Immunovision.com Earns Two Mice

Immunovision Inc., Springdale

www.immunovision.com

Biotechnology is a sector where substance wins out over style.

That’s probably why Immunovision Inc. of Springdale has not upgraded its Web site since 1997, when it was one of the state’s first biotech firms with an Internet presence. A supplier of reagents (purified autoantigens) and test kits to autoimmune researchers, Immunovision’s strategy was to set up an online information-based storefront that would serve as a resource for its customers.

Executives at Springdale-based PC Turnkey Inc., which designed and administers www.immunovision.com, said the site has always received a large amount of traffic from research universities and pharmaceutical companies.

Also, the site attracts many visits from overseas because of its distribution in Europe and Japan. Since bandwidth in foreign countries is a precious commodity, Immunovision wanted to make sure fancy graphics wouldn’t crash its customers’ computers.

That said, the site is obviously not the most attractive one we’ve seen.

We understand that the autoimmune research field is highly specialized, and probably most surfers who click through Immunovision’s Web pages have a need to go there regardless of how the site looks. But a little sprucing wouldn’t hurt, especially for a technology company.

The site’s design is ultra basic, relying heavily on tiled background icons, which make some of the home page text difficult to read. “Small, white lettering gets lost in the background,” one of our reviewers said.

We did find the site easily using a couple of nationally prominent search engines. And overall, we found Immunovision’s Web presence to be refreshingly straightforward. If we were in the market for calf thymus, this would be our first stop for pricing information and submitting an e-mail order.

But including an electronic commerce link would make it more efficient and much nicer. Besides, such features can be added at little cost.

Functionality over visual appeal was probably a good call for Immunovision four years ago. But the business puts too much faith in customers’ willingness to wait for e-mailed orders to be filled when they could be transacted instantly. We sent an e-mail inquiry to test Immunovision’s responsiveness, and heard back within a day.

The foundation is solid, but it’s time to redecorate.