Building a museum website is – as you’d probably expect, given the subject matter – a hugely varied and interesting process. The content, stories and objects are unique, often compelling, and wide-ranging in terms of the topics they cover.
However, when asked why they’re “doing web”, museums still say, almost without exception, that they want their web presence to drive traffic to the “real” museum. They see “more feet through the door” as a critical outcome of their digital activity.
This is understandable, but it’s also frustrating – and too broad a brush to apply to the process in its entirety.
Of course, some of what goes online is about this – where the museum is, what’s on and so on – but it shouldn’t be all of it. It is not only next to impossible to measure this conversion from digital to “real”, but it tends to belittle what really good digital content can do.
The best museum websites often have large sections that have little to do with driving people to the museum and everything to do with changing how people think about the incredible objects and histories that have changed lives and civilisations in profound ways.
The museums that get this right think about digital activity in the same way they would plumbing or wiring: a crucial, arterial, connected resource that runs through the museum and supports and enables it, rather than being an outlier to it with one rather narrow aim.
Mike Ellis is a director of digital consultancy at Thirty8Digital
However, when asked why they’re “doing web”, museums still say, almost without exception, that they want their web presence to drive traffic to the “real” museum. They see “more feet through the door” as a critical outcome of their digital activity.
This is understandable, but it’s also frustrating – and too broad a brush to apply to the process in its entirety.
Of course, some of what goes online is about this – where the museum is, what’s on and so on – but it shouldn’t be all of it. It is not only next to impossible to measure this conversion from digital to “real”, but it tends to belittle what really good digital content can do.
The best museum websites often have large sections that have little to do with driving people to the museum and everything to do with changing how people think about the incredible objects and histories that have changed lives and civilisations in profound ways.
The museums that get this right think about digital activity in the same way they would plumbing or wiring: a crucial, arterial, connected resource that runs through the museum and supports and enables it, rather than being an outlier to it with one rather narrow aim.
Mike Ellis is a director of digital consultancy at Thirty8Digital
