Vanessa Mae Lim

Aug 1, 20219 min read

Birmingham Museum: Website Analysis

For a long time, surveys were the primary source of data collection for museums. Recently, cultural institutions worldwide have begun employing Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to gather information on visitors' habits for curators to understand visitors' interaction in museums and deliver engaging exhibitions (Carlsson, 2020). This report will assess the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) website using Search Engine Optimization tools and a digital marketing framework. BMAG is in the heart of Birmingham, renowned for the most extensive Pre-Raphaelite collection in the world. Visitors can explore over 40 galleries, dive into centuries of European and World history cultures, and observe artifacts from Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt (Art Fund, n.d). As culture hubs remain inaccessible, having a powerful website is crucial. The report will discuss a literature review on digital analytics, its origins, current practices, and several tools to retrieve data to analyze website optimization and provide recommendations.

The Web's evolution has progressed rapidly from a conventional distribution platform to disseminate information for one-to-many into a collaborative ecosystem with endless opportunities to create, monetize and share user-generated content (UGC). New features transpired in the Web 2.0 phase, such as cookies and clickstream for software scalability, keyword strategy, web analytics, search engines, semantic web extension, and many more. The application of clickstream analysis is to extract information from data generated by navigations or transactions on web pages via server logs and client-side cookies (Turban, Sharda, & Delen, 2014). Clickstream data helps determine clients' lifetime value, create cross-promotion strategies, assess promotional campaigns, and produce a personalized experience provided by users' interests and patterns (Nasraoui, 2006 as cited in Turban et al., 2014). Contrastingly, Kaushik argues clickstream is just foundation data with limitations as it provides answers to what but not the why. It led Kaushik (2010) to redefine the paradigm of Web Analytics 2.0, clickstream answers what, multiple outcome analysis answers how much; experimentation, testing, and consumer's voice explains the why, and competitive intelligence answers to what else.

Web analytics was for professionals to examine web server logs and display diagnostics readout at the introductory stages, but eventually evolved with Javascript and led to the emergence of digital analytics and Big Data (Sponder & Khan, 2017). Presently, web analytics describes the practice of reviewing website traffic and conversion to perceive visitor behaviour better and utilize data-driven insights to continuously optimize websites and improve conversion (Sponder & Khan, 2017). Kaushik insists that possessing a clear business objective correlates to successfully employing web analytics (Kaushik, n.d as cited in Sponder & Khan, 2017). Marketers are encouraged to apply the Digital Marketing and Measurement Model to facilitate the process. The model starts with establishing objectives, followed by a goal aligned with the objective, specify key performance indicators (KPI), identify target values, and create market segments. Stakeholders' are encouraged to set objectives, establish the goals and KPI (Shear, n.d). Furthermore, an exemplary Digital Marketing and Measurement Model should cover three marketing areas: traffic acquisition, visitors' behaviour, and the initiative's outcomes (Kaushik, n.d).

Due to the digital evolution and abundance of actionable data, the landscape of business operations and marketing communications has also evolved. Marketers adopt software platforms like marketing automation systems, customer relationship management systems, data management platforms, and analytics tools into their digital strategy to accommodate the ever-changing market conditions (Glass & Callahan, 2014). The shift from traditional to digital marketing comes with its challenges and opportunities. Websites give users personalized experiences and achieve a global reach, but marketers deal with customers in real-time, threats of comparisons are ever-present, which alters the purchase decision, and data volumes can get overwhelming (Thomas & Housden, 2011). Nevertheless, a significant advantage of using a website as a marketing channel is the marketers' flexibility to manage the domain to convert traffic into prospects and customers. Marketers must develop websites with usability and accessibility for the ultimate user experience (UX). The goal is a straightforward website with functional designs to eliminate barriers and allow users to fulfil their goals effortlessly (Ryan, 2016). A recent study indicates that although companies' adoption of web analytic tools is high, the application of data in conversion rate optimization (CRO) remains low (Chaffey & Patron, 2012). Moz (2021) distinguishes CRO as a methodology to increase the percentage of website visitors to take the desired action. Most industry specialists view CRO as on-page optimization, but Rabhan (2013) practises Holistic Conversion Rate Optimization (HCRO) by envisioning the bigger picture and viewing CRO as a timeline to optimize for the traffic, webpage, and follow-up stages instead of focusing entirely on optimizing conversions on the webpage.

