Using analytics to improve the Andy Warhol Museum’s website navigation and local visitors’ browsing experience
Overview
The Andy Warhol Museum website offers open access to the largest and comprehensive collection of Warhol's artworks and archival materials. As a response to the decline of non-local tourists due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum strategically shifted their target audience to local Pittsburgh visitors. A team of five digital analysts evaluated the museum’s web analytics data to find ways to increase their reach to local audiences, as well as enhance the performance of their recently restructured navigation. The team discovered that the website experience can be improved by making some changes to the layout and content, and also taking advantage of the advanced features in Google Analytics.
My Role
Digital Analytics Analysis
Comparative Analysis
Data visualization
Tools
Google Analytics
Google Data Studio
Semrush
Project Type
Digital Analytics
Team
Katherin Aristizabal, Sean Gao, Sapphire Hilton, Cathy Hu, Myself
Period
Mar 2022 - May 2022
The Problem
Lack of insight to increase the reach to local audiences.
An initial interview was conducted with the Andy Warhol Museum’s contract web designer, Marty, to discuss the project scope and objectives around the website and web analytics. The museum was seeking recommendations for information architecture changes that support their new strategy shift focused on local audiences but had not done any analysis in the past.
Questions to check the local audiences’ behavior and navigation performance
In addition to understanding the digital footprint of the local audience, the Warhol Museum also wished to evaluate the success of the newly restructured navigation menu. The finalized goal for this analysis was to determine how to increase the museum’s reach to locals and content findability, and the museum’s Google Analytics data was primarily analyzed for the scope of the project. To achieve the objectives at hand, the team came up with the following research questions to keep in mind during the analysis process.
How does the behavior of local vs. non-local audiences compare?
How is the restructured navigation system (implemented in June 2021) performing?
What content are the local audiences looking at?
Our Analysis Process
How the data was analyzed
After the initial interview, the team received access to the museum’s Google Analytics to understand the current user web behavior and performance. To examine the behavior of local audiences, a segment of users located in Pittsburgh was created, and compared to another segment made with users non located in Pittsburgh.
For secondary analyses, the team also did a comparative analysis and a SEO Audit. I was in charge of conducting the comparative analysis of 7 other artist-specific museums which included the Van Googh Museum, Musée Marmottan Monet, Musée National Picasso-Paris, Bourdelle Museum, Dali Theatre-Museum, Frida Kahlo Museum, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Although the findings did not contribute heavily to the report, it provided insights to what similar museums were doing well at and how the Warhol Museum compares to them.
The SEO Audit was done using various tools such as Semrush, Screaming Frog, Woorank, Lighthouse, SEOMoz, Google Mobile-Friendliness Test, Google AMP Test, and Google Page Speed Insights to optimize the museum website’s content and understand what the users search for to derive insights on making the site appealing to the users and search engines.
Lastly, the team created a customized monthly dashboard using Google Data Studio.
Analysis Period
The Google Analytics data from April 1st, 2021 to April 1st, 2022 was analyzed in order to understand the latest web performance, as well as view the user behavior before and after June 2021 when the restructured navigation system was implemented .
Metrics
Unique Pageviews, Sessions (Avg. Session Duration, Pages / Session, Number of Sessions), Time on Page, Bounce Rate, Users (New and Returning Users, Device Category, Gender, Age), Source/Medium, Page Path Analysis
The Overall Audience
Before looking specifically at the behaviors of the local audience, an overview of the general audience was also observed in order to compare the local audience to later in the process.
There were a total of 973,744 sessions during the time frame (Figure A).
Out of the total users, 86.7% of them were new visitors, and more than half of them were accessing the website from their mobile device (Figure B).
To understand where the local audiences lie within all users, the Pittsburgh local audience segment was compared to all users as well as Pennsylvania users. This Pittsburgh locals accounted for 46.18% of users from Pennsylvania, which was 34.50% of the total users (Figure C).
Website Findings
Local audiences predominantly use mobile devices to access the website, but do not spend as much time as they would when accessing from desktop.
Mobile devices are the most popular device to use for all users and especially so for local Pittsburgh users. 74.5% of the locals access the website from a mobile device.
However, the locals were found to spend more time on the site if they were using a desktop device when the average session duration for each device category were was compared.
Local Pittsburgh audience’s interactions with the Warhol website on mobile, desktop, and tablet
There were no major differences in the pages that users visited from each device except for one, which the desktop users viewed the Calendar page more and mobile users viewed the Admission + Hours page more. The type of content on these pages suggests that desktop users spend more time on the site because they are searching for a reading more information (like events in the Calendar), while mobile users do more quick action-oriented tasks like looking up the museum hours and purchasing tickets.
2. Users are not using the site search within the navigation bar.
Analyzing the local’s path from the homepage revealed that more people were visiting the website after the current navigation bar was implemented in June, 2021. There was an increase in the number of entrances (+2.03%) and a decrease in the number of exits (-1.14%) from the homepage.
