It can be very worthwhile for an arts organisation to have hundreds of fans on their Facebook page, or thousands of Twitter followers – but is the time and energy spent on these platforms seeing a real return for the organisation?

If you are running a gallery, is your time on Twitter resulting in an increased footfall? If you are looking to sell books, cds, tickets online – is your time spent engaging with your Facebook community converting into sales?

Important questions indeed. Twitter, Facebook, FourSquared etc. – these are powerful tools indeed, however for many organisations, it still remains far more important to get the basics right on the website – particularly if this is where you hope to do business. So, for those looking to generate business on their website, the success of social media platforms is largely measured in the extent to which these tools bring visitors to your site.

Beginning earlier this year, four arts organisations received mentoring from Google Ireland over a number of months. Here, Michelle Dillon Marketing Officer of The Dock in Carrick on Shannon outlines lessons learnt during her mentoring, which she received from Tom Morrison-Bell, Nathalia Niznik and Alan Flanagan in Google.

If you are interested in discussing this work with those involved please visit the Arts Ireland group on LinkedIn – if you’re not already a member, it’s free to join (what’s this? find out more here).

to download a pdf of this Michelle’s report, click on this link: The Dock – Google mentoring report

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Using Google Analytics to enhance your web presence

Before the mentoring…

At the time of applying for mentoring The Dock was already engaged in a number of different aspects of online marketing – alongside our website we had a presence on facebook and twitter, we used Constant Contact for e-bulletins and had a stand-alone wordpress blog. We had specific goals we wanted to achieve such as;

• growing our email list to the same size as our postal mailing list (when mentoring started it was only 1/6),
• reassessing if our blog was worth the time that was put into it
• doubling our facebook fans and twitter followers.

Our overall plan was to build a larger and more engaged online audience within our current resources, in particular an audience that would be more receptive to our online booking system that will be introduced later in the year.

Considering our audience demographic, resources available and the size of our organisation we felt we were performing okay, however going into the mentoring scheme we realised that our online activities were being carried out in a very unsystematic manner. We were conscious that we were operating without a coherent online marketing strategy and we were concerned that perhaps we may be covering too many bases, without enough resources, and for not enough return.

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The first meeting with Google…

From the outset we learned to focus on thedock.ie as the hub of our online presence – something which we had begun to overlook as we gained more momentum and energy in the other aspects of online marketing. This shaped the outcomes of the mentoring process. While it is important to open new channels of communication with our audience, we still needed to direct them towards the main website as this is where the bulk of our information is to be found. Also, in relation to our primary aim, it is where they can actually purchase tickets. Social media accounts should complement and enhance users experience but should drive customers towards goals set out for the website (financial or not).

The Dock’s digital loop; YouTube, Twitter, Facebook & Blog direct traffic to the website

The team from Google started off the mentoring session by looking at our web analytics account, to see from where people are coming, from where they exit the site, and what are they doing while on the site.

Note – most websites come with some sort of statistics monitoring package installed however if you don’t already have Google Analytics installed you should consider it. It is extremely powerful, free and a small job for your webmaster to add to your website.

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Looking at the stats…

The two main areas we looked at were

1. Where were our visitors coming from
2. What were they doing while on our site

A synopsis of what we discovered was -

Only 10% comes from direct traffic (where the visitor knows the address), while this is declining as a lot of people use search engines even when they know the address, as it is faster. This shows that we need to promote our site more offline. Over 50% comes from search engines and of this 80% comes from a keyword with the word ‘dock’ in it.

This throws up 2 strategies:

1. How can you increase traffic coming from words not based around ‘the dock’
2. Increase awareness of The Dock to drive more traffic through this word.

Just under 40% comes from referrals (i.e. clicking on a link to thedock.ie from another site). There were some surprises here and certain websites were sending us much more traffic than we had realised. Social Media referrals: Facebook is the 16th highest referral site, twitter is 19th, the blog is 45th. Is it worth reassessing how much time we spend at this?

