Panacea Biotec was expanding into Global Markets
In response to their strategic expansion into international markets, I was tasked to redesign their website to reflect a modernized identity built for global partners and investors.
The Website Wasn't Built for Global Partners
The website was designed around Indian digital conventions which read as overwhelming and untrustworthy to US and European audiences. The cultural mismatch meant the site's strengths actively worked against the markets it was trying to enter.
Indian digital products, particularly in healthcare, are built around trust-building through density.
The original homepage reflected this: every available credential, press release, financial result, partnership announcement, and social feed was surfaced simultaneously
But in the US density reads as distrust.
Instead of building confidence the website was creating friction. It felt overwhelming, and overwhelming feels untrustworthy in that cultural context.
How was this impacting the navigational experience?
Through competitive analysis and heuristic evaluation of Panacea Biotec's website, I identified these key insights
Recognition over recall
The company's primary goal was to showcase their product portfolio and financial performance to incoming investors and potential buyers yet both were accessible only through secondary navigation
Consistency & standards
The homepage displays at least 4 distinct button styles, 3 color systems, and mixed icon treatments with no design logic. This is the most visually damaging heuristic failure.
Aesthetic & minimalist design
The page presented fourteen competing content zones simultaneously. There was no hierarchy telling the eye where to go first and this density created immediate cognitive overload
Competitor analysis revealed a clear structural gap.
I analysed the top 3 B2B pharmaceutical companies, mapping how they surfaced information, click depth to key pages, and how navigation guided users to relevant content.
Presenting the new structure
I presented the proposed navigation to stakeholders, showing how the flat five-page structure reduced clicks to key information and eliminated the ambiguity of the original menu labels.
However,
Stakeholders wanted more information surfaced at the top level, arguing that more items need to be visible in the navigation.
But,
Adding more items to the navigation would have recreated the exact problem we were solving.
I redirected the conversation, asking stakeholders why those pages mattered to them. That question reframed the discussion from
The outcome was a small change: News was replaced with Investors at the top level
Establishing the Foundations
Before designing any page, I established the foundations, a consistent button component with three defined states, a unified color system using Panacea's new brand colors, and a typography hierarchy that gave each section clear visual weight.
I centralised the multiple colored CTA's into one reusable component with three defined states - Default, Hover, and Disabled
Giving Users Control
Research by Notre Dame found that only 1% of visitors interact with auto-rotating carousels.
Auto-rotating carousels remove user control, content shifts before visitors have finished reading, creating unplanned interactions and confusing pathways.
I replaced the auto-rotating carousel with a static hero section presenting a single clear headline about who Panacea is, giving international partners immediate context the moment they land
However,
Stakeholders wanted the carousel kept. It was how they displayed their most important content upfront, all at once
But,
But presenting everything at once means nothing gets seen
Small wins, but the right direction
Despite not being able to fully convince them, the conversation moved the needle. The final website kept the carousel but with two meaningful changes
Organising Content by Audience
Important information was buried in a wall of links mixed with videos and press releases with no clear hierarchy
Before
I introduced a tabbed structure - Press Releases, Quarterly Results, Financial Filings — allowing each visitor to navigate directly to what was relevant to them without processing content meant for someone else.
After
This shows users enough to make a decision without overwhelming them with everything at once.
The final redesign cut down usability violations by 35% and reduced navigation friction by 75%
This was my first big UX design project, I held back from asking stakeholders too many questions because I was afraid of seeming underprepared. What this project taught me is the opposite is true. The designers who ask specific, informed questions are the ones who appear most confident because they understand the problem before touching a design tool.
I approached this project with the instinct to show up with answers. What I didn't understand yet was that asking the right questions upfront is the actual design work. Designing without stakeholder clarity isn't initiative — it's assumption. And assumptions create rework. I had access to stakeholders throughout this project. I didn't use that access enough.