The working life of Museum of London

At the beginning of these blog posts, I raised a number of questions about the effectiveness of social software on the Museum of London. The conclusions derived from my research are as follows:

Does the Museum of London lose visitors through having content sitting on separate social software sites?

It became obvious from my research that the Museum of London (MOL) was not losing visitors by having content sitting on other sites but was in fact, gaining more visits to MOL websites as a by product of its existence on Facebook and the existence of MOL’s blog (MyMOL). In addition, as a result of its presence on Facebook, Facebook members were making some actual visits to the Museums that they previously may not have made.

However, the advantages of having a blog and a presence on Facebook was clearly not being utilised to its full potential. I discovered that if more blog entries were made on MyMOL, with links to the MOL websites and incentives to visit events and exhibitions at MOL, more visitors would visit the MOL websites and possibly end up visiting the two MOL Museums.

Also, from the comments I received in the Facebook survey I carried out, it was apparent that MOL could promote more events and engage better with the audience by actively prompting members to not only visit the Facebook pages, but also MOL websites and any other social software sites where MOL activities were taking place.

Are visitors engaging with Museum of London through social software sites?

Within the limit of my study on the MOL website and MyMOL, the measure I used for testing whether visitors were engaging with the sites proved that in actual fact, very few visitors were engaging with the Museum or the Museum blog through active comments, enquiries and feedback. This, I realise, may be incorrect to conclude as visitors could have been engaged in many ways such as using information for research and planning visits and visiting the actual Museums, but the method I used showed very little engagement on the social software sites.

On Facebook, however, the engagement level was greater in one sense, but minimal in another. It was greater in that with the response to the survey alone, it proved that a high percentage of the members were willing to engage with the MOL, however, very few members were carrying out discussion or collaborating.

So to answer this question, very few visitors were engaging with MOL through its social software sites at the time of research.

Do visitors find information on Museum of London social software sites of value?

I concluded that visitors of MyMOL must find information of value as a high percentage of visitors made repeat visits. Though there was a drop in repeat visitors at the end of the reporting period for MyMOL, if the pattern of repeat visitors on MOL website was used, it was possible to see that the repeat visits would start to steadily grow, suggesting that visitors see it as a valuable source to come back to.

In addition to this, members on Facebook had generally thought the MOL’s presence on Facebook was useful, and every single member agreed that MOL should remain on Facebook, confirming that they do value it for the individual purpose for which they signed up to them, whether it was simply to keep up to date with events, or to find out about new developments at the Museums. Also, the comments were mostly positive and many members were recommending MOL and its presence on Facebook to friends and family, which was a very important factor in determining that members do find information on MOL websites and those on associated social software sites of value.

Should museums spend time pursuing the use of social software to attract new audience?

The number of visits to MyMOL in comparison to MOL website was very small, however, given that MyMOL was so new and did not have any publicity, it was still evident that the number of visits to MyMOL was increasing steadily, and the trend in visits mirrored that of the MOL website. For this reason, cultivating MyMOL would ensure that more visitors would be attracted and end up visiting MOL and MOL websites, and with promotion of MyMOL, it would be worth spending the time to attracting these new visitors.

Similarly, the number of MOL Facebook members were very small in comparison to the number of visitors to the MOL website received. However, as more effort is put into improving the communication on Facebook, more members are likely to join, and therefore, increase the traffic to MOL and its website. For this reason and for the fact that those existing members who responded to the survey valued the MOL Facebook presence and found it useful, I concluded that it would be worth spending time on attempting to engage these members and attract new audiences.

Should website visit statistics of content sitting on social software sites be included in the official statistics reports?

Having compared the web statistics for the MOL website with MyMOL, although the number of visits is small in comparison, they are still visits to a Museum site that holds information that belongs to the Museum and therefore, should be included in the official reporting. I could find no evidence other than the fact that for social networking sites such as Facebook, it may not be as easy to capture the visits and visitor statistics*, however, where statistics could be and are being collected, these should be reported in the same way as for all the other MOL websites.

To conclude

Museums can use social software to communicate with its audience outside of its own website, and can react quickly, efficiently and appropriately if the Museum is being discussed (Newson 2008).

The findings of my study at the time of research concludes that visitors use MyMOL and the Facebook pages for information purposes only, and MOL use social software to simply publish content. From this study, it appeared that people wanted to receive information but did not necessarily engage with the Museum in any way other than to read emails, update alerts and blog entries, and did not want to carry out conversations. They wanted to be prompted and guided to available content in the most convenient way possible without having to visit the MOL website unless necessary.

Given this conclusion, it could be said that MOL has much to gain from having a presence on Facebook and working with social software such as blogs, to attract new audiences and new visitors to the Museums and the Museum websites. It provides MOL with different ways to disseminate information that visitors’ value and can engage with, and MOL should spend time on ensuring that the right social software is being used appropriately.

However, as Newson argued, museums can only see benefits of using social software if they change their perception of social software to properly manage and take advantage of current knowledge and trends. “In other words, the value these tools offer depends on regular contributions, networked thinking and good levels of participation” rather than the actual social software themselves, therefore social software will only be effective if MOL takes a lead on it and uses it appropriately.