Our bounce rate (how many people leave the website after visiting only the page they arrive at) of 47 percent was much too high, and a good indication of how good your site is at retaining peoples attention, showing that our website could be working better to encourage more visitors to explore the site. People visited, on average 2.68 pages per visit. We had to ask ourselves were we happy with how much information people can get within this amount of page depth?

Furthermore we had 73% new visitors to the site – while it is great that we are attracting 73% of visits new that does leave the question why are only 27% returning. Ideally we would like to keep these new visitors and encourage them to visit the site more often.

The team at Google showed me how to set up ‘Goals’ in Analytics focused on the main places we wanted our customers to click – such as book now and join our mailing list to monitor how many people actually use these functions (here is a blog post detailing the process http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-setup-goals-in-google-analytics.html)

Google Analytics can be daunting; there is so much information available it is easy to get swamped. If you haven’t used it before my advice would be to set aside 45 minutes and explore it and make a note of the reports that will be useful to your specific organisations needs. If you are like me and find stats and figures difficult to get your head around without visuals, I recommend the Site Overlay tool – this basically shows your stats over your actual website and makes it easy to visualise the customers’ journey through your website. It very useful to see what is working on your current website and what isn’t. (Site overlay report is located under Content > Overview).

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Review of the website…

So after analysing the stats it became clear that our website was not working as well as it should, and rather than concentrating on our social media involvement, it was clearly the website which we needed to review, particularly in light of our aim to encourage people to use our online booking system.

Obviously in the current economic climate we were concerned about allocating scarce budgets to redesigning our website, however the team at Google showed us that it didn’t take a drastic overhaul of our website to make it work better for us. We worked with our existing web designers to “revamp” our website and make some simple changes rather than a completely new and potentially costly redesign.

When thinking about changing your website keep in mind what currently works well and of course who your audience is. As an arts organisation it is often more important that it is aesthetically pleasing but don’t add a feature just because it looks cool – ask yourself, ‘what’s its purpose?’ Does it keep people on your website? Does it convert goals? As an example, even though Flash looks great, we had to keep in mind that much of our audience are accessing our website using lower broadband speeds so a quick loading website is more important.

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A quick synopsis of changes we made

1. Highlighting our “calls to action”

• “Book Now” buttons were made prominent and ready to link to online booking facility when it becomes available shortly.
• Also “join our mailing list” was made more noticeable, placed in a more prominent position and simplified which will be discussed further below.

2. We utilised space on the site by widening the site on the page and changing positions to reflect where people look when they view a website . (Tool to view how your website looks in browers http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/)

3. We brought The Dock’s blog over to thedock.ie domain – this will be discussed further below.

4. Due to low broadband speeds in our area we were conscious to stick to our original decision to avoid Flash and have a quick loading page so we focused more on how images were displayed on the home page.

5. Adding the share button and moving the links to blog and social media to their own section to distinguish them from links to other pages on the website.

6. As well as making the front page look fresher and more up to date we gave all of our pages (website/twitter/youtube/emails) a similar colour scheme, emphasising continuation of our brand.

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Review of Blog…

From the outset of the mentoring we were concerned about the amount of time The Dock’s blog took up and what our return was on it. From looking at the WordPress statistics package we already knew views were consistently low and after analysing the statistics we discovered that the blog was only 45th highest referrer to the website. While this seemed to speak for itself, the return on investment in the blog was low. We had a dilemma as the blog was the only place for our customers to access certain pieces of information, so as a result we decided to bring the blog over to thedock.ie domain. By hosting the blog on the main site we are cutting off a fall off point and not splitting our audience between blog and site. The blog would now be incorporated as a news section. Head lines of latest articles will be displayed on the home page so as to attract new viewers to the blog but as it is hosted on the website.

