page showing the latest information on that topic, from news stories and technical articles to relevant events and companies operating in that sector of the industry.

These in turn will link to more stories, articles, events and companies that carry related tags, enabling the visitor to move seamlessly around a particular subject area without constantly needing to revisit the original search and enter new terms.

I hope you will take time to explore the new site and see how you can benefit from its improved functionality.

Development work is still ongoing and there are bound to be a few gremlins in the works. As ever, all feedback will be welcome, so please email me (hilarya@hpcimedia.com) with any comments you may have.


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