Though it can be argued that my research on the effectiveness of MyMOL on MOL and MOL websites was “not a good measure”, and in fact a better method of research would have been to check for “citations/linkbacks and user comments” (Chan), the results found still proved that although MyMOL was not highly increasing traffic to MOL website at the time of this study, and possibly no traffic to the actual Museum, it still raised the profile of MOL with the thousands of visitors who regularly visited the site and encouraged visitors to recognise MOL as a brand.

The use of social software by MOL was effective to a certain extent, but could be improved. I concluded that MOL should communicate more with its audience and engage with them effectively by clearly guiding visitors to the relevant events, exhibitions and collections, ensuring that the message is openly received.

Finally, though each museum has its own niche in visitor attraction, through the findings of this research on the effectiveness of social software on MOL, and using Hubbard’s justification that “sampling is observing just some of the things in a population to learn about all of the things in a population”, as the “law applies to everything” and not just for the “examples observed” (Hubbard 2007), it can be concluded that the findings for this report could apply to other museums and their use of social software too.

* Additional notes

The inability to capture website statistics for social software sites such as Facebook is very important to note as many social software tools are hosted on external servers that do not belong to the museums and often, cannot be accessed by the museums other than through the front end as a user. This raises a number of issues that museums should address.

Firstly, the question of who does the content belongs to?  In February 2009, there were rumours that Facebook was announcing that they owned all users content, and users no longer have copyright to it. However, although Facebook has stated that all content on Facebook put up by users, still belongs to the users (Lacy), it is important to consider this.

Secondly, there are the security issue and problems of backing up data that can potentially be lost forever should anything happen to those sites or servers. Currently, the only way to back up any information on such sites is to manually copy the data and store it in an internal server.

Finally, there are the issues of not being able to measure the level of usage of the site and how much traffic it gains as museums will not have access to the web logs that contain the data used for web analytics. Without this data, museums will not be able to track the number of visits that are made to the Facebook pages and evaluate the effectiveness of the use of the site on the museum and its websites, nor can it report the visitor numbers to stakeholders.

References

Chan, S. “Better museum blog metrics – is your blog really working for you and your organisation.” Weblog post. Fresh + New(er). Powerhouse Museum, 19 November 2007. Web. Accessed 6 August 2009. <http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2007/11/19/better-museum-blog-metrics-is-your-blog-really-working-for-you-and-your-organisation/>

Hubbard, D. How to measure anything: finding the value of ?intangibles? in business. John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Print

Lacy, S. “Facebook: You Own All Your Data. Period. (But See You at the Next Privacy Uproar.).” Weblog post. TechCrunch. 21 February 2009. Web. Accessed 28 August 2009. <http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/21/facebook-you-own-all-your-data-period-but-see-you-at-the-next-privacy-uproar/>

Newson, A., D. Houghton, and J. Patten. Blogging and other social media: exploiting the technology and protecting the enterprise. Gower, Ltd., 2008. Print

At the time of my research Museum of London (MOL) had a Facebook fan page that users of Facebook who were interested in MOL could join as a ‘fan’. MOL also had two ‘groups’ for users interested in the MOL late events that run on the first Thursdays of every month in both MOL locations (London Wall and Docklands).

On Facebook, MOL could send emails to all the members of MOL Facebook groups and send update alerts to all MOL Facebook fans.

I created a survey that was posted as an email to the members of the MOL Facebook groups, and it was also added as an update alert on the MOL Facebook fan page. (Information about my research methodology and the full survey can be seen in my last post). The survey was available for three weeks and in that time, 46 people completed the survey, of which, 45 were genuine responses.

MOL had been on Facebook for a year and at the time of the survey, had 369 people joined to its Facebook group ‘late at Museum of London’ and 155 people on its ‘late at Museum of London Docklands’ group. It also had 721 people joined as ‘fans’ of MOL.

Though the total number of members across all groups and fan page was 1245, many of the same people were joined to more than one of the above, and some were joined to all three.

So with the total number of members at 1245, and 45 respondents, in effect 3.6% of all members responded, not taking into account that many of the members may be joined to more than one group and/or the fan page, which would have meant that a higher percentage of members had responded.

How members were distributed over MOL on Facebook

It can be seen from the below graph (figure 1) that of the people who responded, the percentage of those signed up to the three different Facebook pages roughly mirrored that of the actual figures (721 fans, 369 members on late at MOL and 155 members on Late at MOL Docklands).

Figure 1: Members signed up to each MOL page on Facebook

Keeping in touch through Facebook

I wanted to know whether people actually visited the Facebook pages, and posed a question on this. The response to was that only 37% of the members visited fairly regularly (monthly, weekly, or daily), but of the remaining 63% of members, 47% visited the pages less than once a month, whilst 16% did not visit the pages at all.

These figures, however, were not quite accurate. First because the scope provided in my survey, between ‘less than once a month’ and ‘not since first joined’ is so large, but also because I did not factor in the question for whether members visited the pages if prompted with an email or alert. This is more evident through the fact that when asked when Facebook emails or alerts were sent out, were they read (figure 2), 67% of members said they read the emails and 53% said they checked the alerts, whilst a further 29% said they sometimes read the emails and 33% said they sometimes checked the alerts. Therefore, the percentage of people who did not actually read the emails or check the alerts was minimal.

Figure 2: Members who read the Facebook emails and alerts

In addition, I had to bear in mind the comment made by one responded that may have been true of other members on Facebook:

“This questionnaire asks ‘How often do you check your Museum of London Facebook pages?’ I selected ‘Have not visited since joining groups or becoming a fan’ because I don’t proactively visit pages. I only go in response to emails or other notifications from the page owner.”

