Remaking Amyris, One Molecule at a Time

Amyris Inc. Website Design Case Study

Amyris Inc. UX Strategy & Website Redesign

OVERVIEW

Amyris was founded on the vision of making a positive impact on the world through science. Best known for their life-saving malaria treatment created in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Amyris has since expanded their focus to engineering ingredients from renewable plant matter which have been used by some of the world’s leading cosmetic, fragrance, lubricant, and fuel brands.

With such a forward thinking and environmentally conscious business, we at SPINX Digital set out to design a website that reflected their emphasis on technology and sustainability while driving site visitors to partner with Amyris in the creation of their next product.

awards
Horizon Interactive Awards 2016 Silver in Corporate & B2B
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

+8.33%

Avg. Time on Page

5%

Decrease in Bounce Rate

+32.8%

Mobile Device Usage
Its said that a good facelift looks like a weekend at the spa, and that’s exactly what we did for Amyris’ new website. Nothing too drastic. Just a nice weekend at the SPINX Spa.
DISCOVERY

The discovery process included stakeholder interviews, an in-depth analysis of their current site and identity, basic persona creation, and a competitive audit. During our initial discovery meeting we took a deep dive to learn the goals and objectives of Amyris’ site redesign and understand the unique challenges particular to their brand. First and foremost, Amyris is a science-driven company and their old site placed a lot of emphasis on that science. It was clear that Amyris is proud of their scientific achievements, but one of their main problems was that visitors to their current site weren’t able to understand what they actually did.

Another issue that they were facing was that their old site looked very sterile and clinical. There was very little on their site to emotionally connect with. Amyris wanted to change the perception that they are all about the science, when in fact their main drive and purpose come from making the world a better place. Their pursuit to develop renewable alternatives to petroleum-sourced and non-sustainable products stems from their desire to change the world using science, which should give anyone the ultimate warm fuzzy feeling.

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before

UX STRATEGY

Applying our findings from the discovery phase, we began formulating the user’s experience by creating a sitemap and sketching out the user journey. Their old site contained a lot of content that wasn’t relevant to their new site goals, so the initial creation of the sitemap allowed us to strategize what a visitors’ experience should be at a very high level.

Diving into the individual pages, we began to cut through the fat. Pulling from content that was already created and creating a content plan whenever there were pieces missing, we formed a cohesive story:

  • A concise overview of what Amyris does
  • Key moments in Amyris’ history
  • An overview of service categories that Amyris can create ingredients for
  • Bold CTA’s for site visitors to innovate with Amyris

Having a solid content and information architecture strategy in place, our next step was to wireframe the journey to make sure our strategy made sense. After wireframe reviews and revisions, we were ready to jump into the design phase.

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BUILD

During the design phase, we were very intentional about the imagery, colors and fonts that we use. Throughout the design, we featured large, warm, emotive imagery to dispel the perception that they are non-caring and clinical.

Knowing that Amyris wanted to self-manage their content after the site launched, we built our custom site design on top of a WordPress CMS. This allowed for complete customization of the visuals while taking advantage of a CMS platform that Amyris was already comfortable working with.

One of the challenges we faced in building the website was that Amyris hosts their SEC filings, quarterly and annual reports, and press releases on a NASDAQ server, and they wanted the main website and the investor site to be aesthetically similar so site visitors don’t feel like they are leaving the Amyris site when they click over to the Investors section. Partnering with NASDAQ, we shared our designs and collaborated to ensure the investor site maintained a consistent look and feel.

Remaking Amyris, One Molecule at a Time Build Image-1
TEST & LAUNCH

After having built the site in a sandbox we began testing the site internally. Once we had thoroughly tested everything to make sure it functioned perfectly, we unveiled the site to the Amyris team. After a brief tutorial on adding pages, content, and changing images, they were able to do comprehensive review of the site in the dev environment and finish adding content.

Once everything was ready to go, we coordinated with their team at NASDAQ to launch the website and investor site simultaneously.

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Amyris had a lot of content strewn all over the place. Thankfully, our Information Architects are neat freaks and love uncluttering content.
CLOSING THOUGHTS

Thanks to focused goals and a concentrated UX strategy, we were able to create a winning content strategy to let the Amyris story shine through. The end result is a usable, informative site that encouraged site visors to become world changers by partnering with Amyris. While Amyris is busy remaking the world one molecule at a time, we’re thrilled to have helped redesign their website, one molecule at a time!

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