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Review of Email…

As mentioned above we wanted to grow our email mailing list to the same size as our current postal one. We discovered through Google Analytics our click through rate to our “sign up to our mailing list” page was very low. A general rule of thumb is that the more hurdles there are for a customer to overcome the less likely they are to complete it. Whilst located on the front page it didn’t stand out enough and once you enter the page itself it is detailed and requires somewhat of a time commitment to fill out – particularly as we hadn’t specified which fields were required, thus making it seem that they all were. Our main priority was to get people to sign up to the monthly bulletin. To make it as simple as possible we put a form in a prominent position on the right hand side of the home page where the customer can enter their email address and click submit. This is linked to our constant contact database, and eliminates the need for us to process additions to the database.
A useful tool for analysing the movements of readers of the newsletter to the site I was introduced to was analytics tagging (see http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578 and for how to use it http://google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55518) which creates links that can be tracked through Google Analytics.

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Review of Social Media…

This was one of the more surprising aspects to our mentoring. Is it worth dedicating the amount of time you spend for the results you get? Despite having consistently more followers on twitter than facebook (we created a twitter account first and put slightly more time into keeping it updated) by checking through the stats we found that facebook actually channelled more people to our website. The google team suggested that while the energy of the twitter account was good perhaps there was too much information on twitter and it was drowning out some of the more important information. We have now actually maintained our time spent on facebook and halved our time spent on twitter while still attract followers.

It is extremely important to cross link URLs to build a comprehensive communication structure on every channel (as illustrated at beginning of report).

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Using Google Analytics to shape a strategy…

While the website revamp was being completed I was busy fusing the information gleaned from Google Analytics with the overall goals of our organisation and strategy to draft an overall online strategy. This was not a complicated document, a few pages long, to be used largely as a reference for making decisions on resources. You can use Google Analytics to help plan your time.

For example, by using google analytics to break down where your customers are coming from and what they are doing on your site you can decide where to focus on link building. We get a lot of referrals from google images however these have a high bounce rate and rarely click beyond the landing page so there is little point in putting a lot of effort into developing this. But if you look at referrals from hotel websites, you can see that the time spent on the website is much longer and with higher page visits so it is worth putting effort into working with the hotels to develop this further.

Remember the importance of monitoring and evaluation. Google Anayltics can help argue for funding for marketing or show you what is not worth the effort put into it. Don’t forget about sales in house and the drip drip effect of marketing – a customer may find out about a show online but may still come into the building to book a ticket or pick up the phone and call. Our front of house team asks customers where they heard about the show. Only one of the options set up on Databox was online (website) – when we changed this to reflect our online presence (website and blog, twitter, facebook, other) we were surprised at the level of bookings from facebook in particular.

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Conclusion

This mentoring project has helped us refocus our time spent on online marketing and rethink what is important to us. Using Google Analytics to find out more about our audience online and combining it with our goals as an organisation has helped us shape an online strategy.

Focus on our website – this should be the hub and all social media should link back to the website, particularly considering the fact that sales online are driven through the website. Remember to monitor. Are you doing too much? If you are unsure if something is working keep an eye on stats and it will be come evident what you need to change.

Remember statistics are not the be all and end all. It’s easy to get bogged down in stats so always keep in mind what is interesting and useful and what is merely interesting. Also what is useful information for another organisation may not be necessary for you to monitor.

Considering a new website? Want to optimise the outcome, and keep costs as low as possible? Two important words for you… ADVANCE PLANNING!

The more prepared you are in advance of talking with a web designer…

• the easier it will be for a web designer to give you an accurate quote;

• the easier it will be to decide which web designer can deliver on your requirements;

• the faster you will get through the process;

• and of course the cheaper it will be (if you approach a web designer with no preparation, you will need to develop the brief with the designer, which will cost more).

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios realise that a good website is a key element in engaging with audiences, and plan to redevelop their website. Under Arts Audiences’ New Media Mentoring Scheme, Aoife Flynn of asquared mentored Rayne Booth of TBG&S as she prepared a brief for the organisation’s new website.