Many other respondents made similar claims, where they said they “don’t think to go there unless prompted”, and because “I haven’t looked at the page on my own initiative but I like getting messages about events because I don’t have much time to look myself”.

Does Facebook encourage visit to MOL or MOL websites?

Of those people who responded, the number of visits made to MOL website was very high. 86% of all members visited MOL website as a direct result of MOL’s presence on Facebook (figure 3). Given that there are 1245 members on MOL Facebook pages, it could be said that it is equivalent to 1071 new visitors visiting MOL website as a result.

The visits to MOL and MOL Docklands are on a lesser scale, though it still shows 46% of members having visited the museums. If we carry that across all MOL Facebook members as above, 46% who may visit MOL or MOL Docklands will equates to 458 new visitors walking through the doors.

Figure 3: Members who visited MOL website, or MOL or MOL Docklands because of MOL presence on Facebook

If we look at the specific visits for actual late events advertised in the Facebook groups, it shows that 18% of members attended an event due to the fact that MOL had a presence on Facebook (figure 4).

Figure 4: Members who attended the late events because of MOL presence on Facebook

From the comments I received from the survey, it becomes apparent that some members think it is “useful to find out about lates” and that updates keep them “in the know about happenings at the Museum”. One respondent said “I find it useful to know what’s going on – even if at the moment I keep failing to get there!”

It was interesting to find that many members do not live in London but enjoy hearing about what the Museum is up to and what they can do if they decide to visit London. From this I concluded that though a presence on Facebook will result in some specific visits to MOL events, the members on Facebook do not see it as an invitation to attend but rather as a place to get information about recent changes and updates to keep them informed about MOL.

How visitors learned about MOL and MOL on Facebook

To find out whether Facebook increased awareness of MOL, especially if they have never heard of MOL before, and therefore, can be classed as new audience, I asked how people learned about MOL as well as how they found out about MOL on Facebook.

The below graph (figure 5) shows that in fact, 22 people (43%) who had signed up to one or more of the MOL Facebook pages, were already aware of MOL because they had visited it in the past. A further 20% found out about MOL from friends, and 12% of the respondents actually worked for MOL. In reality, only 4% of respondents learned about MOL through Facebook – so Facebook did not reach out significantly to a whole new audience in the traditional sense – that of acquiring new audience in a new way that have never heard of MOL before.

On the other hand, 40% of respondents learned about MOL on Facebook through Facebook. This did not come as a surprise to me as I was aware that at the time of research, MOL Facebook pages were not advertised and only appeared in a single page on the MOL website, buried within the site, and therefore, the possibility of members signing up via MOL website was small.

Figure 5: How visitors learned about MOL and MOL on Facebook

Looking at the graph, there appears to be similar reasons behind how people learned about MOL Facebook pages as they did with MOL itself, and those reasons appear to be through friends and for having visited MOL in the past.

How useful Facebook visitors found the MOL presence on Facebook

As I wanted to find out whether the MOL presence on Facebook was thought of as ‘useful’ by members who have signed up, I requested that respondents rate how useful they thought MOL on Facebook was. The result (figure 6) was that the majority (38%) of the answers given fell in the ‘neutral’ zone (3/5) although no one rated it as least useful (1/5).

Figure 6: How useful members found the MOL presence on Facebook

This didn’t actually tell me much about ‘what’ they found useful or not useful and it was entirely due to the fact that I had not defined ‘useful’. However, there were some very interesting comments that accompanied this rating. See some comments below:

“It seems that people dealing with it, are just bored and do it because they have to do it”.

“Because I live in the north and it is easy to keep up to date with goings on Facebook because I am always on here!”

“I think their website is the best resource but I’m glad to see them on Facebook as well.”

“Notification of events at MOL is brilliant”

“It’s easier to engage with as opposed to visiting a website”

“I’d not know about the events otherwise”

One respondent noted that other museums provided more updates, by which, it was implied that MOL was not providing enough updates and perhaps should do more to make it useful. On the other hand, another respondent said that “you do it well and you don’t spam”, which implied that MOL got the right balance in frequency of alerts and emails.

This was an interesting point as social software tools can be used either as a social networking tool, or as a publishing tool by organisations to communicate information to users and members of Facebook can fall into either category.

To make sure people in both categories received the right level of information and interaction is difficult to get right. If regular updates are made and alerts and emails are sent, there is the possibility of irritating some users who may decide to remove themselves from the MOL Facebook pages. On the other hand, if enough updates are not sent, encouraging users to engage with MOL, the members who wish for more interaction will be bored and detached from MOL activities and may also choose to leave.

The challenge is to make sure that members in both categories were not alienated, and that everyone gets something out of the MOL presence on Facebook. The solution may simply be to ask visitors how frequently members wish to learn about particular events, exhibitions or museum news, and categorise them and only send regular updates to these people, for the specific type of update they signed up for.

In total, the number of positive comments outweighed the number of negative comments by 1 to 5, and thus it could be said that on the whole, Facebook members found the MOL presence on Facebook useful, but MOL could do more to improve its communications. Conversely, it could be said that as the respondents choose to answer the survey, they may have already felt positive towards MOL and thus skew the results. In fact, the results could be biased simply because those who did not respond may have felt negatively about MOL and its presence on Facebook but decided not to contribute towards any MOL activities.

