Novo Nordisk : Converging journeys

With a little care it is possible to provide customised routes to information from common areas of enquiry.

The Site

Novo Nordisk, the Denmark-based pharmaceutical and medical equipment group, includes a set of dropdown menus on its home page that are framed to give visitors more than one way to reach relevant information. Each of the headings – Your Country, Our Products, Patient Information and For Professionals – is the start of a journey that leads by a different route to the same product and other information.

For example: an Austrian diabetic wanting help can click on ‘Austria’ to go to the country home page, then on a link to a community site, (www.diabetes-info.at); or they can click on Patient Information, then diabetes, then select Austria from the dropdown list: this leads to the same community site. An American diabetic with the same need will follow similar routes, but is likely to end up at a US-specific site, Keeping Well with Diabetes.

The Takeaway

Sending people down the right route is particularly critical for Novo Nordisk because as a pharmaceuticals company it is subject to different regulations in different countries. For example, it is legal to market direct to patients in the US, but not elsewhere. Its use of dropdown menus shows that it is possible, with some care, to provide separate routes by using the basic navigational capabilities of the web.

Offering entry points that are based on common areas of enquiry gives a user-focused edge that increases visitors’ chances of being funnelled quickly to the information they are looking for.

First published on 03 October, 2006