Rayne’s report will be of great interest to anyone considering building a high quality website on a tight budget, and readers will no doubt find Aoife’s additional notes at the end of this report very informative.

If you are interested in discussing this work with Rayne and Aoife, there is a discussion started on the Arts Ireland group on LinkedIn – if you’re not already a member, it’s free to join (what’s this? find out more here).

to download a pdf of this report, click on this link: Developing a brief for a website

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REPORT OF RAYNE BOOTH

Basic requirements

It’s clear that now, more than ever, a website is an important tool in building a relationship with the public. Increasingly people are using the internet as a research tool rather than, or in addition to, visiting galleries, and as such it is possible that TBG&S has a section of it’s public that may rarely, if ever, actually come in to the building.

So it is important for us to be able to provide visitors to our site with relevant, up to date information as well as other features such as blogs, newsfeeds, etc. Furthermore, social networking developments such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as other facilities such as blogging, have become an efficient and cost effective way to keep connected with your core audience (as well as to engage with new audiences), and I felt it was important that our website should reflect these developments.

The current TBG&S website was designed in 2005. The format of the site means every time we wish to update content, we must employ a webmaster. This is more costly and time consuming than is necessary, and I felt that a system which would allow staff to manage content would make more sense for TBG&S. As well as problems with content management, was felt that the website’s design could be more dynamic and up to date.

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image courtesy of Temple Bar Gallery and Studios

The plan

In the first meeting with Aoife Flynn, I expanded upon my original proposal to the mentoring scheme, outlining the various other features that would be needed on the website. For example, an extensive archive section, a blog, a content management system, integrated to Facebook and twitter.

Aoife asked a variety of questions regarding TBG&S’s needs for the website and through these we established roughly what type of features we should think about including.

Aoife suggested that the website be linked in a simple manner to TBG&S accounts on Twitter and Facebook and, if budget was a concern, the site could be built on a wordpress.org template so that it could be easily updated by gallery staff.

Due to the fact that TBG&S are hoping to update our logo in future, Aoife suggested that the logo should not be included as an integral/central part of the design of the site, so that it could be easily replaced in the future should we decide on a redesign. As our current website does not have any analytical features built in, Aoife also suggested that we ensure that the new website is linked to Google analytics so that we can harness statistics regarding how frequently the site is accessed and by whom. Google Analytics is a free programme that can be added to any site via simple pasting of code.

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Preparing for the Brief – 4 stages

Aoife suggested several steps as to how I should go about writing a brief for a web designer:

• RESEARCH: Undertake a period of research, in which TBGS staff would each select a number of websites which we either liked or disliked, focusing on quality of design rather than quality of content.

• EVALUATION: Evaluate what elements on the current TBGS site work well and what additional elements may be required

• FIRST DRAFT: Once that internal research was completed I would then meet with Aoife to draft a brief which could subsequently be evaluated by TBGS management.

• FINAL DRAFT: Taking feedback from management on board, the brief would be finalised and Aoife would advise on how best to approach web designers.

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Research

To guide the internal research Aoife suggested that we focus on three factors:

• The look and feel of the website, ie, the colours, will it be contemporary or classical in style, will it be minimal or combine a lot of text and information on one page?

• When looking at other websites as a visitor, consider why they work, why they don’t work and use this to inform how we want our site to work for a visitor

• The back end. How will we use the website, what do we need in terms of archive, who will be able to update the website, how many users, what logos and links we need, how will the blog function and how many people will be updating it? How will we access statistical information, what is achievable within the budget, search engine optimisation

I began by asking TBG&S staff to each select 5-10 websites they liked or disliked. These did not necessarily have to be ‘arts’ websites. We then met internally and discussed the various elements of these websites that could work for TBG&S and which elements we were sure we did not want.

