analytics

Many museums and media archives have already digitized large parts of their collections, and we may expect even more images and video to become digitally available in the near future. Are the standard web and desktop interfaces for accessing digital collections adequate for understanding these collections?

Since its introduction in 2005, Google Analytics has become "the most widely used website statistics service, currently in use on around 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics).

It is common practice among museums to publish quarterly or annual reports that include the museum attendance figures, online visits and more recently information about their social network activities. These figures are generally accepted as indicators of the effectiveness of museums activities both online and offline.

Web analytics are an essential skill for every museum web developer and content producer. With the new complexities of a 'web presence' rather than just a 'web site', museum professionals need more than ever the ability to measure and track visitors so as to both improve their products and content, as well as demonstrate value to managers, directors and funders.

How to measure and define the success of cultural websites and online services is a problem common to all parts of the cultural sector – museums, archives, galleries, arts organisations, libraries, publishers. Worse, funding agencies and government departments lack the expertise to offer guidelines or set standards.