Museum website features, aesthetics, and visitors’ impressions: a case study of four museums

Abstract

In an effort to extend previous work on developing general recommendations for design of art museum websites, we evaluated four museum websites (the Tate, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Rijksmuseum) and examined the relationships between website features, virtual visitors’ impressions and estimates of repeat visits to the site. The study produced a comparative evaluation of the four museum websites and identified strengths and weaknesses in the sites’ navigation, design, and content features. The study found that website aesthetics was the strongest predictor of the visitor’s overall impressions. Ability to manipulate content (e.g., download, print, and zoom in and out) was also linked to the visitor’s inclination to make repeat visits to the site. This paper describes the methods and results of the study and proposes a set of recommendations for the development and evaluation of art museum websites.