Nonetheless, given that not all responses proved to be positive, it could be said that the set sample of responses is still representative of the population and the result can still be assumed to represent all members.

To conclude

Despite the rating of the usefulness of MOL Facebook pages by the respondents being mostly ‘neutral’, there was a unanimous agreement from the respondents that MOL should continue to use Facebook.

A comment that followed the question of whether respondents thought MOL should continue to use Facebook was “why not?”  If MOL were looking for an argument for not using Facebook as a means to communicate to a wider audience, then the above unanimous response defeats this. As one respondent commented, “it’s a very economical means of mass communication and reaches a “young” sector of the potential audience.” And as many respondents pointed out in various ways, “a LOT of people use Facebook!”

Perhaps the success behind having a presence on Facebook relies on the fact that “most people don’t have time to check multiple websites” and “it’s good to offer multiple ways for people to get information about your museum and events”.

This blog post looks at the methodology I used to evaluate how effective the Museum of London’s (MOL) presence was on Facebook at the time of my research.

(My last post on the study of social software and its effectiveness on Museum of London looked at the results of the Museum of London’s blog site and the post before that looked at the methodology I used to research the effectiveness of the Museum’s blog.)

Primary research method for analysing effectiveness of MOL on Facebook

Method: use of survey

The primary way in which I researched the effectiveness of MOL on Facebook was through a questionnaire posted to all MOL Facebook fans and members of all MOL Facebook groups.

This provided qualitative answers such as whether members found MOL on Facebook useful and whether they visited MOL and the MOL website.

See the full survey I posted on Facebook (Word 78kb, opens in a new window)

Secondary research method for analysing the effectiveness of social software on MOL

In addition to this, contacted members of the Museums Computer Group and the London Web Managers’ Forum for information about use of social software in their organisations and the possible research they have done or come across on these. Unfortunately this method did not yield many useful answers in regards to evaluations done on the effective use of blogs and Facebook on museums. However, I did receive some useful information about the various social software being used by other museums.

I also reviewed the literature on blogs, Facebook, web analytics, surveys, research methods and museums and social media.

Lessons learned

Surveys have both benefits and limitations (see below), however, I learned that I missed a brilliant opportunity to ask more about the use of other social media that MOL fans and group members used to communicate and engage with the Museum and its various websites.

I realised that I could have asked whether Facebook fans and group members read our blog site and made a connection between this part of the research with the blog part of the research. I could have asked about our Flickr images and our YouTube videos and our Twitter sites… Quite simply, I could have better designed the questionnaire and asked more questions specific to social media.

However, the results I received were still very interesting and changed the outcome of what we do on Facebook. I will blog the results next week, so do check back.

Recognised benefits and limitations of online surveys

Surveys are efficient ways of collecting information from across a large number of people, and online surveys have the advantage of being able to reach people across the world without geographical barriers and can be created and distributed cheaply, and the data gathered can be analysed quickly and accurately.

However, online surveys depend on individuals to be self-motivating in responding on their own initiative with honesty, and therefore the response rate may be low. In addition, individuals may simply ignore the request to complete it, or respondents may abandon the survey mid-way if there is no incentive to complete it.

Although surveys can have lots of questions, it can be time consuming to create, distribute, and analyse on return and while it allows individuals to read the questions first before completing it and prevents interviewer bias, individuals may not complete the survey if they read all the questions, and surveys can still be biased if the questions are asked in the wrong way. It also means that respondents cannot ask for any clarification in the same way that there can be no intervention from interviewers to prompt for clarity on answers or probe for further information.

Finally, those who do respond to the survey may have very different opinions from those who do not respond, and therefore the result may end up being biased and skewed as the sample results are less representative of the whole population.

Given the limitations on surveys, the fact remains that it is still a very useful way to gather qualitative information from individuals, and not just the quantitative. As long as I was able to keep the limitations in mind and account for this in my research, the result proved to be worthy.

Last week, Boris Johnson gave a very entertaining and insightful lecture on Samuel Johnson at the Museum of London’s annual dinner. The Mayor’s famously dishevelled locks also found their historical antecedent in the shape of an Edwardian coachman’s wig which bears an uncanny resemblance to Johnson’s own coiffure.

You can listen to Boris Johnson’s lecture on the Museum of London website.

In my last post on this topic, I explained that I gathered a number of web statistics for the Museum of London website (MOL) and the Museum of London blog site (this site referred to as MyMOL). Below is a brief explanation accompanying each area for which statistics were analysed during the reporting period (the web statistics gathered, analysed and compared were for the duration of one year from 1 April 2008 to 31 March 2009):

• Unique visits – “typically consists of one or more page views”
• Unique page views – “the number of times a page was viewed”
• Unique visitors – people “with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site”
• Repeat visitors – “unique visitors with activity consisting of two or more visits”
• New visitors – “unique visitors with activity including a first-ever visit to a site”
• Average duration of visits – “length of time in a session”
• Referrals – “the source of traffic to a page or visit”.

(All definitions from Web Analytics Association)

The results

I found from my results that during the period of analysis, the total number of unique visits and unique visitors to MyMOL was equivalent to 1% of those on MOL, and the total number of unique page views to MyMOL was equivalent to 0.5% of those on MOL.

This was despite the fact that MyMOL never received any publicity and was still very new in comparison to MOL.

