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Yes, I'm being facetious post Museums & the Web, but this looks like an area of tremendous opportunity if you haven't embraced it yet.
Web site Search utility is often under-realized. However, it's probably the one feature on a museum website that offers your on-line visitors the closest thing to an in-house experience.
Major art museums are out in front on this- at the conference it was noted that MOMA has figured it out. Especially with their Collections Browser. It's a bit buried, but it's a cool utility. In reviewing it, Nate Solas of the Walker stated that people like being able to search in different ways and get results in meaningful ways: "Concept Browsing is a great way to surface deep content and provide a sense of fun and discovery vs. straight up Search".
Expanding the backend behind Search and Browse on your website, and reframing it on the visitor experience end makes a lot of sense from a practical to an educational and finally, a cohesive branding perspective. It's about expanding access- to even things you can't show at the moment (or ever).
The SFMOMA does a great job of making this clear with their "Explore Modern Art" being at the top of their main navigation. My wee gripe being it's not blindingly clear what ArtScope is, and "Explore Our Collection" is a bit buried. I'm averse to feeling like an outsider especially at a modern art museum.
Thoughtful interlinking amongst your content, collections, and yes, even your gift shop, looks like a worthy next step for an expansion or enhancement.
It's also a good strategy for smaller museums that may not be able to afford capital campaigns but could swing some web development.
Museums and the Web is an annual museum/tech conference that caters mostly to developers. Archimuse, runs the conference and does a good job of capturing the detail from sessions on the site.
Here are a couple of quick hits from my time in Denver– much of this we’ve written about before, but it’s worth repeating:
If you want visitors to contribute to your on-line project, hang out in the spaces where they are and respond. Don’t expect to put up a visitor created content experience or participatory design web site if you aren’t there yourself.
For example, if you want a lot of followers on your Facebook page, then you have to find like-minded folks, friend them, post relevant info to their needs (that of course reinforces your identity) and follow up. Keep the party alive.
All aspects of a website reinforce your institution, not just the graphics. Christina DePaolo from the Seattle Art Museum suggested that everything from the text on your site (no matter how informal), to the experience of surfing it, needs to reflect your institution or brand. Do so cohesively.
Sometimes, every department wants their content on the home page, but that can make for a lousy intro. If you’re still having a hard time determining what goes where, Dana Mitroff Silvers of the SFMOMA suggested that you try bringing the public in to help.
When you’re too close to the trees, make topic cards and bring them out onto the floor– let the public take a stab at organizing them into content “buckets.
Connect with your collection/exhibits on your website (even if it’s not out on the floor) and do it in a variety of ways. Finding both obvious and unexpected ways to connect back and forth to your physical collection is ideal.
Nate Solas from the Walker Art Center suggested if you are going to provide “deep links” into your site's content, be sure to give visitors a sense of where they arrived. They may be coming from a Google search.
Speaking of which, next let's look at why it's good idea for museums to do justice to their search feature.
Image courtesy of Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/teknokool/
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