Web developer in Cambridge: a spin-out website showing your people, work and stage
Research spin-outs and instrument makers are who I build websites for, and I've shaped my work as a web developer in Cambridge around one reader: a partner in Japan, Germany or the States who meets the company on a screen first. That reader wants three answers early. Who runs the company? What has it built or published? And what stage has it really reached?
Overview
Your stage, in your team's own words
I write the stage the way your team would say it in a meeting. Prototype, pilot or first paying customer: whichever one is true today.
Partners and investors in your field can check that line for themselves. I'd like them to find it matches what your founders say on a call.
When the company passes its next milestone, somebody on your team changes the line in the editor. You won't be waiting on me to do it.
What gets built here
Facts a partner can check
Your team supplies the wording. I put each fact where a visitor from abroad meets it without scrolling far.
- The people — named founders and leads, with what each one does
- The work — papers, patents or products a reader can look up
- The partners — who you already work with, named only with their agreement
What a scope from me looks like
What version one carries
Included
- A written scope: every page and feature as its own line, agreed before work starts
- Design to build, reviewed on a staging URL that stays open the whole project
- Mobile first — checked on a real phone
- Domain, hosting and every account created in your name from day one
- People and work pages drafted from your own papers and decks
- Built to load quickly for visitors in Europe, Asia and North America
- Basic on-page SEO: titles, descriptions, headings, sitemap, Search Console connected
- Editor logins for your team, so a new hire or a new paper goes up without me
Phase two
- A publications or documentation section, once there is enough to list
- A partner or investor page, if those readers need a route of their own
- Ongoing SEO once the site has traffic to read
- A maintenance plan once the site is live
- Logo and brand design, quoted separately from the build
Not doing
- Guaranteed rankings
This sample assumes a company selling to partners in other countries. Funding rounds, pilot customers and pending patents appear on it only if you're happy to name them in public.
The science stays with your side
Put your technical lead on the first call. I can organise what they tell me into pages, but I can't originate the substance. With them there, you leave with a page-by-page plan for version one, so use the booking page once their diary is clear.
What moves the number
What makes this build larger
Your technical lead's notes set the size here. If your papers and decks already explain the work, the build stays small. If they don't, we write it up together first.
- Technical material — already written, or still to be drafted with your lead
- Audiences — partners, investors and customers, each wanting a section
- Plain-English versions — for partners whose English is excellent but second
- Search visibility — whether the current site has some worth keeping
- Pace of change — how often the research or the product moves on
- Publications — whether a list belongs in the first build
Where this comes from
A website designer in Cambridge, working from Kolkata, India
UK clients wrote about the work in their own words, under their own names, and they're on the projects page. That UK work is part of a record of 900+ projects since 2017, for clients in many countries.
For a Cambridge company I'm an offshore web developer, and every meeting happens by video. The team works on your schedule, in your time zone.
Nearby
Also in England
The Oxford page is about backing a well-known address with evidence of your own, and the London one covers sites organised by the boroughs a business serves.
FAQ
Before a spin-out website goes live
Written for a founding team whose partners and investors are abroad.
Does an overseas audience change how a spin-out website is built?
- An overseas audience changes the build in two ways. Pages have to load quickly on connections far from the server, so images stay light. And the English has to read cleanly for someone whose first language is German or Japanese, so sentences stay short and British idiom stays out.
How much should a spin-out say about its stage?
- A spin-out should name the last milestone it has passed, with the month it happened. The next one doesn't go up until it's happened too. A pilot still in progress is described as in progress.
Can you write the technical pages?
- Technical pages get written with your lead, not without them. Your lead talks me through the work on a call. I turn that into plain sentences and a page structure. Then your lead corrects anything I got wrong before it goes live.
Can a spin-out launch before every page is written?
- A spin-out can launch with the pages it can stand behind today. Publications and partner pages join later, when there's something true to put on them.
How does the site keep up when the research moves on?
- Your team edits the site through a simple editor. The people page is a field anyone with a login can change, and so is the publications list once it exists. I walk your team through each one before handover.
Next step
Your founders and one paper
A list of your founders and one paper or product you'd want a partner to see first is all I need. With those in hand, we'll lay out the home page together.
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