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Case Study: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s Mobile Site

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Crystal Bridges Museum of Modern Art started off with some amazing advantages from the point of view of web design — a gorgeous Crystal Bridges Museum space with incredibly photogenic offering, immediate attention from major news sources, and a full time tech guy, among other things. Still, when we began working with them last year, they were facing some real challenges with their website.

Arkansas businesses that are starting off with office space in the garage, a product or service that doesn’t have much going for it visually (or maybe isn’t yet ready to photograph), and a DIY site supported by late-night Googling may take some comfort from that fact.

One of the primary issues at that time was the mobile website. There wasn’t one. The museum was building a new WordPress website, so it was the perfect time to solve the problem. They have a unique situation, but the issues that CBMAA had to face in planning and implementing their new mobile presence were much the same ones every business faces when deciding to go mobile:

  • How urgent is the need for a mobile site? CBMAA was receiving nearly one quarter of all their visits via smartphones, with tablets contributing another 12%, so more than one third of all their visits were seeing the website on a small screen. Mobile traffic was increasing, too, at a faster pace than desktop traffic. What’s more, the museum knew that they wanted to reach travelers, who would be very likely to use smartphones. They were also working on a collection of digital resources to be used on Android and Apple devices. Clearly, creating a terrific mobile site was essential. Your company may think it’s not important for you to have a mobile presence, but you should check your analytics and find out. As older adults choose to use tablets rather than laptops and younger adults used desktops only for work, sites accessed from home are increasingly likely to have a high proportion of mobile visitors.
  • Do you need a responsive website or a special mobile site? Crystal Bridges knew that the tourists they wanted to connect with would have an immediate need for information like their hours, location, and phone number. They figured local people might get off work and want to check on events and exhibits as they made their plans for the evening. Their analytics told them some other interesting things, though.For example, the restaurant has become a separate destination, and many people look for Eleven’s menu as they decide where to lunch. They also hadn’t realized how many people checked out their walking and biking trails while they were on the go. It makes sense once you think of it, but they hadn’t thought of it. That’s why it’s smart to base decisions like these on data, not on gut feelings. The museum’s web site is so large and complex — and growing all the time — that a special mobile site makes sense for them. With the data from analytics, CBMAA was able to make a mobile site that served the needs of their mobile visitors. If you check your analytics and see that mobile visitors don’t behave differently from other visitors, a responsive design is your best choice. It may also be the most economical choice, if you don’t have a web team in house.
  • How important is search? For CBMAA, search was not an essential issue for their mobile website. People trying to find their way to the museum, checking for upcoming events, and otherwise looking for data in the course of planning a visit to the museum will have no trouble finding it. No competing major art museum will pop up and grab their potential customer’s attention. A local locksmith will have a completely different situation. If search matters for your mobile site, you need to focus on content that will communicate well with search engines as well as offering a great visitor experience. If you’re a hospital, an airport, a college, or a major landmark, usability is your only priority.

Crystal Bridges Museum of Modern Art created a special mobile site. Since then, their mobile visits have increased significantly. So have conversions among mobile visitors. Keeping an eye on the site’s analytics allows us to make sure the mobile version of the site meets the needs of its users.

The same process will help any organization make the best decisions about mobile websites.

The post Case Study: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s Mobile Site appeared first on The ARScene.


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