The Andy Warhol Museum holds the largest collection of Warhol's artworks and archival materials and is one of the most comprehensive single-artist museums in the world. They primarily marketed themselves to non-local tourists, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Andy Warhol Museum adjusted its target audience to focus more on the local Pittsburgh audience.
Our team of five digital analysts evaluated the Andy Warhol Museum's web analytics data to investigate the success of their restructured navigation and compare the behaviors of local and non-local audiences.
We interviewed the Andy Warhol Museum to discuss the project scope and objectives around their website and web analytics. Our goal was to answer the following questions:
How can current analytics efforts be improved?
How is the restructured navigation system performing?
How does the behavior of local vs. non-local audiences compare?
We analyzed the Andy Warhol Museum's Google Analytics data to answer our research questions and pinpoint areas of improvement.
Web Analytics
Findings
Recommendations
We analyzed the Andy Warhol Museum's Google Analytics data from April 1st, 2021 to April 1st, 2022 to better understand how users interacted with the navigation bar before and after the restructured navigation system was implemented in June 2021.
Furthermore, we used segments for non-local users and local Pittsburgh users to learn about the types of content each audience accessed and their overall experience on the website.
The primary metrics analyzed include:
In addition to our analysis of Google Analytics, our team also conducted a search engine optimization audit as well as a comparative analysis of 7 other artist-specific museums.
I was responsible for conducting the SEO audit to optimize the museum website’s content and to derive insights on making the site appealing to both users and search engines. I used Screaming Frog, Woorank, Lighthouse, SEOMoz, Google Mobile-Friendliness Test, Google AMP Test, and Google Page Speed Insights to collect this data.
Most visitors to the Warhol website access it on a mobile device, and Pittsburgh users in particular primarily use their mobile devices to view the website. In fact, 74.5% of Pittsburgh users accessed the website from their mobile devices.
While mobile devices are very popular, Pittsburgh users tend to spend more time on the website while using a desktop. They are also less likely to immediately exit after entering the site.
There were no major differences in the pages that users visited from each device, though users accessing the website via desktop tended to view the Calendar page more whereas users accessing the website via mobile tended to view the Admission + Hours page more.
Analyzing the user path from the homepage revealed that more people were interacting with the website after the new navigation bar was implemented. There was an increase in the number of entrances (+2.03%) and a decrease in the number of exits (-1.14%) from the homepage.
A comparison showed an increase in site search usage with the new navigation bar. Before the new navigation bar was implemented, 0.70% of users used site search compared to 0.98% usage with the new navigation bar.
However, only 1.03% of users used site search within the time frame in this report. The most searched term was "Search" (18.43%), which is part of a usability issue where users are double-clicking on the search icon and then prompted to a "results for search" page.
Pittsburgh users tend to view more pages and spend more time on the website than non-local audiences. They were also less likely to leave the site right away, having a bounce rate of 48.47% compared to the overall bounce rate of 61.58%.
Pittsburgh users were also found to check the calendar more for upcoming events but visit Andy Warhol’s Life page fewer times than non-Pittsburgh users. This was likely due to the locals being more familiar with Andy Warhol, and more inclined to attend events than learn about the artist.
The Warhol's Google Analytics account is currently tracking 7 goals, or predetermined end actions that the museum wants the user to perform while using the website. However, since August 2021 there has been a decline in goal conversions and a rise in abandonment rates.
To understand why this is, taking a closer look at user behavior on the website is essential. However, events are not currently being tracked. As such, there is a missed opportunity to better understand what users are engaging with on site to help improve user goal completion.
The top 3 sources that bring users to the website are Google organic search, directly typing in the URL, and Facebook. However, with an average bounce rate of 49% for the whole site, the paid advertisements under Facebook had a 92.91% bounce rate among local users and 94.4% bounce rate among all users.
We realized that referrals account for around 15% of all traffic and paid social traffic occupies about 8% of all traffic. However, the users accessing the site via referral tend to have a very low bounce rate at around 28%. These users also tend to stay longer on the page and engage with an average of 4 to 5 pages per visit.
Since mobile users account for the majority of all users, both local and non-local, adopting a mobile-first approach would be a good way to cater to that audience. For instance, rearranging the layout of key pages such as the ticket checkout page would make it easier for mobile users to read what’s on the page and improve their experience with the website.
The current ticket checkout page on the left can also be difficult to read, but changing the layout of the page would make it easier for users to understand what is happening on the screen. A possible redesign of the checkout process that prioritizes the experience of mobile users can be seen on the right.
Throughout the analysis, a search tool usability issue was identified; users are double-clicking on the search icon and are redirected to a "results for search" page.
Instead of the landing page being "results for search," we propose 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.
The calendar information can be presented upfront on the homepage to promptly address the needs of the local audience. Currently, the website requires the user to click at least two times from the homepage to view the calendar of events.
A popular way to showcase the information or link to events 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 (a), and has a designated section at the top of the page to post any urgent news or updates (b).
The legacy account has a goal set up that tracks how many users register for an event at the museum. With event tracking, the museum would be able to track micro-interactions that occur before users even register. 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.
Tracking the scroll depth of the Events landing page can also provide insight to understanding how the users behave and interact with the events list – are they scrolling to the bottom of the page and viewing all of the available events? If not, where is the average user scrolling to?
Search Console and Smart Goals can be set in Google Analytics to help determine user behaviors, dig deeper into improving user experience, and explore potential users. Using Search Console can directly improve the organic traffic coming to the website by improving the Warhol Museum’s SEO positioning, whereas enabling Smart Goals can improve the overall Google Ads campaign performances and improve behaviors in paid traffic. By adapting both tools, we believe the current Warhol website can optimize both organic and paid traffic coming from Google.
Warhol's most engaged users come from Google, whether they directly searched or were referred to by Google pages. We recommend reevaluating the investments 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.
My team and I presented our report and slide deck to our client, and they were delighted by our work. The search usability issue with the navigation bar had been an issue they were struggling with, and they were also very interested in adding events to better track their goals in Google Analytics.
It was fascinating to take a deeper look at how Google Analytics can be integrated in a website to provide quantitative feedback about visitors' experiences with a museum website. I hadn't had much experience with web analytics prior to this project, but I was able to gain a much better understanding of how web analytics metrics and key performance indicators align with an organization's goals. I also recognized the value of being able to track the overall performance of the website by investigating where users are coming from, which pages they are visting, and how they are interacting with the website.
If I were to continue working on this project, I would definitely want to conduct usability tests on changes such as the mobile-first design approach as well as presenting events on the homepage to ensure that they address the users' needs. I would also want to observe how the addition of event tracking could provide deeper insights into more specific areas where users are interacting with the website.