As previously illustrated, digital marketing components rarely work alone; tools and channels within the ecosystem can effectively amplify each other to maximize the return of investment. Yielding a high rank in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) is essential to reach more users (Charlesworth, 2018). Therefore, marketers practice website optimization by understanding search algorithms and abiding by the rules to gain a competitive advantage. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a process of refining websites by using on-page and off-page practices to be successfully indexed by search engines and acquire a high organic rank in the SERP (Dodson, 2016). Besides the organic counterpart, there is also Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which is essentially a paid search advertising tool whereby businesses can buy specific keywords to increase traffic (Sponder & Khan, 2017). To utilise SEO and SEM efficiently, practitioners should conduct keyword research. There are short-tail and long-tail keywords. Marketers find the latter more valuable as it expresses motivation, intent, and specification, thus displaying a higher conversion rate (David, 2011). There are many strategies to build a keyword glossary, but ultimately, the consumer's intent and voice should be weaved into the development process, after that use research tools to filter them down (Odden, 2012).

Figure 1: On-page insights

Source: Similar Web

I. Page Speed

As seen in Figure 1 BMAG website received 59.98k visits over six months. The average duration lasts slightly over a minute, with 3.7 pages visited per session and a bounce rate of 54.21%. Research unveils 74% of users will wait 5 seconds for the page to load before abandoning the site (Frick & Eyler-Werve, 2014). According to Google PageSpeed Insights, BMAG mobile performance fails the Core Web Vitals assessment, but the desktop passed. Google prioritizes the performance of metrics for loading, interactivity, and visual stability. All performance metrics on mobile and desktop measured less than 5 seconds except Time to Interactive (TTI), 10.18 seconds. TTI is the duration for a site to be ready for interaction; hence could cause poor user experience and potentially contribute to bounce rates. The First Contentful Paint (FCP) for both platforms are at 2.3 seconds and 1.8 seconds, respectively. Another metric important for ranking is the mobile platform's visual stability, known as the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which scored 0.26.

Figure 2: Mobile speed insights

Source: Google PageSpeed

Figure 3: Desktop speed insights

Source: Google PageSpeed

Figure 4: Meta specifications on Birmingham Museum website

Source: Seobility

Figure 5: Desktop preview of website title and description on SERP

Source: SERP Snippet Generator

II. SEO Optimization

Marketers optimizing a website should consider three factors that make up the 'SEO triangle': technical SEO, content, and links (Kingsnorth, 2019).

Technical SEO

BMAG URL is descriptive and uses keywords; this is beneficial for user understanding and search engine crawlers as keywords detected within URLs influence ranking (Jones, 2013). Based on Figure 4, BMAG has no issues with crawlability. Navigations to other pages within the website also seem clear, with hyphens as word separators. Seobility shows acceptable use of title tag, though the meta description needs to be optimized. In Figure 5, the meta description cuts off in the SERP as it exceeded the word limit. Seobility also notes that the website has successfully optimized images with alt attributes. Upon further inspection, 22 images had improper alt attributes. (Figure 6 & 7)

Figure 6: Image SEO and social networks score

Source: Seobility

Figure 7: List of unoptimized images

Source: Sitechecker

Figure 8: Page quality for content

Source: Seobility

Figure 9: SEO Keywords BMAG ranks for

Source: Ubersuggest

Figure 10: Heading tag structure

Source: Sitechecker

Content SEO

Technical optimization and high-quality links drive traffic, but content makes the audience stay. As mentioned earlier, BMAG has a low average user duration and high bounce rate. BMAG should present quality content that encourages dwell time, conversions, and shares, strengthening online reputation and driving more traffic. Successful businesses regularly generate content that answers problems, entertains, feels authentic, is timely, and catered to a niche audience (Jefferson & Tanton, 2015). Additional factors to consider are the content information, length, keyword density, and update frequency. Seobility (Figure 8) gave the website content 87% and presented two minor content errors. BMAG has an average of 2-3 blog posts per month. Patel (2021) suggests brands strive for a post frequency of 3 per week. Ubersuggest shows several keywords optimized by BMAG; the search volumes are substantial as the minimum volume is 5,400 and the maximum reaches 12,100. (Figure 9) BMAG uses a good selection of keywords, illustrated by the ranking position in the top 2 results. Content SEO also includes title, meta, and heading tags. Figure 10 discovered BMAG does not have a H1 tag nor organized H1-H6 suitably. Heading tags are essential to give search engines a clear structure on the page layout (Kingsnorth, 2019).