Usage of the site search with the new navigation bar also slightly increased (+ 0.28%). However, only 1.03% of users used site search within the time frame in this report. The most searched term was "Search" (18.43%), because the term is part of a usability issue where users are double-clicking on the search icon and then prompted to a "results for search" page.
Overview of the locals’ site search during the project time frame
3. Local audiences tend to check the Calendar for upcoming events more.
Pittsburgh users viewed more pages, spent longer time on the website, and didn’t leave the site right away than the non-Pittsburgh users, making them important contributors to the website traffic.
These Pittsburgh users were also checked the calendar for upcoming events more and not visit Andy Warhol’s Life page. This was likely due to the locals being more familiar with Andy Warhol, and more inclined to attend special events rather than relearning about the artist. It is also assumed that local visitors are more willing to find and attend events happening on the day-of, since they live close to the museum compared to non-local visitors.
Website sections that the non-Pittsburgh audience (left) and the Pittsburgh audience (right) tend to go to from the homepage.
4. The lack of event tracking is a missed opportunity to gather insightful behavioral data and enhance keyword strategy.
The museum’s Google Analytics account currently tracks 7 goals or predetermined end actions that they want the user to achieve. However, since August 2021 there has been a decline in goal conversions. while abandonment rates increased.
Overview of Goal Completions and Total Abandonment Rate (Local User vs. All Users)
5. Referral traffic behaves better than paid social traffic.
The top 3 sources that bring users to the website are Google organic search, directly typing in the URL, and Facebook.. However, 6.55% of the whole traffic were entering the website but 94.4% of them were directly bouncing out to other pages.
Referral traffic occupies around 15% and paid social traffic occupies about 8%. However, the bounce rates, pages per session and average session durations showed that users from the Referral traffic tended to have a very low bounce rate at around 28%, tend to stay longer on the page, and engage with an average of 4 to 5 pages per visit.
Percentage of Bounce Rate and Average Session Duration by Users
Recommendations
Optimize for mobile responsiveness
To accommodate the majority of all users who use mobile devices users, a more mobile-first design approach is helpful. For example, rearranging the layout of the ticket checkout page to make it easier for mobile users to read the information is one way to improve the mobile user experience.
Comparison between the current checkout page (left) and the redesigned checkout page aimed to improve readability (right).
2. Increase visibility & functionality of site search.
To avoid the usability issue of double-clicking on the search icon and being redirected to a results for ‘search’ page, the team recommends including a more extensive and detailed search bar in the landing page while including examples of information users can search for and links of content pages that will interest the users. Adding an advanced search option can allow users to do a deep dive of the vast content housed on this website.
Proposed Search Landing Pages
3. Present upcoming events upfront on the homepage.
The calendar information can be presented upfront on the homepage to promptly address the needs of the local audience. Currently, the link to the Calendar is just within the navigation. A popular way to showcase event information or a snippet of the calendar on the homepage is to make a “What’s On” section. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum website’s homepage for example, lists the community programs and events happening on that day or within the month in their “What’s On” section, and has a designated section at the top of the page to post any urgent news or updates.
The Georgia O’Keeffe website home page’s What’s On section (a) and news section (b)
4. Track events on Google Analytics.
To understand the user behaviors associated with achieving the museum’s goals, like registering for an event at the museum, event tracking would be beneficial. Buttons, links, or images that users interacted with prior to completing a registration goal could be tracked. For example, understanding how users filter events by calendar date, by event type, or by audience type can provide insight into what is popular amongst the users and how they prefer to filter the events listed.
Events landing page with the suggestions of what to track in red.
5. Reconsider budgets on paid social traffic.
Search Console and Smart Goals can be set in Google Analytics to improve the organic traffic coming to the website and the Google Ads campaign performance so the current Warhol website can optimize both organic and paid traffic coming from Google. They will also help determine the behaviors before users land on the official site, dig deeper into improving user experience, and explore potential users. Since the museum’s most engaged users come from Google, the team recommends reevaluating the investment portion between paid Google ads and paid social media ads. With Google's Smart Goals tool, Warhol's Google Adwords campaigns would be automated to promote popular landing pages, eliminating the time and effort it takes to create, publish, and update campaigns.
Conclusion
The client responded positively to our findings and recommendations
The team presented the research findings and suggestions in a slide deck presentation format to the client, who found it helpful and actionable. The client was convinced about adding event tracking for their goals, and following our suggestion to improve the search experience in the navigation menu.
Reflection
It was the first time for me to derive insights to improve a product from solely quantitative data, and it was helpful to combine the Google Analytic’s data with the SEO Audit and Comparative Analysis to make better interpretations. Due to the lack of event tracking, the team was unable to exactly identify what the visitors like and dislike when completing a specific goal.
Next Steps
Maybe a year or so after the event tracking is set up, I would like to look at the museum’s Google Analytics data again to find areas of the website with the most user interaction and capitalize new strategies. Incorporating qualitative analysis, such as a usability test or an A/B test would also allow us to identify whether our recommendations were actually creating an expected change.