Web design for academics: a home for your record that you control.

The record is scattered. A profile page belongs to the university. A publisher page belongs to the publisher. A database entry is set to the database’s rules. Each is useful, and none is under your control. The problem is rarely a lack of information. It is the lack of a clear home for it.

It goes out of date without anyone noticing. An academic’s public record is part of their reputation, and it can become fragmented or outdated until the moment someone needs it. In one study of what people said made a website credible, a site that was rarely updated was among the most negative elements rated, alongside broken links and typographical errors (Fogg et al., 2001). Those were ratings of described elements, not observed behaviour. A review of 73 studies of trust in web-based health information found that providing contact details and identifying the owner or authority of a site were among the most frequently cited positive design factors, and that showing when information was last updated was also cited in several studies (Sbaffi & Rowley, 2017). That review concerns health information, not academic profiles.

Readers arrive from many directions. A collaborator checking a publication list, a journalist checking a title, a student, a grant panel, a search engine. Each needs to find the same facts, and find them agreeing.

Typicality mattered most for university sites. Research into bank, university, and two kinds of retail website found that how typical a site looked for its category affected whether people found it trustworthy, and of the four categories tested the effect was strongest for university sites (Miniukovich & Figl, 2023). A personal academic site is not a university site, but its readers are used to one. We establish what they expect before we depart from it.

Is it independent of my university? Yes. The hosting account is in your name from the first day, and the domain is normally registered by you directly. The source is kept in our GitHub account and transferred to you whenever you ask. If you move institutions, the site goes with you.

Can it be cited? Yes. It is built to be read by people and cited by other researchers. Where it is useful, we also work with structured data, Wikidata, and Search Console, so that the underlying description of you and your work is clearer to the systems that index it and easier to maintain.

Who keeps it current? You decide. There is no dashboard to learn because there is no dashboard: you send a change and it is made. On a care plan, small changes are handled within a business day. Without one, they are quoted as small pieces of work. Alongside Margo’s site we built a citation inventory and review process that keeps the public record current without her maintaining every part of it herself.

Does my institution need paperwork? Often, and we have it. The studio carries professional indemnity and public liability insurance and can send a certificate of currency before a purchase order is raised. The ABN is on every page. Every project has a fixed price agreed before work begins, and the proposal sets out scope, price, and timeline.

What does it cost? Sites for one person start at $4,800, excluding GST. A substantial publication library, or several years of accumulated material, is a larger project and is scoped individually. The bands are on How it works.

Every project begins with written research, shown to you before design begins. For an academic it reads three things.

How your work is found now. Where your name and your publications currently appear, what each place says, and where they disagree. Search itself is worth a close look: in one observational study of US adults’ browsing in March 2025, a results page carrying an AI-generated overview was followed by a click on a search result on 8 per cent of visits, against 15 per cent without one (Chapekis et al., 2026). It is a preprint, and its authors say it supports no causal claim. We take it as a reason to make the record legible to systems as well as people, not as a promise about traffic.

Who is reading, and why. The kinds of readers your work attracts, and what each of them needs to find.

What your peers’ sites look like. Independent sites by researchers in your field, and the conventions your readers will bring to yours.

The research remains yours whether or not we build the site.

Margo Turnbull is a health-communication researcher in Brisbane. Her scholarly identity was spread across university pages, publisher sites, and research databases, and none of them was hers to control. We built a citable site independent of her university. It brings together her profile, research, and publications in a form that can be read by people and cited by other researchers. Alongside the site is a citation inventory and review process that helps keep the public record current.

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If you think the studio might be a fit, send a short description of what you need. Andrew will reply within one business day. If it looks suitable, the next step is a free thirty-minute conversation. There is no obligation until you accept a written proposal.

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