In pharma marketing, poor UX isn’t just inconvenient—it’s costly. Bad user experiences lead to lost engagement with healthcare professionals (HCPs), frustrated patients, and compliance risks. This article identifies 10 silent UX killers sabotaging pharma websites, along with practical, actionable solutions from Iguazu to turn clicks into clarity.
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Why should a pharma brand manager prioritise UX?
A well-optimised website not only enhances user satisfaction but also supports key business objectives—whether it’s driving HCP education, improving patient adherence, or ensuring compliance with regulatory guidelines. Poor UX, on the other hand, can result in confusion, missed opportunities, and reduced trust in your brand.
What mistakes to avoid
Complex navigation, inconsistent design, and irrelevant content, for example, can create barriers, making it difficult for users to find what they need. This article highlights 10 key common UX mistakes that could be limiting your website’s effectiveness and provides actionable tips to enhance the digital experience for your audience.
1. Lack of Visual Hierarchy
Redundant content can overwhelm users, and poorly structured layouts can obscure key information. This is particularly critical for pharmaceutical websites, where clear communication of medical data, prescribing information, and safety guidelines is vital. When content is repetitive and cluttered, alongside a lack of a clear visual hierarchy, it becomes difficult for users. Healthcare professionals and patients alike may find it challenging to scan and process essential information.
TIP: Prioritise your content based on relevance and user intent. Determine the most critical information for your users and highlight it accordingly in “bite-size sections” broken up by clear headers. Refresh your site regularly to accommodate new content and ensure clarity as your site evolves.
At Iguazu, we can assist with refining your content strategy and implementing a robust design that prioritises content, improves navigation, and streamlines the user experience.
2. Overcomplicating Things
Overly complex navigation or excessive buttons and calls-to-action (CTAs) create decision fatigue, making it harder for users to move from one point to another, ultimately leading to frustration and abandonment. For pharma websites, a streamlined design is not just about usability—it also helps reduce user errors and compliance risks by ensuring critical information is easily accessible and correctly interpreted.
TIP: To avoid this, plan your user journey in advance using wireframes to guide your design process. Simplify choices with one or two clear CTAs per page.
Kick off your website with a good, clear wireframe. Mapping user journeys is key to identifying potential pain points and creating an intuitive user experience. At Iguazu, we can assist in wireframing and user journey mapping as part of our website creation process. By using our years of experience in the pharma marketing industry we can streamline your user journey, ensuring your site is easy to navigate.
3. Lack of Mobile Optimisation
A website that isn’t optimised for mobile can alienate a significant portion of your user base, as mobile devices now account for the majority of web traffic.
TIP: Ensure your website design is fully responsive or consider developing a custom mobile-friendly design to cater to your mobile audience more effectively. At Iguazu, we can assist you in implementing a tailored mobile-first strategy, optimising your site’s responsiveness to enhance performance across all devices, ensuring a seamless experience for every user.
Are you losing users due to poor mobile optimisation? Ask the experts.
4. Unnecessarily Difficult Navigation
Poorly designed navigation and menus are a significant barrier to users progressing through your website. Design, layout and even page names are essential to ensure clear, and simple “sign-posts” to direct the user to the content they need.
TIP: Choose the correct layout for your navigation based on your sitemap. Horizontal navigations are great for smaller sites or those with a few core level-one pages. For larger sites or long page names, a left navigation can often perform better.
5. Inconsistent User Interface (UI) and Unclear Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
Design inconsistencies can leave users feeling confused. Poorly positioned or ambiguously worded CTAs can confuse or frustrate users, reducing their ability to complete desired actions. For example, imagine an e-learning site where the “Start” button appears in different colours and locations across pages.
TIP: Keep things simple. Ensure consistency in interactive elements across your site. Use clear, action-oriented language, such as “Sign Up” or “Register” instead of “Click here,” so that your users do not feel misled or lose trust in your site. Maintain uniformity in the colour palette, wording, and placement to engage your users better and create a seamless user experience.
6. Interactivity Overload
An overuse of pop-ups, animations, and other interactive elements can disrupt the user experience, often frustrating visitors and detracting from the overall site performance.
TIP: Minimise the use of pop-ups, which are not considered to be within the best practices for SEO and will not give you the desired metrics. Consider alternative, less intrusive UX elements like accordions or content reorganisation to achieve the same results without overwhelming your users.
We can help streamline your website’s interactivity by identifying and replacing disruptive elements with more user-friendly solutions that improve engagement while maintaining a clean, responsive design.
7. Poor Accessibility Features
Ignoring accessibility not only ignores the needs of a group of users, but also decreases your Google ranking. Neglecting accessibility features such as alt text, captions, or keyboard navigation not only excludes users with disabilities but can also violate legal accessibility guidelines and result in regulatory issues.
TIP: Accessibility is essential to providing an inclusive user experience. Implement key features such as alt text for images, accessible video captions, and keyboard navigation. We can perform an accessibility audit to ensure your website is WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) compliant, helping you create a more inclusive experience for users of all abilities.
