Managing a lab website is harder than it looks. Between updating publications, rotating team members, and showcasing ongoing projects, most research groups spend more time editing pages than doing actual science.
Most lab websites fail not because of poor aesthetics, but because the tools behind them weren’t built for academic environments in the first place.
Academic credibility is built over time, but it is often evaluated in specific moments.
Most academic website accessibility problems do not announce themselves. There is no immediate penalty, no warning email, and no automatic flag when a lab website fails to meet accessibility standards.
The most common problem with graduate student recruitment is not a shortage of applicants. It is a shortage of the right ones.
Walk through any university department and click on lab websites at random, lab website maintenance is clearly not a priority.
For research teams, building an academic lab website is rarely a one-time task; it’s an ongoing responsibility that competes directly with the work that matters most.
Every lab website grant application review starts the same way, a funding agency opens your proposal, then opens your website.
A lab website is not like any other website on the internet. While most websites exist to sell something, explain a service,
For most research labs, visibility is treated as a function of effort. More emails, more conference presentations, more networking. And while those things matter,
Most labs invest significant time in creating and launching their websites. What gets far less attention is lab website support: the ongoing work that keeps a site up-to-date,