Hi Christina,
Many thanks for taking the time to respond so constructively. You are quite right about determining what we want from our visitor research; that’s exactly the process we’re embarking on at the moment. As I mentioned, we have six very different museums – and it’s possible we’ll develop a slightly different questionnaire for each one.
Your list of useful links is extremely helpful – and I’m sure other members of this group would get something from it too.
With thanks and regards,
Sheila
From: Museums Computer Group <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Christina Lister
Sent: 06 September 2018 12:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Collecting visitor data
Hi Sheila,
I’d recommend you go back to the start and have a think about what you want or need to get out of your visitor research and what you will do with that information. There’s no point in wasting visitors’ and your time collecting and inputting reams of data that no one does anything with.
Then identify issues with your current system – for example, many surveys forms are started but not completed; some staff/volunteers aren’t engaged and barely any surveys are completed on days they work; you don’t know what to do with answers to some questions. You say your form is unwieldy – it might well be that you could streamline it, dropping some questions and making others more efficient.
And make sure you identify if there is certain information you have to collect for a funder, a funding application or local authority reporting as a starting point, then build from there.
Not sure the size of your museums but it’s always useful to get representatives from different departments together to feed into this work. And also making sure that everyone understands why you are collecting what you and, what you will use it for and the benefits and implications as this helps with motivation and in answering questions from visitors.
What survey mechanism you then use should work for you and your visitors, so don’t worry about a paper version being ‘old-fashioned’ in itself. But if you find that staff or volunteers don’t have time to enter the data and/or visitors don’t like it, you can rethink this.
I work as an audience development and marketing consultant with small and medium-sized museums and put together some links following a presentation I gave about visitor surveys earlier in the year that you could skim through: https://christinalister.co.uk/2017/11/09/visitor-survey-link/.<https://christinalister.co.uk/2017/11/09/visitor-survey-link/>
Hope that helps a bit.
Best wishes,
Christina
Christina Lister
Marketing and audience development consultant and facilitator
Co-Founder of the Museum Freelance Network
Former IPSE National Freelancer of the Year Awards Runner-up
07968 438273
www.christinalister.co.uk<http://www.christinalister.co.uk>
Christina Lister Comms
On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 10:39 AM, Sim, Sheila <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hello everyone,
I’m new to this group, so apologies if this theme has been covered before. I work for East Lothian Council Museums Service, and one of my responsibilities is our visitor survey. We have six museums across the county, each running on a different basis (different opening hours, different staffing models, etc).
In addition to logging daily visitor numbers we also conduct a survey. Up till now we have been doing a paper-based survey during the first week of every month. We input the data ourselves into SurveyMonkey. Our questionnaire is rather long and unwieldy, and we are starting to feel that our paper-based approach is somewhat old-fashioned.
Could I ask for tips and suggestions about how we might better capture visitor data? I suppose one idea is to have an ipad at the door of each museum where visitors can answer a few questions as they leave, but before we go down this road I would be very pleased to hear of approaches taken by other museums. (Ideally we would prefer to avoid using any Apple devices.) If you work for a museum and you have a good system of data collection, or if you’ve heard of anyone else with a good idea, please let me know!
Thanks in advance.
Sheila Sim
Visitor Services Officer (part-time)
East Lothian Council Museums Service
www.eastlothian.gov.uk<http://www.eastlothian.gov.uk>
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