The trend in visits, visitor numbers and page views for MOL and MyMOL showed that though the pattern for MOL and MyMOL started of differently in the first three months, by the fourth month the pattern on both sites were very similar.

Figure 1: Trend comparison for MOL and MyMOL visits, page views and visitor numbers

I also discovered that the trend for repeat visitors to MyMOL started of much higher than MOL, but by the end of the year of analysis, the repeat visitors to MOL was in significantly in the lead.

Figure 2: Repeat visitors trend for MOL and MyMOL

To try to answer the reason behind why that may have been, I looked at some possibilities:

• MOL has rich and engaging content
• MOL is a larger, well established & well publicised in comparison to MyMOL
• MyMOL was unavailable between December 2008 and January 2009 when there were technical problems that resulted in content migration
• The number of posts published on MyMOL during and post content migration was much less than before and since the analysis period
• Visitors may have made visits from more than one computer, or have different IP addresses, or have simply deleted their cookies.

One of the problems with looking at repeat visitors as a form of analysis on the level of engagement with a site is that if someone is repeatedly coming back to a site, it does not necessarily mean they enjoyed their visit. It could simply be that they did not find the information they were looking for the first time. Therefore, even though both sites received a large number of repeat visitors, it did not conclude that all repeat visitors returned to the websites for more information because they were interested in the content.

However, for this particular study, I concluded that MOL looked to be more engaging and able to retain its visitors more than MyMOL.

The new visitors to MyMOL, on the other hand, were exceeding the trend of MOL by the end of the year of analysis.

Figure 3: New visitors’ trend for MOL and MyMOL

This is important on one level as “the number of new visitors you are able to attract to your web site is a direct measure of the efficacy of your reach” (Peterson 2004).

Average time on site

Analysing the average time visitors spend on websites can be interesting. However, the conclusions drawn can be both positive and negative, for if visitors spend much time on a particular site, it can be encouraging as it can show that visitors are engaging with the content and are interested and consuming information. On the other hand, it could be negative and show that visitors cannot find what they are looking for, and so are spending the time trying to find information.

Looking at the trend for the duration of visits, the average time on MOL appears to be much steadier than that on MyMOL.

Figure 4: Average time on site trend for MOL and MyMOL

There appears to be some similarity in the pattern for the seven months in the middle of the year of analysis, however, the actual rise and fall in the average time spent on MyMOL is significantly uneven. There appears to be huge drops that follow large rises, with no apparent reason that can be seen from the web statistics alone.

There is the strong possibility that a single page was viewed on MyMOL during a visit with a timestamp for the start of the visit (which as a blog site, I thought it may have been the case), but as there were no more visits to other pages, the time spent on that single page may have been zero.

New audience for MOL

A new audience for MOL website would determine the success of MyMOL because it would prove that there are values in having social software sites such as blogs that can be quantified. This can be tested by looking at the number of new visitors that are gained through referrals from MyMOL.

I saw from the new visitors and unique visitors trend that MyMOL is attracting at least 1% of new audience for MOL that may or may not have visited the MOL website before.

Figure 5: Actual number of referrals from MOL to MyMOL and MyMOL to MOL

Looking at the actual number of referrals from MyMOL to MOL website and vice versa, it is very clear that firstly, there are not many referrals being made between the sites, and secondly, the referrals that are made, are of similar pattern on both sites.

Only 0.065% of all visitors from MOL went on to visit MyMOL in the year of analysis, whilst 4.85% MyMOL visitors ended up on MOL. So if visitors to MyMOL were to increase, the possibility is greater that more new visitors will end up on MOL.

However, increasing visits to MyMOL alone is not enough to retain visitors or to refer visitors onto MOL. It is about writing good content on MyMOL that provides relevant links to MOL website and encourages visitors to go there.

I actually took this to be the most significant of findings in my results as it made me ensure that more blog posts were written regularly and that every single post had at least one link back to the Museum of London website.

Enquiries and comments

To look at the level of engagement on each site, I had also looked at the number of email enquiries to info@museumoflondon.org.uk that came via MOL as a proportion to the number of visits on the website. The average enquiry per visit for the year turned out to be 0.0027 enquiries for each visit on MOL.

On MyMOL I looked at the number of comments over the year as a proportion of the number of visits and it turned out to be that there were 0.0041 comments for each visit. Both of the averages are very small. Nevertheless, the average level of engagement on MyMOL is double that of MOL.

To conclude

Well written content and regularity of posts is vital for the success of a blog site and to increase visits to the Museum website, well placed links back to the site must be in each post.

References

Black, G. The engaging museum: developing museums for visitor involvement. Routledge, 2005. Print.

Peterson, E. T. Web Analytics Demystified: a Marketer’s Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business. Celilo Group Media, 2004. Print. p.110

Web Analytics Association. (b) “Web Analytics Definitions.” Web Analytics Association. 22 September. 2008. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/attachments/committees/5/WAA_Web_Analytics_Definitions_20080922_For_Public_Comment.pdf>

Last week I attended a workshop arranged by Culture 24 that was led by Seb Chan of the Powerhouse Museum and I thought I’d put up my notes here of some things that you may find of interest as I have been busy exploring effectiveness of social media on the Museum of London and our websites.

