The Royal Mint Museum, near Cardiff, developed a digital strategy that captures how digital content, services and infrastructure are integrated into all aspects of its operation.
The team took as its priorities four of the pillars of the Royal Mint’s own institutional strategy – storytelling, audience, efficiency and collaboration – and allied them to workstreams such as collections management, exhibitions and education.
They worked with consultancy Headland Design and the Digital Culture Compass tool to assess current digital activity and then identify priorities.
One issue was the museum’s website which, although well populated, featured content for content’s sake and lacked a clear sense of whom it was for.
The museum’s digital engagement and collections access officer, Susie Sandford, says: “It became quite clear through the process of making the strategy that we didn’t know who our audiences were.
“We want to know who we’re targeting, and we don’t want them to just browse the site, but to look in more depth at our content and easily find the thing that they are looking for.”
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The team has adopted a more analytical mindset, putting more focus into tracking user journeys – where people come from, where they go on the site and how long they linger on different content. It has revealed users who are loyal, engaged and keen on all things coin, but highlighted other potential users too.
Information and research manager Chris Barker says: “The museum is quite niche and we obviously need to serve that audience. But we have a broader story to tell that appeals to a more general history audience.”
This led to the creation of a podcast in 2024 as another channel for storytelling. The first subject, Coins and the Sea, covered maritime and coinage topics, with pages on the website supporting each of the six episodes. Web content on more popular subjects such as pirates targeted a different audience.
There is also a link back to physical displays, while the podcast’s second season, Secret Life of Coins, will become an exhibition.
“It’s taking a topic and exploring it across more than one platform – the podcast, the exhibition, the website – and for different audiences,” says Barker.
David Mason, the museum’s public engagement and information officer, says the lack of a data-driven focus at the start was, in the end, a plus.
“We had to have that slightly more nebulous phase of figuring out who we were and who we wanted to be, then examining the data and the audience issues,” he says.
“Starting with that idea of a vision, rather than a clear data-driven strategy, actually helped us because the strategy has grown organically.”