Figure 11: Internal links

Source: Seobility

Figure 12: Descriptive link text

Source: Hubspot

Internal Links & Backlinks

Internal links should be presented throughout the site to navigate and spread link equity for ranking power (Moz, 2021). Figure 11 reports show the amount of internal links is sufficient and accentuates several anchor text problems. Contrarily, Figure 12 shows BMAG appropriately using anchor text with descriptive text instead of stating 'click here'. A backlink is an off-site SEO strategy whereby the volume and quality of backlinks from relevant websites can help with website traffic referrals and ease findability, affecting ranking (Sponder & Khan, 2017). Figure 13 reports BMAG domain authority scored 61/100, there are 96,314 backlinks with 3,754 unique domains. Furthermore, the sources of backlinks are considered high quality as they have domain authority above 90. (Figure 14)

Figure 13: Backlinks overview

Source: Ubersuggest by Neil Patel

Figure 14: Backlinks sources

Source: Ubersuggest by Neil Patel

III. User Experience (UX)

A good UX is when users do not spend significant time locating, evaluating, and using a web page navigation (Romano & Schall, 2014). BMAG website functions are straightforward and user friendly, the brand visibility is consistent throughout the webpages with the logo, choice of colours, and key phrases used. BMAG also implements the two essential factors in UX design: visual hierarchy and information architecture (IA). BMAG demonstrates visual hierarchy using an F-pattern layout, a common eye-scanning movement from left to right (Malamed, 2015). The layout creates emphasis and serves as a guide for viewers; moreover, their contrasting typeface and bright blue tone text attract the audience. Adobe (n.d) defines IA as the art of arranging and labelling the content on digital platforms to support UX. Frick and Eyler-Werve (2014) add that the IA of website navigation bars communicates the organization's digital strategy, thus translating BMAG's objective to attract and retain visitors, promote sales of event tickets, and seek volunteers. BMAG also utilizes text navigation called a Site Map, which gives users a bird's eye view of content and aid search engine crawlers to access through the links improving rankings (Frick & Eyler-Werve, 2014).

Recommendations

Figure 15: Digital Marketing Measurement Model for BMAG

BMAG should revise the meta description into 65 characters and include relevant keywords to improve its SEO strategy. Seobility (n.d) advises making it concise and display a comprehensive impression of website content to improve click-through rate (CTR). BMAG's clickstream (Appendix A) shows most traffic comes from Search, 56.36%, and only 4.51% traffic from Facebook. Figure 6 remarks that BMAG only embedded a few social widgets. Implementing more adds authority, promotes social sharing for more traffic and engagement, reducing bounce rate (Kuligowski, 2020). Furthermore, BMAG should use open graphs to manage content preview and enhance how information is displayed to improve CTR when shared on other platforms. A basic open graph configuration should include title, type, image, and URL (Fayock, 2020). The KPI for the acquisition is the percentage of visits and CTR. To increase retention, BMAG should improve website efficiencies, produce relevant content and refine mobile optimization. BMAG should revisit its content structure and determine the hierarchy of information to add an H1 heading tag and amend other heading tags' according to priority. BMAG should also correct the 22 images with improper alt attributes to improve the user experience, especially for users with visual impairments using screen readers (Orndorff, 2019). Optimizing content will help to increase dwell time and page visits per session. Refer to Appendix B, C, and D for topic suggestions based on audience interest and high search volumes to generate content. BMAG can also utilize keywords in Appendix E and F, with high search volumes and low competition. Aside from that, BMAG developers should add explicit weight and height dimensions to media elements to allocate sufficient space to reduce CLS (Osmani, 2020). The most effective method to improve website interaction time score is to optimize the critical rendering path. Enabling browser caching and lazy-loading offscreen images are methods to speed up interaction time (Hall, n.d). To counteract slow loading speed for mobile, BMAG should serve images in next-gen format to speed up loading time and reduce cellular data consumption (Google Developers, 2020). For outcome objectives, BMAG can use structured data by implementing schema markup code on their events to refine the way listing appears on the SERP. Schema markup is a type of metadata used to inform search engine algorithms to categorize it accordingly (Patel, n.d); it also benefits users as it increases search results accuracy and shows the gist of your page at a glance (Smith, 2019). The KPI to measure for outcome objectives are ticket sales, donations, and online applications.