These were notes jotted down very quickly that I have since then tried to make sense of, so please forgive me if it is a bit disjointed, and please do ask if you want me to expand on any areas I have learned about that I remember. I will try and put up the presentation slides if/when they are sent to me.

The workshop agenda for “Strategic social media for the cultural sector” can be found at http://culture24socialmedia.eventbrite.com.

Audience

Seb began by talking about the Powerhouse Museum website and explained that the content across the sites are segmented by audience. So for example, the children’s website does not hold as much information about the Powerhouse as the main site, but has lots of activities for children to download. These activities can be printed and completed offline and Powerhouse see this as successful marketing of the Museum in addition to being an engaging activity for children.

Connection between Museum and Museum websites

Seb stressed that the Museum and connection to the Museum website should be emphasised in the Museums (galleries in particular). So for example, if an object in the Museum gallery has an equivalent on the website, there should be a note saying something along the lines of ‘Download this on the Museum’s website’ or ‘Find out more about this object on the Museum’s website’.

Seb questioned why are videos in galleries not available online? He has observed that in galleries people don’t have time to watch full videos, but actually look for it online, which I found interesting as recently I received an email from a visitor who also wanted to know if a particular video in one of our galleries was online for them to watch. Unfortunately, my answer was no, but I have since then started to investigate a way of getting hold of that video to add to our YouTube account.

Seb pointed out that yes some videos may be old and Museums may not have permission for reuse, but any new videos commissioned should go through all the paperwork that make it possible to have it online.

Seb also said that the social media for children is offline, in people’s homes, where children print off an activity and take it along to do with friends. The Museum is being promoted and marketed in a successful way and the giving of stuff away, whether it is souvenirs at workshops or fairs, or stuff online, ensures freebies come back to the Museum (I guessed this to be visits to the Museum and Museum website and the free publicity).

On the other hand, adult social media is more online and this is evidenced from the Sydney Observatory website where 60% of visits are to the blog section.

Web at heart of Powerhouse Museum

I found of particular interest that the Powerhouse Museum have built in to the job descriptions of its curators that as part of their jobs, they have to blog weekly. Each curator is also trained to write user-friendly content into the collections database which is made available online.

Seb disclosed that all the Powerhouse job descriptions mention in it that applicants must have web publishing experience*. And in the Powerhouse web team there is a web producer who is dedicated to social media and monitoring social media activities. This person works with the marketing team to publish content on social media sites such as Facebook.

In addition, Seb conveyed that the Powerhouse Museum website activities are at the heart of the Museum and its strategies and policies and has buy-in from top down.

*CORRECTION (12 November 2009): Apologies, Seb actually meant that Powerhouse are heading towards adding in all their job descriptions that applicants must have web publishing experience, not that they actually have it already!

Flickr

In discussions about Flickr and photographs, I raised the question about conflicting copyright of objects and the photograph and possibly the photographer. Seb believed that we should push the responsibility back to the user if we cannot take charge of our photography policy, and so we should have terms and condition clearly outlined on our account that we are not responsible for what other people submit to the pool or put on Flickr and the user must obey the Flickr terms and conditions.

Collection online

We should offer the collection content under creative commons to users (the photographs will have different copyright – so that is separate to the content you offer for use). However, be aware that the enquiries about the collections as well as the request for private viewings will rise – so make sure you have a good policy for dealing with these.

Employees and use of digital media

Having seen the BBC’s guidelines and Seb’s blog post on this, I enquired about how Powerhouse deals with the use of social media by its employyes as I thought other people in the room may not have seen these. Seb said that it’s important to have clear guidance like the BBC that ensures if employees identify themselves as belonging to a particular organisation in their private social media activities, then they are bound by the same rules as if they were communicating on behalf of the Museum.

(You may also find the the blog entry ‘Employee Policies For Social Media Participation‘ of interest.)

Using social media

Your website is not necessarily your social place, so don’t get obsessed with why certain activities are not happening on your own site. It may be happening elsewhere, such as on Facebook or on Flickr.

Social media is about the 1% of visitors who are engaged with the Museum and are in the cycle of making repeat visits. These are your most important visitors, and these are the visitors that you will target your social media content at.

React quickly to any comments or feedback. Seb gave an example of a recent event that took place at the Powerhouse Museum which resulted in bad feedback from visitors on Twitter. When this was spotted by Seb & co, an official apology personally from the Chief Executive at Powerhouse Museum was put on the Powerhouse websites as well as social media sites such as Facebook. Lesson to be learned form this is that if you are going to use social media that is rapidly changing and requires quick responses, you need to act quickly and appropriately.

Seb mentioned the five rules of Museum content:

1. Discoverable – it is where I am and where I look for it
2. Meaningful – I can understand it
3. Responsive – to my interests, moods, location
4. Useable/Shareable – I can pass it on and share
5. Available in all three locations – online, onsite and offsite.

The full detailed rules are on his blog site at: www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2009/10/29/five-rules-for-museum-content-via-amsterdam

It is important to make your content relevant as you will be competing for people’s attention, so you should ask six important questions before using any social media and running any projects that have a web element:

1. What do you want to achieve?
2. Who are you trying to engage?
3. Where do they spend time online?
4. What do you have for them? Can you open it up to enhance what they do?
5. What are the best methods to use?
6. How will you measure and evaluate it?

Key message I surmised from the workshop

The web is about communications, not information; hence the abstraction on the web and it is our role as web managers/producers/editors/developers to ensure that the communication takes place as seamlessly as possible and the abstraction is reduced if not eliminated.

