Most lab websites get built once, during a startup package or a new faculty orientation, and left alone until something breaks. That’s how you end up with a site listing a postdoc who left four years ago, next to a header photo of a building the lab moved out of. The sites that work don’t avoid this by being fancier. They avoid it by being maintained, and by getting a handful of specific things right from the start.
The first sentence says what the lab studies
A visitor decides whether to keep reading in about five seconds. If the homepage opens with the group’s name and a mission statement instead of what the lab does, that decision goes the wrong way. The strongest lab pages state the research question or system in the first sentence, in language a smart outsider can follow. Save the mission statement for the about page, if anywhere.
Compare “The Chen Lab investigates the fundamental mechanisms underlying complex biological systems” against “We study how neurons in the fruit fly brain encode memory.” The second tells a stranger, in one sentence, exactly what happens in that lab. The first could describe half the departments at a research university.
The publications list is current and linked
Not a CV upload. A browsable list, sorted by date, with a link to each paper. This is the single most visited page on most lab sites, and the one most likely to fall behind, since updating it means remembering to do it every time a paper comes out. Attaching this to an existing habit, like the moment a paper gets accepted, keeps it from slipping.
Photos are the actual lab
Stock photos of generic scientists in generic labs are easy to spot and don’t help anyone evaluating whether to join. Real photos, the actual bench, the actual field site, the actual people, even taken on a phone, do more to convince a prospective student this is a real place doing real work.
This extends to the team page specifically. A photo taken at a lab retreat or after a defense reads as more real than a row of identical headshots against the same gray backdrop, even though the headshots look more polished. Prospective students are trying to picture themselves in that group, and a candid photo helps more than a professional one.
Joining the lab has its own page
If the group takes rotation students, postdocs, or undergrads, that information needs a dedicated page, not a buried mention in the about section. State what you’re looking for and how to reach out. This is the page a hesitant prospective student reads three times before emailing.
Be specific about what the lab wants: background, skills, whether funding exists for the position. Vague language like “motivated individuals with a passion for research” filters nobody. A sentence like “we’re looking for someone comfortable with Python and interested in single-cell sequencing data” filters for exactly the right person and saves everyone a mismatched email exchange.
It works on a phone
A reviewer checking your site during a conference session, on their phone, in the hallway between talks, is a real and common case. A site that requires pinching and zooming to read a name loses that moment. Most current site builders and templates handle this by default, but a site built years ago on an older platform is worth checking on a real phone, not only a resized browser window.
Common mistakes that undercut good intentions
A few habits show up across otherwise well-meaning sites. A homepage that opens with jargon a first-year graduate student in an adjacent field wouldn’t follow. A publications list that links to a paywall with no preprint alternative for readers without institutional access. A “News” section with three entries from three different years, which reads worse than having no news section at all. None of these take long to fix once noticed. The hard part is noticing them, since the people running the lab read the site too rarely to see it the way a stranger does.
Somebody owns it
The trait underneath every other one on this list: a specific person, not “the lab,” responsible for the site staying current. Without that, every other item on this list decays the moment nobody’s watching.
Common questions
Does a lab website need a professional redesign to work well?
No. Most of what separates a good lab site from a neglected one is maintenance, not design: a current publications list, real photos, and a clear statement of what the lab studies. All of that is fixable without rebuilding anything.
Should a lab website use stock photography?
Avoid it where possible. A real photo of the actual bench or the actual people, even taken on a phone, does more to convince a prospective student the lab is a real place than a polished stock image of a generic scientist.
What's the most visited page on a typical lab site?
Usually the publications list, which makes it the page most worth keeping current. It's also the page most likely to fall behind, since updating it depends on someone remembering to do it after each new paper.
How important is mobile-friendliness for a lab website?
More than most labs assume. A reviewer or prospective student checking a site on their phone between conference sessions is a common, realistic case, and a page that requires zooming to read loses that moment.