Measuring “Conversion” on Museum Web Sites

At the Museums & the Web 2008 conference last week, I talked to some people about a different idea of “conversion” for museum Web sites–as distinct from the meaning used on commerce sites. Seb Chan in his talk about metrics pointed out that for museums, the value of a visit to the Web site should *not* be measured in terms of commercial “conversion” – i.e. resulting in a commercial transaction. I totally agree. But perhaps we should be measuring success based on a different kind of ‘conversion’? That is, if we can convert a visitor coming to our site in one behavior mode, into a new behavior.

In a separate conversation with Lucy Hoffmann from the Museum of New Zealand, she told me about the idea of new ways of segment users into behaviors: “visitors, transactors, browsers, and searchers.” So, the idea of “conversion” in a museum is that we know people come to us usually with an initial purpose and behavior mode – the kinds of tasks we typically tend to segment the audience into – but that real success for us would be to “convert” these visits into a different task/behavior. So, someone who comes to your site to find the opening hours (a visitor), may then discover the online collections and spend time just browsing, and thus be converted into a “browser”. Someone who comes in as a “searcher” looking for information on a particular work of art may then discover there’s an exhibit on right now they want to go to and be converted into a “visitor”.

Dangers of Facebook

scene: 11:45 a.m., at work, madly multitasking at my desk

phone rings *ring, ring*

me: Hello.

co-worker: Hi, how are you?

me: I’m fine, what’s up?

co-worker: your Facebook status doesn’t say you’re fine

doh!

Museums & the Web 2008 Sound Bytes

A few of the great things I have heard here in Montreal at the Museums & the Web conference. Apologies if I got some of these attributions wrong; I can’t read my own handwriting.

Re: IP and Fair Use: “We in the non-profit sector need to talk the talk and walk the walk. If we want a robust public domain, we need to treat it as a true public domain. —Michael Geist, opening plenary

“Objecthood doesn’t have a place in the world unless someone is making use of it.” —Olafur Eliasson, as quoted by Peter Samis who went on to cogently point out that this statement calls into question the very basis of value in most museums, the object.

Re: a blog SFMOMA created for the Olafur Eliasson exhibition, which invited contributions from users: “We invited the public into the room, asked them to tell us what they think, and then we left the room.” —Peter Samis

“Demographics are descriptive, not predictive.” —this was a comment by an attendee in the session Engaging Museum Audiences.

“People coming to museums are feeding their own idea of who they are by going to a museum. They are testing out identities.” —I believe this was Gabrielle Trépanier

Re: standardizing data for sharing: “It’s good enough.” —Frankie Roberto

“When you look closely at all the organization of our systems, it’s actually a mess….Mess is good….How do we smoosh it all?” —Seb Chan

“We sell experiences in the leisure market, not just information. People can get information from Wikipedia. What we offer is an experience.” —Seb Chan

“Scarcity vs. Scale: In the old model, the value of an object is determined by it’s scarcity. In the new model, scale and proliferation may be where value lies.” —Mike Ellis

Blogging in Museums (as discussed at MW2008)

It’s been a while since I have posted (long enough for me to not notice WordPress updated their interface – ack!) and what better inspiration to get me writing again than a blogging workshop at the Museums & the Web conference! I am at the conference in Montreal and participated in this great session hosted by Brian Kelley and Mike Ellis. What made it great? Mostly the discussion with colleagues from other museums from all over – mostly North America, the UK and New Zealand. We shared our experiences with blogs, got some great ideas about how to make them successful, and whether to do them at all. One participant, arkrausehardie, posted a great summary of the sessuion on the M&W Conference Blog: Blogging with Master Bloggers Mike Ellis and Brian Kelley.

For me, the best bits were the brainstorming and advice about how to promote the benefits of blogging in museums. This largely amounts to quelling fears about opening up the institution to comments from “anyone.” But it seems clear that the building-community potential of a blog is huge. The opportunity a blog can offer for a museum to be open and honest and build trust with an online audience should be embraced, not feared (easier said than done). I also liked that Mike pointed out that a blog can help you maximize what you already do. And Brian and a few participants in the session made the point that if you’re not going to embrace the spirit of the blog — with non-institutional language, allowing unmoderated comments, and a simpler workflow for approving posts than most publications in museums have — then you should just not do it.

I agree. And yet, many of the most successful blogs I have seen are peer-to-peer blogs. Museum staff writing about our work, “thinking out loud” as Brian said it, to our peers. I am still wondering what makes a successful blog for our visitors? And I am still wondering who is going to write that blog? Maybe most of the blogs coming out of museums now are about technology in museums because the people inclined to blog at the moment are the technologists in museums? (Indeed, most blogs out there are peer-to-peer. Most bloggers write for themselves, don’t they?) I think a blogger needs to feel the compulsion to blog, to write. How do we tap into the great voices in our institutions and get them inspired to write…in their own voices?

The other thing that really struck me in the session was the advocacy for starting blogs about your institution, or associated with your institution, on your own. This is the spirit of the Web, right? To do so,  Brian and Mike advocated for clarity about ownership of the blog and stating clear policies about posts. This just opens up, for me, the huge Pandora’s box of personal vs. professional activities. Where do you draw the line? I am starting to think that in this day and age, the line is decidedly dotted.