Hi Sheila
Christina has said what I was planning to say. I know how limited your resources are! Restricting the survey to what you really need
to know; understanding why you need to know it; and ensuring you respond to the information gathered by changing the way you do things are more important that the technology used to collect, store and analyse the data.
I also wouldn’t worry about using paper – at least it lasts for centuries, rather than a few years – but if you want to move it online,
how about using cheap smart phones and the museum wifi?
Best wishes
Pete
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
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.
Marketing and audience development consultant and facilitator
Co-Founder of the Museum Freelance Network
Former IPSE National Freelancer of the Year Awards Runner-up
On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 10:39 AM, Sim, Sheila <[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
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