Good things are happening in the world of museums and digital metrics. For a start, the amazing Google Analytics has been widely adopted as the de-facto standard. This is unsurprising – it’s easy to implement, powerful and free.
Second, there is a body of knowledge building steadily across museums as the likes of Culture24’s Let’s Get Real continues to gain momentum. We’re seeing real-world case studies, reports and examples – although we won’t ever be able to compare website A with website B directly, there are fantastic economies of scale to be had by growing and sharing sector knowledge.
Measuring activity to, from and around a website is hard and often technical in nature, though. Understanding high-level stats (the things funders and directors ask for: “Are visits up this week?” or “How long did people stay?”) is easy. But these questions are a world apart from the sorts of questions that need to be asked to actually improve the experience: “Why didn’t user X convert on a mobile?”, “Are newsletter clicks more likely to end up in a shop purchase?” or “Are people engaging with this resource?”.
I run a lot of analytics workshops, and I always ask at the beginning if anyone has the time or budget to react to the things they’ll find. Sadly, the answer is almost always no.
Great digital is iterative in nature: a constant cycle of publishing, measuring and republishing. This is hard, and expensive and complicated. But it is also the only way to make all that measuring worthwhile.
Mike Ellis is a director of digital consultancy Thirty8 Digital
Second, there is a body of knowledge building steadily across museums as the likes of Culture24’s Let’s Get Real continues to gain momentum. We’re seeing real-world case studies, reports and examples – although we won’t ever be able to compare website A with website B directly, there are fantastic economies of scale to be had by growing and sharing sector knowledge.
Measuring activity to, from and around a website is hard and often technical in nature, though. Understanding high-level stats (the things funders and directors ask for: “Are visits up this week?” or “How long did people stay?”) is easy. But these questions are a world apart from the sorts of questions that need to be asked to actually improve the experience: “Why didn’t user X convert on a mobile?”, “Are newsletter clicks more likely to end up in a shop purchase?” or “Are people engaging with this resource?”.
I run a lot of analytics workshops, and I always ask at the beginning if anyone has the time or budget to react to the things they’ll find. Sadly, the answer is almost always no.
Great digital is iterative in nature: a constant cycle of publishing, measuring and republishing. This is hard, and expensive and complicated. But it is also the only way to make all that measuring worthwhile.
Mike Ellis is a director of digital consultancy Thirty8 Digital
