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Welcome to the new Nanoracks website! It’s been a long time coming – but we’re thrilled to be sharing our new and improved look with our community. Our hope is that the new website is a welcoming home for space veterans, newcomers to the industry, and space enthusiasts alike! Our hub will be ever-evolving, just as we are at Nanoracks, and we look forward to sharing many more exciting updates and announcements to come.
Jeffrey: Nanoracks had a static web presence for 10 years. Why was it so important to you for Nanoracks to have a new website now?
Abby: A website is the gateway to a company. Nanoracks has grown so much in the past decade, and our previous website was not able to keep pace to those changes.
I’ve been at Nanoracks now for six years, and during this time we’ve seen the emergence of an incredible NewSpace industry – a sexy, sleek, and well-presented industry, and it became time for Nanoracks to catch up with the new imaging and branding. We pioneered the concept of commercial space services, enabled the CubeSat revolution, and democratized space access – but we haven’t always been great at telling that to the world.
As we begin to better tell that story, I would be remiss if I didn’t give a big thanks to our friends at Cosma Schema who designed our new logo that we released in October 2019! This logo and brand package gave us a platform in which our voice and image could finally evolve into this new website.
Jeffrey: Can you highlight some of the strengths of the new website compared to the old one?
Abby: A picture says a thousand words. This website is loaded with imagery, and I hope with much more to come. The space services Nanoracks provides, and the vision we have for commercial Outposts, are complicated. I know that. But to finally put imagery in front of our viewers so they can start to live and feel what Nanoracks does – that’s a major improvement and will help the world better understand our story.
Our new website also brings a focus to our future plans at Nanoracks – a future where we repurpose space junk into commercial platforms and leverage the harsh space environment to provide solutions to overcome Earth’s greatest challenges. Our old website was incredible at providing information for payload users that already knew what they were looking for – but now we’re speaking to a larger vision and need to engage a broader audience.
Lastly, the greatest strength of this site is now having the ability to grow and adapt. I’m a one-woman marketing team and I look forward to having this website evolve as we receive feedback. I’ve got a ton of ideas for ‘Phase II’ – there is plenty more content for us to add – especially for highlighting the incredible work of our customers and the technology that access to space has enabled.
Jeffrey: Who is the new site intended to help? Newcomers to the space industry, long-term players?
Abby: Both!
Nanoracks is at a critical growth point where we are still providing incredible space services to both new and veteran space users (and will continue to do so), but we are also focusing on our long-term growth. Our site is intended to bring to life our new ventures, including showing the world how we are positioned to be the leader in the space infrastructure market – including owning, operating and using commercial platforms.
I’m also very excited to welcome consumer brands to Nanoracks. The International Space Station is officially open for business, and we’re in an entirely new ballgame when it comes to marketing, advertising, and product development in space. Our new website has a (growing) home for these very new users.
Jeffrey: Can you touch on how you see the site working to highlight the Nanoracks team?
Abby: I want our website to be a place where we can show off our incredibly diverse, fast-moving, and growing team. I want the voice of Nanoracks to be more personal, have a face to it, and to show more of the people that make the magic happen. Going forward, I plan to have more blogs, more interviews, and more media showing our team and just exactly what it takes to be the leading provider of commercial access to space.
Our team has been working at full speed to prepare the Bishop Airlock for launch this Fall on the SpaceX CRS-21 mission, and our new website comes just in time to show the world the folks who are building the first-ever permanent commercial addition to the International Space Station.
Jeffrey: In the process of creating this new site, what changes have you seen happening in the space industry that were important to address in the new site?
Abby: I think the most important issue to address was making the complicated work that we do accessible to the everyday person – to not write in technical jargon or in acronyms that our industry so infamously loves. The space industry is great at talking and marketing to ourselves – but not the everyday person who only thinks of NASA or the Space Shuttle when they think of space.
Importantly, there is also a larger social movement happening that has highlighted once again the lack of diversity in the aerospace community. Our industry has made incredible strides over the last few years, thanks largely to the multitude of smaller commercial companies popping up around the country and the world – but that’s not enough. So, what role does a website play in that?
The website needs to be inviting, speak to the average person, and welcome a diversity of thinking. It’s a small step, but if we are excluding people based just on the language we use in our websites – again, by only speaking to ourselves – then that very first gateway I mentioned earlier will never be open to the diverse community we seek.
I want anyone who looks at our website to think: “I want to work here,” and “This is a company that can provide solutions to my space-based challenges.”
Jeffrey: How will you gauge the success of the site?
Abby: We work hand-in-hand with our good friend Martin Wilson – he is behind our web administration and is able to pull a wide range of data. From that, we will see what pages are working for users, which ones aren’t, and where we need to improve our communication.
Success for me is positive feedback from users and loads of inquiries from folks around the world who are interested in space research, Outposts, or just sharing their vision for space exploration. Success is growing our community and having colleagues and friends, old and new, fall in love with our brand and what we stand for as a company.