If you fail at a particular project, don’t just abandon it. Evaluate the reasons behind the failure and how it could have been avoided and learn from it (and share it with others so they learn via you!). Also, don’t think all failures are failures. Each failure results in some form of success, e.g. a pilot scheme in galleries for web content to be available on mobile phones may not be used significantly by visitors to the Museum, however, it may result in a better, user-friendly website created for phones that’s accessible by people who may not be visiting the Museum but visiting the Museum website via their phones remotely.

There are a number of ways in which I gathered information and analysed the data to evaluate the effectiveness of social software in increasing visits to Museum of London and the Museum’s main website. I used a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, including drawing upon my own experience as Web Content Manager working on these websites.

In today’s post, I will explain some of the methodology I used to answer the set of questions I identified at the start of my research to help me measure the effectiveness of the Museum of London blog (this site referred to as MyMOL) on the Museum of London website. These questions can be seen in my first blog post on this subject.

Primary research method for analysing effectiveness of Museum blog (MyMOL)

First method: use of web analytics

I used the website logs to analyse and compare the patterns in visit and visitor numbers of the Museum of London website with that of MyMOL. The web statistics gathered, analysed and compared were for the duration of one year (1 April 2008 to 31 March 2009). This period of time allowed for patterns to emerge, and correlations between the sites to be discerned, if any.

The web statistics gathered for each site were the:

• number of unique visits,
• number of unique page views,
• number of unique visitors,
• number of repeat visitors,
• number of new visitors,
• average duration of visits, and
• number of referrals made between sites

(Terminologies above will be described in greater details in the research findings.)

To ensure website statistics gathered were comparative for the Museum of London website and MyMOL, I used statistics from Google Analytics for both.

The percentage of new and repeat visitors and the duration of visits were used to demonstrate how engaged visitors were with each site and its content, which also provided an insight into how valuable visitors found the information (though these values have limitations – see ‘Recognised benefits and limitations of web analytics’ below for more on this).

To help answer the question of whether MyMOL was attracting new audience and encouraging more visits and engagement with the Museum of London website, or whether it was only taking visitors away from it, I looked at any referrals that resulted in visits made from the Museum of London website to MyMOL, and from MyMOL to the Museum of London website, for the same period of time.

Second method: Museum of London website emails and MyMOL blog comments

The second research method I used for finding out how engaged visitors were with the Museum of London website and MyMOL, was to compare the number of enquiries that come through the Museum of London website with the number of comments made on MyMOL blog entries for the duration of the year.

As it was difficult to track every single enquiry that came via the website due to the fact that email addresses are explicitly published on all Museum of London websites and offline publications, I only counted enquiries submitted to the info@museumoflondon.org.uk email, which is the generic email address for all web enquiries, including emails via the contact forms on Museum of London website.

I calculated the number of enquiries received with number of visits made to Museum of London website to arrive at an average number of enquiries per visit, per month.

To compare this with MyMOL, I looked at the number of comments made to blog entries and calculated the average number of comments per visit, per month.

This indicated how engaged visitors were with the sites, both individually, as well as in comparison with each other.

Recognised benefits and limitations of web analytics

Web Analytics is the statistical measure of a visitor’s journey through websites and is described as “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage” (Web Analytics Association 2009).

Canadian Heritage Information Network claims that success of a website is “determined by its usage”. Web analytics helps measure this usage by enabling site managers to gather information about where visitors come from, what pages they view and how long they stay on the site. Web analytics also enable site managers to find out how many visitors are visiting the site over a period of time and if those visitors make repeat visits.

However, whilst this is true, there are problems with how the information is gathered in the logs for analysis. For example, visits and visitor numbers are not accurate. “Lots of tools use IP address to assign visitor status, but when a customer is using an ISP such as AOL they are on a dynamic IP. This means that if they come to your site today on IP ‘A’, tomorrow they might come on IP ‘B’. This would be tracked as 2 visitors each with 1 visit, even though it was really 1 visitor with 2 visits” (Kyrnin 2009). On the other hand, “some visitors may use more than one computer on a given day” and “more than one visitor may use the same computer” but it all appears “as one unique visitor” (Dash 2006). In addition, if cookies are used to track visits and visitors, the result is compromised as many people delete cookies or refuse to accept them (Kyrnin 2009).

Page views can also be misleading as people may see information on other sites instead of the original website, and so pages will not be counted. Also, the duration of visits could show up as longer then is true if visitors look at one site but keep open the browser for another site, to which they come back to after a length of time. On the other hand, if visitors view only one page, duration of time will not be logged at all.

There is also an assumption that processes for measurements “relate to an action by a human visitor”(Web Analytics Association’s Web Analytics Definitions). However, sometimes website crawlers visit websites to index pages for search engines. Some web analytic software includes these visits, whereas Google Analytics excludes them, which gives a more accurate result. However, if JavaScript is turned off on a person’s browser, Google Analytics will not be able to gather any data for any visits from that browser, thus decreasing the visitor and visit numbers, although switching off JavaScript is not a common occurrence.

Even with the recognised limitations of web analytics, other then carrying out intensive web surveys (which has limitations of its own), using the only means currently available to measure the success of a site, is still very strong. As the limitations apply to both the Museum of London website and MyMOL web statistics, and as both analysis are done using Google Analytics, I thought the results will balance against each other and as long as I am flexible and take into account these limitations, the information will still prove to be valuable.

