Services Used
Instem is a global provider of software solutions for the life sciences industry, supporting clinical and preclinical customers with analysis software and services that drive discovery, accelerate studies, and advance research. With over 700 clients worldwide and a growing product portfolio spanning in silico data insights, study management, regulatory submission, and clinical trial analytics, Instem needed a brand and website that reflected the scale, sophistication, and forward-looking nature of the business.
The existing brand was dated. The existing website was a legacy PHP build that had grown organically over many years, was difficult to update, and no longer represented the technology-led, modern company Instem had become. Marzipan was engaged to deliver a full brand refresh and rebuild the website from the ground up on WordPress, with a long-term goal of bringing every customer-facing surface (digital, print, and physical) into one coherent visual system.
Before the project began, Instem's marketing team was managing two parallel problems. The brand needed a complete reset to reflect the scale and sophistication of the business, and the website was holding back every digital initiative the team wanted to run.
The old website ran on a dated PHP CMS that required developer involvement for almost every change. Page builds were slow, content updates required tickets, the editorial experience was frustrating, and the front-end was missing the modern interactions, accessibility, and performance that visitors expect from a leading software vendor.
The brand itself, anchored by a navy-and-grey legacy logo, did not match the energy or ambition of the business. The visual system lacked a tagline, did not extend cleanly into print or physical environments, and looked nothing like the modern scientific software providers Instem was competing against.
Instem chose Marzipan because they wanted one team across brand strategy, visual identity, website design, WordPress development, and SEO migration. Splitting the work across separate agencies would have meant handoffs, ownership gaps, and a brand that drifted between digital and print expressions.
Marzipan had already been supporting Instem on digital marketing and SEO, so we already understood the audience, the product portfolio, the keyword landscape, and the editorial calendar. That existing context meant we could move directly into strategy and design without spending weeks getting up to speed.
The programme was structured into five workstreams, each one a prerequisite for the next. Brand strategy informed identity. Identity informed website design. The website rebuild informed the print and physical brand rollout that followed.
The rebrand started with a deep discovery into Instem's positioning, products, competitive landscape, and customer audiences. From that work came a new tagline, "Discover. Accelerate. Advance.", a new colour system anchored by warm gradients of purple, magenta, and yellow, and a refreshed wordmark with a distinctive abstract mark that signals motion, momentum, and scientific progress.
The visual identity was built to scale. Every asset, from the smallest favicon to a 4-metre trade show wall, was designed against the same core system: gradient backgrounds, bold sans-serif typography, brand pattern motifs, and a consistent treatment of product names and scientific imagery.
With the new identity in place, we redesigned the entire website from scratch. Page templates were rebuilt for clarity, conversion, and modern accessibility, with a new information architecture that organises the site around four core product areas (in silico data insights, study management, regulatory submission, and clinical trial analytics) and the audiences and applications they support.
The site was rebuilt on WordPress, replacing the legacy PHP CMS. Performance was a first-class requirement. New templates, optimized media, modern caching, and clean front-end code delivered substantially faster Core Web Vitals across the key page types.
A website rebuild is the most common moment for organic visibility to collapse. We protected against that by mapping every legacy URL, planning a complete 301 redirect strategy, rewriting on-page content around the keyword clusters that mattered most, and migrating schema markup and metadata onto the new templates before launch.
Just as importantly, the new CMS was built to be operated by the Instem team without developer involvement. Every page type ships with a reusable block library so the marketing team can author new content, refresh existing pages, and launch campaigns directly. No more dev tickets for a paragraph change.
Once the digital brand was live, we extended the system into print and physical environments. Branded brochures, sales collateral, event materials, and even celebratory cupcakes for the launch were all designed against the same visual system to reinforce internal pride and external consistency.
Office environments across the UK and India were updated with branded wall murals, signage, and vision-and-values installations so that every Instem employee and visitor experiences the same brand standard, regardless of which office they walk into.
Instem attends a calendar of life sciences events across the UK, US, Europe, and India. We designed a modular booth system that scales from a compact 3-metre stand to a full 6-metre presence, with consistent gradient backdrops, large-format brand patterns, and product-specific messaging blocks that can be swapped between events.
The result is a brand presence that looks unmistakably Instem at Lab of the Future, SOT, Lab Innovations, and every other show on the calendar. The team can ship and reset the booth quickly, and the consistency builds compounding brand recognition with the same audience across multiple events per year.
At launch, Instem had a unified brand across every customer-facing surface and a website that the marketing team could operate independently. Page speed and Core Web Vitals improved across the board, SEO visibility was preserved through a careful URL and redirect migration, and the editorial experience became a strength rather than a constraint.
“Working with Marzipan was a turning point for our digital strategy. The new site is fast, scalable, and delivers qualified leads every week.”
Mike Thurogood
VP Marketing, Instem
The rebrand has extended cleanly into every region, every trade show, every piece of sales collateral, and every office. One brand, one voice, one website, managed by a marketing team that no longer waits in a developer queue to update a page.
A programme of this scope typically runs across several phases over a number of months. Brand strategy and identity development run first, the website redesign and WordPress build follow once the identity is approved, and the rollout into print, office environments, and trade show assets continues after launch. The timeline depends on the size of the existing site, the number of stakeholder approvals required, and how much print and physical rollout is in scope.
WordPress remains the most widely supported CMS in the world, with mature plugins, strong performance options, and an editorial experience that internal marketing teams can run independently. Replacing a bespoke legacy PHP CMS with WordPress reduced Instem's dependency on developer time for routine updates, improved security and patching, and unlocked a richer set of marketing-controlled page templates.
By treating SEO as a build requirement, not a launch checklist. Every legacy URL is mapped, every redirect is planned, every page's on-page content is reviewed for keyword coverage, and schema and metadata are migrated to the new templates before cutover. For Instem, this allowed the site to launch on a new architecture without losing the rankings and visibility built up across the legacy site.
Yes. The new identity was rolled out across digital templates, print materials, internal office environments, and a modular trade show booth system that scales from compact event presence to full 6-metre stands. Keeping print and physical rollout with the same agency that designed the digital identity is the simplest way to avoid brand drift between channels.
Yes. The new WordPress site was built around a reusable block library that lets the marketing team build new pages, edit existing ones, refresh hero sections, and launch campaign landing pages without raising a developer ticket. Training and documentation were delivered to the team before launch. web design services or view graphics and animation services or view all case studies.
Yes. Marzipan specializes in brand identity, website design and development, and SEO for B2B and life sciences organizations. The same approach used at Instem (strategy first, identity second, website third, then rolled out into print and physical assets) applies across biotech, pharma, medtech, and life sciences software companies of any size.