Example websites included;

The Irish Museum of Modern Art (http://www.imma.ie)
We found this site easy to navigate but a bit more ‘museumy’ in style than what we were looking for in our site. We like the Artist residency programme info which was well presented and clear with past, present and future artists – each have a page with image and info about their work

Smart Projectspace: http://www.smartprojectspace.net/
We really liked the use of a strong lead image on front page but would prefer a less complicated design.

Palais de Tokyo: http://www.palaisdetokyo.com
We liked simple the black on white text which dominates the design but felt it would be important for us to also include more images.

Whitechapel: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/
We really liked the format of large image on front page with minimal text, then going into another front page with more text and options.

Through looking at other websites we then established that we really wanted the look and feel of our website to;

• have a clean, simple feel,

• use strong images sourced through the TBG&S programme,

• and focus on images more so than text.

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image courtesy TBG&S

Evaluation

What we like about our current site is that it presents important information about the programme for the visitor on the first page. We like the immediacy of having an image on the front page as we feel that presenting artists work should be the most important aspect of the site.

In relation to our back end needs we then determined that some of the following should be included in the draft designers brief:

• The website should have an easy to use content management system so that staff can update the website themselves.
• Items like logos and images should be easily changeable by staff.
• The website should allow for multiple users to update.
• Website should have excellent search engine optimisation
• Some sections will be updated more regularly than others-eg, exhibitions and events will be updated regularly whereas studio artists will be updated with less frequency.
• Blog: This could be linked to a wordpress or similar blog page and not built in to the site as it is less costly
• Current Studio artists should be able to update their own pages, and only their individual page. They should be given a password for this.
• Current/upcoming events should automatically be archived by the system once the closing date has passed

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First Draft

During the staff meeting we discussed the layout of the website. How we would like pages to connect with each other. We decided that the front page of the website should have a large, striking image from the gallery programme, which would change every six weeks or so. Users would click on this image to access further options and to get into the website.

We identified three sections for the website; gallery, studios and Info. Both the gallery and studios sections would have an archive section where users can access information on past and future exhibitions, and current studio artists can update and maintain their own pages as a ‘mini website’. I drafted a diagram of how these three sections could link into each other and added details such as how many images we would expect per exhibition/artist.

I sent this draft document to Aoife and we arranged a second meeting to discuss and finalise the draft. At this meeting, we went into further details regarding how the website would function and Aoife suggested some changes to the structure of the brief to make it clear for the designer. This included giving more details on the exact needs of the back end (outlined above) and flagging which aspects of the design were set, and which were open to discussion. We also looked at some suggestions for web designers and discussed how TBG&S could make better use of our facebook page to promote our activities.

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image courtesy TBG&S

Final Draft

The final contact with Aoife was done through email. I emailed her the updated brief and she made some suggested changes to the language and layout. Following this, we confirmed a final brief that we were both happy with. At present we are experiencing some changes with regard to funding & budgetary structures at TBG&S, and I am now awaiting approval from the board to go ahead with the new website. I hope to begin speaking with web designers in the coming weeks. We now have the brief in place so that the process can begin quickly when funding becomes available.

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Learnings

The mentoring process was extremely helpful in providing me with the tools and language to be able to provide a web designer with a clear brief, and in doing this, save time and money for TBG&S. I now understand what information a designer needs in order to fulfill a brief. The process also helped us to establish exactly what we needed and wanted from the website, and to focus on what formats would work best for us. I now feel that I have a document that I can send to several designers and be confident that they will be able to understand our needs.

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Note from Aoife Flynn

There can be a lot of confusion around the costs of websites, which prices seeming to vary wildly for what appears to be the same “thing”- a functioning web site. Often this can arise from the perception within an organisation that they lack the specific knowledge around web design and thus plan to ask the web designer what they need.