References

Canadian Heritage Information Network. “Web Analytics ? Measuring for Success.” Canadian Heritage Information Network. 15 January 2009. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Digital_Content/Web_Analytics/index.html>

Dash, R.K. “What Is Web Analytics? Web Metrics?” Weblog post. Chameleon TechnoBabble. 26 April 2006. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.chameleonintegration.com/2006/04/26/what-is-web-analytics-web-metrics/>

Kyrnin, J. “What Web Analytics Can be Tracked: An Overview of Metrics That Can Be Tracked.” About.com. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://webdesign.about.com/od/analytics/a/what_can_track.htm>

Web Analytics Association. (a) “About Web Analytics Association.” Web Analytics Association. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/aboutus/>

Web Analytics Association. (b) “Web Analytics Definitions.” Web Analytics Association. 22 September. 2008. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/attachments/committees/5/WAA_Web_Analytics_Definitions_20080922_For_Public_Comment.pdf> p.7

Following on from last week’s post about my research on the use of two social software by Museum of London; blogs and Facebook, this week I will write a little bit about a few interesting findings I came across during my research.

As part of my research, I had emailed the top ten London museums (according to UKguide.org, see below for list) and received a response for my questions. According to the responses I got back and the research I carried out on the web, out of the ten museums (of which, Museum of London is one), four museums had a blog site or were about to launch a blog site, while the remaining six were exploring the possibility of creating one. In addition, out of the ten museums, nine already had a presence on Facebook.

I also came across the results of a questionnaire of 270 managers in cultural institutions from across the world carried out by Communicating the Museum at a conference in June 2009. It showed that 61% of these managers had a high knowledge of social networking despite 32% having no affiliation with any social networks themselves. It was also discovered that more institutions intended to move into social media, though a majority of cultural institutions were still using their websites for most communications and were not using social software tools at all. Remarkably, however, where cultural organisations did use any social software, the most popular tool used was Facebook to promote events and organisation brands.

These are just a few general findings that the student part of me (I was studying for my Masters at UCL and this research was for a dissertation – see my last post for more information) tried to be impartial about but the employee part of me found exceedingly interesting. The employee in me was also happy with the conclusion reached by Freshminds who carried out research on behalf of the DCMS, that using existing social networks can “open doors for cultural organisations trying to attract new, more diverse audiences”, and felt spurred on to do further research.

My next post will outline the methodology I used to research the impact of the Museum of London blog site on the main Museum of London website, so do check back.

Top ten London Museums

“London Museum Guide” on Ukguide.org Says that the top ten museums in London are:

• British Museum,
• Science Museum,
• Tate Gallery,
• Victoria & Albert Museum,
• National Gallery,
• Imperial War Museum,
• Natural History Museum,
• National Maritime Museum,
• London Transport Museum,
• Museum of London.

Updated 9 November 2009:

Communicating the Museum, Results of the Questionnaire: Digital Mix PDF of presentation slides can be found at www.agendacom.com/Resultats-Questionnaire-Digital-Mix.html

We’ve been using a number of social media tools for the past few years to connect to new and diverse audience, taking the Museum of London to visitors on platforms they are already familiar with, whether it is a social networking site such as Facebook, a video sharing site like YouTube, or simply a blog site like this one.

Doing this of course takes a lot of time and effort, and this year I decided that I wanted to find out how effective some of this social software is for the Museum in reaching out to, and attracting, new users who end up visiting the Museum’s website, and even better, if users actually end up visiting one or both of our Museums.

As I was also studying part-time for my Masters in Electronic Communication and Publishing at University College London, I decided to base my dissertation on this topic and started my research. I very soon realised how little I knew about web stats and surveys and the sheer number of blogs talking about blogs! By the end of my research, my head was reeling with all the information I acquired and my feelings were yo-yoing from happiness at the results, to being overwhelmed. I wondered ‘how on Earth was I going to write up so many findings, but even more daunting, how was I going to use it?!?’

Social software, what is it?

Now before I carry on, if you have stumbled across this entry and are new to the whole ‘social software’ terminology, then a very brief explanation would be that it is a general term that encompasses a number of tools that enable visitors to interact and exchange information, mainly through the web. These can include Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and many more such sites.

What did I research?

I decided that I didn’t have the time to look at all our use of social software, so I concentrated instead on our blog site (this one), and our presence on Facebook. During the research, I tried to answer the following questions:

• Does the Museum of London lose visitors through having content sitting on separate social software sites?
• Do visits to content on social software sites result in visits to the Museum of London and its website?
• Are visitors engaging with Museum of London through social software sites?
• Do visitors find information on Museum of London social software sites of value?
• And, should website visit statistics of content sitting on social software sites be included in the official statistics reports?

In the coming weeks, I will be blogging about my research process and what I found, so do check back.

Day 5 (the last day)

For the final day of the project everyone was hard at work editing their interviews. The group did brilliantly editing 15 minute interviews into 5 minutes or less in just a few hours. At the end of a long afternoon we listened back to some of them. They were fantastic and really opened up some of the personal stories behind these Riots.

What next?

The interviews are currently being transcribed and the many photographs sorted. We’ll then be uploading the audio, transcriptions and photographs to our main Museum website, so watch this space!

See more of the photos from the project here.