Dressing up for DAX: Rethinking Sartorius’ global website and shop-system

Sartorius AG – a trusted partner for the biotechnology industry – decided to work with chilli mind to redesign its corporate website. The goal: a scalable, future-proof platform that supports international business growth, M&A activities, and a seamless B2B-customer journey. With its heterogeneous product portfolio and highly specialized service offerings on more than 25,000 webpages, the challenge was clear: reduce complexity.

Scaling biopharma in time & budget

The overall reduction in complexity combined with a business-oriented information architecture had a significant impact on the KPIs of Sartorius’ scaling ambitions.

-20,000

Pages deleted – increasing significance

+180%

e-commerce growth in the first year

+60%

Countries rolled out

The chilli approach

Sartorius’ website had grown organically, creating a fragmented structure that hindered intuitive navigation. Initially, the plan was to migrate all content as-is, but analysis showed that customers often had to click through up to 17 pages before reaching a purchasable product – misaligned with the goal of increasing online sales. The challenge: simplify without losing significance.

Through data analysis and in stakeholder workshops, we restructured the information architecture strategically based on sales metrics to prioritize clarity over information overload. The breakthrough came when leadership embraced a less is more approach, allowing us to radically consolidate content while enhancing usability. The bold approach: get rid of 20,000 sub-pages! A participative process, including an analog website expo, ensured buy-in across all divisions.

The result: a sales-enhancing digital ecosystem that doubled  e-commerce sales in the first year because customers were able to find relevant information about products much faster. The flexible website architecture also enabled a smooth response to the Sartorius brand relaunch in 2020 and allowed the most important digital customer touchpoint to be adapted to the new corporate design with minimal effort.

Party hard: By not having to edit, translate, proofread and transfer 20,000 sub-pages, the project could be realized in time and budget. This project not only transformed Sartorius’ digital presence but also set a benchmark for UX-driven business impact in the biopharma industry.

Measurable business impact

The relaunch of the Sartorius website with a noticeably reduced information architecture brought the first measurable business impacts in a very short time: Doubling of ecommerce sales after the first year, an increase in the average session time and greater customer identification with the new brand promise of “simplifying progress”.

»One of the biggest challenges was to meet the different wishes and needs of the various divisions with not losing sight of the goal: To create a customer-centric website architecture. We achieved this in a participative approach enriched on an analog website expo.«
Philipp Schütz, Partner, chilli mind GmbH