GSK Direct

who is the client?

GlaxoSmithKline is one of the largest pharmaceutical, biologics, vaccines and consumer healthcare companies in the world. The Consumer Health section produces and markets healthcare products that are mainly over the counter and focus on common treatments, like cold and flu symptom relief, painkillers, weight loss assistance and smoking cessation aids.

what is the project brief?

This website is GSK Consumer Health’s first direct sales channel but it was important for us to remember that the purpose of the site was not only to provide this channel, but also to facilitate research into the shopping habits and product choice of GSK’s customers. This information could then be fed back into the research departments and product development teams to ensure that as the company moves their healthcare brands forward, they are providing consumers the best products and in the best possible form.

project evolution

Developing a bespoke ecommerce solution for pharmaceuticals adds new challenges as the CMS is not just expected to be used to manage the data that drives the site, it also needs to have systems that control access to products, pharmacist approval of orders and logging of access to the CMS for full transparency.
This transparency doesn’t just raise challenges for new systems, even our fulfilment modules needed to be customised to track specific stock items, attaching them to specific orders so that should any stock need to be replaced, GSK would be able to track the recipient of that stock item.
Fortunately the Advansys eCommerce framework is flexible and adaptable in design and bespoke web development is a speciality.

our final solution

The final website is broken down into the various categories of healthcare product: mouthcare, pain relief etc. Each section has its own header image and sub menu and many of these categories have bespoke functionality controlling access to products and the back end of the buying process.
This is a site that was created with future development in mind and we expect to be making changes and updating the site’s functionality and appearance as time goes on. Advansys have a commitment to providing GSK the website they need to increase their business and to assist in making their customer relationships deeper and more constructive and this is reflected in our ongoing relationship with GlaxoSmithKline.