Making sense of numbers: a journey of spreading the online metrics culture across Tate

ElenaVillaespesa — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:36:01 +0000

MW2012

Published Paper:

Making Sense of Numbers: A Journey of Spreading the Analytics Culture at Tate

Keywords:

metrics

Keywords:

Web analytics

Keywords:

evaluation methods

Keywords:

audience research

Keywords:

Performance

Keywords:

success measures

Abstract:

Measuring online performance has been one of the hot topics for museum online professionals in the UK. Tate was one of the participants in the Culture 24’s action research project which focused on measuring online success. All participants agreed that reporting purely on number of visits and time spent on site fulfilled the governmental requirements, but has not necessarily helped to evaluate online presence against institutional objectives.

We realised we had to start using the large amount of available metrics in a more intelligent way. In this paper we would like to present the steps we have taken to increase the benefits that online metrics can bring to other institutions and and have brought to Tate and the challenges we met on the way of spreading the analytics culture across the organisation.

Using online analytics maturity models we will assess Tate’s management of online analytics looking at each of the following aspects:

Management
Objectives
Scope
Resources
Methodology and process
Technology

There were many different reasons that motivated us to embark on this journey: most importantly, our wish to understand who our online visitors are and how they engage with Tate’s content to offer the best possible user experience. The explosion in digital social engagement also changed the way we perceive, develop and evaluate content for our digital and physical spaces and the metrics have had to follow in the same fashion.

The paper will uncover our analysis process and present outcomes of our metrics audit, the process of creating online analytics reports for the website launch against a new set of key performance indicators, and show how we started making sense of online metrics in a more mature way.

We are also hoping to present findings from a comparative evaluation study of two campaigns to illustrate real analytics in action. The paper would have a great value as a practical case study for any organisation wanting to implement the online analytics culture across their organisations and tell stories using numbers.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Case studies in reading web metrics

Site:

http://www.tate.org.uk

Authors:

Elena Villaespesa

Tijana Tasich

Networked Multi-sensory Experiences: Beyond Browsers on the Web and in the Museum

ngamble — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:02:35 +0000

Wagmister, F., & Burke J. (2002). Networked Multi-sensory Experiences: Beyond Browsers on the Web and in the Museum. (David Bearman, Trant, Jennifer, Ed.).Museums and the Web 2002: Proceedings.

museumsandtheweb.com - Performance

Making sense of numbers: a journey of spreading the online metrics culture across Tate

Networked Multi-sensory Experiences: Beyond Browsers on the Web and in the Museum