How I made my website to promote my research persona

As discussed in my “My independent research persona” post, having a great looking website was a crucial tool in getting my brand out in the wider world. I had good success in making an attractive looking website using Weebly, and I’ve seen great results from others using Wordpress or Squarespace. There are a lot of great platforms out there that give various amounts of “drag-and-dropability” versus control of design elements. I focused on the landing page, which is where I communicated my brand. The landing page is a perfect place for the lay elevator pitch, while the research pages are better for more detailed elevator pitches. People who come across my page through Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. might only look at 1-2 pages, so I want the most important information on the most frequently visited pages. My site was useful to host my K99 grant writing advice, which in addition to being a resource for other postdocs, also highlighted elements of my persona such as openness, collaboration, and a desire to help others. Touches like these provided subtle hints as to what I might be like as a colleague. I used Google Analytics to monitor traffic to my site (ie. any increase in visits from cities where I applied for jobs). I also linked my site as broadly as possible to improve its searchability. For example, I provided links to key pages on my site to my UCSF department web page, my page on my PI’s lab website, and on scientific sites like ResearchGate and ORCID. Having built a good website for my job hunt, I was able to convert it into my lab webpage with minimal effort, which will be important for helping recruit good students, staff, and postdocs.