Numbers matter, and they’re unavoidable in nearly every field that easily comes to mind. But, do comparatively high attendance numbers equal success for a museum?

The question over museum metrics and their value has been widely discussed and debated in recent years, and yet we’re still faced with the reality that numbers matter. It’s what we do with these numbers, how we make meaning of them, and what numbers we’re looking at that make all the difference.

In the prologue of his 1917 publication The Gloom of the Museum, John Cotton Dana wrote that “Today, museums of art are built to keep objects of art, and objects of art are bought to be kept in museums…” He continued to say “Tomorrow, objects of art will be bought to give pleasure, to make manners seem more important, to promote skill, to exalt handwork, and to increase the zest of life by adding to it new interests; and these objects being bought for use will be put where the most people can most handily use them: in a museum planned for making the best use of all it contains, and placed where a majority of its community can quickly and easily visit it.”[i]

This thinking shows the gradual transition of the inward-facing, collections-focused museum of the past to the outward, audience-focused museum of present day. And yet, even in Dana’s view nearly one hundred years ago the focus then turns to, in his words, reaching “the most people.” But when we focus on just attendance numbers, we are neglecting to ask what happens after these visitors come through your doors. A missing, key component is an assessment of the visitor experience.

In Defense of Numbers

Visitation and program participation numbers have value. They provide a basic guidepost from which museum professionals can measure and plan.

Here are some ways in which sheer numbers can help:

• Trend watching: Keeping track of attendance numbers and regularly assessing them on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis allows you to see trends and alerts you when to ask questions. When a particular time period deviates from the trend, dig deeper and assess what was different about that time period.
• Planning appropriately: Attendance numbers help you manage expectations and plan appropriately, including room for reasonable growth. They can also help marketing staff prioritize attention.
• Raising questions: It’s not enough to say that no one showed up for a particular program to immediately label it a failure. Lower than expected attendance should instead prompt questions and make you reevaluate. Perhaps the day of the week or time of day wasn’t the right fit, or the program description didn’t accurately convey what visitors would experience, or the price point was off. Make minor modifications and try again.
• Know what league you’re in: Comparing yourself with like institutions, with similar basic metrics, will keep you from falling into the trap of setting unrealistic expectations of your museum based on peer museums with larger financial and audience capacities. Know your comparable institutions. This will help you identify what you are – and are not – capable of accomplishing.
• Reporting to funders: Pure and simple, funders want to know how many people you were able to serve with their financial support.

Alternative Metrics

Common metrics ask: What is your annual visitation? Annual budget? How big is your staff? Your endowment? Your collection? These kinds of basic numbers are comparatively easy to track. One could make an exhaustive list of alternative metrics to use in gauging the success of your museum. Here are a few to consider:

• How many programs do you offer each year for adults? Children? Families? Students and teachers? Visitors with cognitive or physical disabilities? What is the total number reached in each of these categories?
• How many active community partners does the museum have?
• How many subsidized school visits does the museum support each year?
• How many people are reached annually through offsite programming? How many of these people then visit the museum?
• How many average visits did museum members make in a year?
• How many non-members visited the museum more than once?
• How do the demographics of your visitors compare to the demographics of your immediate community?
• What is the average length of time that a visitor at your museum spends in the galleries?
• How many individual donors does your museum have? And, how many donations were made in a given year towards operating support (and not restricted towards a specific project)?
• How big is your collections acquisition fund?
• What is the average monetary worth of objects donated in any given year?
• How many people do you reach through social media? Your website? Your museum emails? How many organic Google searches for your museum occur each year?
• How many media mentions do you have in any given year?

Quantifying the Visitor Experience

What sheer numbers don’t do is tell you about the visitor experience. Attendance numbers tell us how many people came through the doors, or participated in a program, but they do not shed light on what was experienced. What happened after those 25,000 visitors came through your doors? What was their experience like? Did they learn something new? Connect with prior knowledge? Have an “aha” moment? Send a text message to a friend to say how incredible your permanent collection is? Did the visit inspire a future artist, scientist, or historian?

Quantifying the visitor experience is possible, but it takes thoughtful planning. You may not be able to accomplish an assessment of the visitor experience for all visitors, but focusing on specific programs or exhibitions may make the task more manageable. Fortunately, low or no cost options are available. This type of evaluation can take many forms, including visitor interviews, response areas within an exhibition, feedback books, observation, and surveys. Assessment should be consistent and sustainable, and not overly complicated. It should be built into your planning for an exhibition or program. The goal is to gauge how meaningful the experience was (In what way did the visitor benefit?) as opposed to simply measuring satisfaction (How much did you enjoy your visit today?).

Museum Metrics Are Not One-Size-Fits-All

While the contents of museums vary widely from museum to museum, so too do missions and institutional goals. Numbers matter. But, the numbers that matter to one institution may not be important to another. This is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. A museum must have a clearly articulated mission, vision, and goals before gauging any amount of success. Museums should assess and quantify mission-based successes on a regular basis, and assessment should be an institutional, cross-departmental priority. What numbers matter to your museum?