This is a little like not knowing what you like to eat, and then expecting a chef to cook you something you will like. You don’t have to be a chef to know what flavours you enjoy, and if you do tell a chef the sorts of things you love to eat you will be sure they’ll cook a magnificent meal specifically to your taste. Web design is not so dissimilar.

As a user of the web you, and others within your organisation, know what you do and don’t like as a visitor to other websites. You know how you want your organisation to be perceived online, you know about your brand, and you know what information you want to prioritise for your visitor. If you can gather all this knowledge through internal conversations you will get a much clearer picture of what you want your site to feel like for other visitors.

So, now that you know what tastes you like, you are significantly more likely to get the website you actually want. By going through this process you’ve now determined the front end; i.e. the visitor experience of your site.

If you have a statistics programme on your site (it comes free with many webhost accounts) this is a good opportunity to check how visitors are using your current site- what pages are most popular, where are they spending the most time, how do they find your site? This information can inform the layout of your new site.

The next step is to discuss what you want the website to do for you internally- how often will it be updated, and by whom? Take into consideration time constraints and the tech ability of your staff. How many sections need to be updated? Do different people need different levels of access? Start with your ideal, you can always work back if the final budget doesn’t allow it. Once you lay this out you will have determined the back end.

This information, when gathered together into a design brief, will give any prospective designer the material they need to develop an accurate quote, and to determine whether they are the best fit for your project. The more accurate the quote from the beginning, the less likely it is to inflate during the process due to unforeseen design needs. Additionally, not all designers are the best fit, some will not be able to deliver what you need, and others will be too complex. A clear brief will allow them to opt to quote for your project.

A couple of other things to consider. There are a lot of free programmes available now, such as wordpress.org (which is different to the free wordpress.com blog platform), which incorporate a content management system. If your design needs are reasonably straightforward you can opt for a designer that knows how to manipulate these templates to suit your needs, which may provide a cheaper alternative.

Social media networks like facebook and twitter are prevalent now, but may not continue to be so popular in the future, think about where bebo and myspace are now. If your budget is limited it’s best to simply provide links from your homepage to your facebook page/twitter page rather than integrating it throughout the site. Similarly with blogs, I would suggest setting up a blog as a separate page or section on your site that is easy to remove if you find that you are not posting it regularly, or it is not working well for you.

Once you have your brief together you should gather a list of 4 or 5 designers whose work you like and send it to all of them, asking them to specify a quote and a timeline. If you have a fixed budget you can specify this, and determine what they can deliver for that amount, but if it is the first time you are tendering work in this area it might be more useful to leave the quotation open ended to give you a better idea of the range of prices in the market.

To gather a list it is useful to note that many websites will list their designer at the footer, or you can contact the company behind a website you like and they will give you contact details. Ideally you should shortlist the quotes to a list of three and then interview/meet these designers. It’s important that you can establish a personal relationship with the successful candidate, and that you feel confident they have understood your brand and your needs, and can work with you on the project to deliver the best site your budget will allow.

The final step in a redesign process is to install an analytical programme on your site (Google Analytics is very comprehensive and is free) so you can monitor how people are using your site. Are they accessing information the way you thought they would? What pages are most popular, how long are they spending on the site? How are the finding your site? If you monitor this on an ongoing basis you can adjust your site to better meet their needs.

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About Temple Bar Gallery and Studios

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios is a publicly funded visual arts organisation located in Dublin City Centre. TBG&S was established by artists in 1983 in response to the increasing demands for affordable studio spaces in Dublin city centre. In the mid-nineties a new gallery and studio complex was custom designed for the company by leading Irish architects McCullough / Mulvin and today the building that houses TBG&S integrates a gallery with on-street access, an atrium space and 30 artists’ studios. The use of these studios reflects the broad-ranging developments in contemporary practice as artists working with photography, video, sound, sculpture, print and painting all currently occupy spaces at TBG&S. The ground floor gallery space hosts a wide ranging programme of Irish and international art, including the work of both established and emerging artists working in a variety of media.