Concerned your pharma site might not meet accessibility standards?
Get an accessibility audit.
8. Broken Links or Missing Pages
Dead links or broken links which lead to 404 Not Found error pages undermine user trust and disrupt their journey, leading to frustration and increased bounce rates.
TIP: While some broken links may be unavoidable due to external content changes, it’s critical to regularly check your site for errors. Rather than displaying a generic “Page under Maintenance” or “Page Not Found” message, consider offering a more engaging message like “Content coming soon” to maintain a positive tone and adding buttons to redirect the user back to where they were before.
Our team can help to implement automated link checks and content updates to ensure your site remains error-free, offering proactive solutions to keep your users on track.
9. Slow Page Load Times
Slow loading times are one of the most detrimental UX issues, often leading to high bounce rates and a diminished user experience. This is especially critical on mobile devices where users are more likely to become distracted or not want to use their mobile data on large websites.
TIP: To be on top of things, regularly review and optimise your website’s performance by analysing page load times and identifying bottlenecks. Removing unnecessary elements and optimising assets can significantly boost site speed.
10. Unintuitive Search Functionality
Ineffective search features or overly simplistic search options make it difficult for users to find relevant content, negatively affecting their experience.
TIP: Ensure your search functionality is powerful and intuitive, providing accurate and relevant results. If the search isn’t critical to your site’s structure, consider simplifying your navigation or relying on concise, well-organised content instead. With the uptake of AI, there are increasingly more interactive ways you can help users find what they are looking for from AI search to AI chatbots.
Ready to transform your pharma website UX? Talk to Iguazu’s UX specialists today.
Conclusion
A positive user experience is paramount for online success. In the pharmaceutical industry, a well-structured user experience isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about ensuring that HCPs, patients, and stakeholders can easily access the information they need.
By addressing issues like poor accessibility, confusing navigation, and slow loading times, you’ll create a smoother, more engaging experience for your users. This translates directly into increased conversions, improved user satisfaction, and a stronger online presence.
Iguazu specialises in crafting user-centred designs that drive results. At Iguazu, we understand the unique UX challenges pharma brand managers face, from regulatory requirements to the need for clear, user-friendly digital experiences. Our team specialises in creating intuitive, compliant, and results-driven UX designs tailored to the pharma industry.
Whether you’re launching a new platform, optimising an existing site, or looking for expert insights to improve usability, our team can help.
Ready to transform your website into a seamless, user-friendly experience that drives results?
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about UX
UX (User Experience) refers to a user’s overall experience while interacting with a website or digital product. A good UX ensures that users find your site easy to navigate, enjoyable, and efficient in achieving their goals. It’s crucial because it directly impacts user satisfaction, engagement, and ultimately, your website’s success.
Visual hierarchy is the arrangement of elements on a web page to guide the user’s eye to the most important information. It matters because it helps users quickly understand the content, prioritise information, and navigate the site effectively.
CTAs, which is short for Calls-to-Action, are prompts that encourage users to take a specific action, such as “Sign Up,” “Learn More,” or “Contact Us.” They should be clear, concise, and strategically placed to guide users towards desired outcomes.
Mobile devices account for a significant portion of web traffic. A website that isn’t optimised for mobile can lead to poor user experience, high bounce rates, and lost opportunities. Mobile optimisation ensures your site is accessible and functional on all devices.
Broken links are links that lead to non-existent or error pages (e.g., 404 errors). They harm UX by disrupting the user’s journey, causing frustration, and undermining trust in your website.
UI refers to the visual elements and interactive components of a website, such as buttons, menus, and forms. UI is a crucial part of UX, as it influences how users interact with the website.
Wireframing is the process of creating a basic visual representation of a website or app’s structure and layout. It focuses on the placement of elements and functionality, without the distractions of visual design. Wireframing is important because it:
- Helps plan the user interface and navigation early in the design process.
- Identifies potential usability issues before investing in detailed design.
- Provides a clear blueprint for developers and designers to follow.
- Facilitates communication and collaboration among stakeholders.
User journey mapping is a visual representation of the steps a user takes to interact with a product or service, including their emotions, motivations, and pain points at each stage. It’s essential because it:
- Provides a deep understanding of the user’s experience from their perspective.
- Identifies areas for improvement and optimisation.
- Helps create a more intuitive and user-centered design.
- Ensures that the website meets the user’s needs and expectations.
- Allows you to anticipate and address user pain-points before they become a problem.
Website accessibility ensures that users with disabilities can access and use your site. It includes features like alt text for images, keyboard navigation, and captions for videos. Ignoring accessibility can exclude a significant portion of your audience and may violate legal requirements.
About Iguazu: We are a digital agency specialising in delivering tactical marketing solutions to the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry.
Author:
Daria Mitchell
Senior Project Manager
