Museums have more stories than they have the time or resources to tell them. They live in collection records, photographs, letters, oral histories, and uncataloged…
When we first reviewed museum transaction platforms, our focus was narrow by design: how well do these systems support the three big transactional needs of…
Why “keeping WordPress updated” is no longer the same thing as protecting your site Most museum website security conversations begin with a fairly simple question:…
What the law actually requires, what lawsuits really look like, and how museums can respond without panic At some point in every accessibility conversation, someone…
What actually improves accessibility on museum websites, and what does not In the first article in this series, we focused on a foundational question: can…
In our first article in this series on website accessibility for museums, we focused on a deceptively simple question: can someone actually use the site?…
One of the persistent challenges of museum website accessibility is that they have to serve “humans” in the broadest sense. Locals planning a Saturday visit….
The first four parts of this series uncovered a pragmatic path for museums: (1) accept that low per-page traffic limits classic A/B testing, (2) zero…
In part one in our series on UX testing in the museum environment, we showed why traditional A/B testing rarely works for museum websites. Part…
After the last article’s reality check, that statistical UX tests crumble when you have only a few thousand pageviews per task and why every museum…
In our introductory article on UX testing for museum websites we revealed why standard data driven A/B testing is impractical to impossible for most museum…
The Low‑Traffic Dilemma Museum web teams often aspire to use standard UX A/B testing methods to improve their websites. However, mid-sized and smaller museums typically…
In 1995, if you wanted to update your museum’s website, you needed to know how to write HTML by hand, upload raw files via FTP,…
Keeping a museum’s digital presence vibrant and engaging is no small task. With so many stories to share—from exhibitions and collections to educational programs and…
[Note: This article was updated in August 2026] Choosing the wrong transactional platform for your museum can have serious consequences. Museums rely heavily on critical…
Every day as you browse the web, the websites you visit dynamically recommend content based on their best guesses about what you might be interested…
Effective websites strategically nudge visitors toward predetermined actions. On museum websites, this typically includes purchasing tickets, making a donation, signing up for a newsletter, or…
Believe it or not, there’s an upside to garage fires. Last Spring, a refrigerator in our garage caught fire. Fortunately, I was able to put…
The holidays are here, and museums are some of the best places to find unique gifts for loved ones. Purchasing a gift from a museum…
Browsing a website has a lot in common with setting foot in a museum, especially when it comes to navigation. While one museum visitor may…
A visitor to a content-rich museum website, like a customer at a bookstore, can easily spend long periods of time simply browsing around. For the…
The most enjoyable presidential debate I ever watched was between two candidates who had been dead for nearly two hundred years: John Adams and Thomas…
In Beyond the Bake Sale: Fundraising for Local History Organizations, fundraising expert Jamie Simek has written a practical and thorough guide designed to help small…
In its December 1995 issue, Art in America ran a cover story about a new technology that was beginning to transform the world of museums:…
Creating good website content is a team effort. On the technical and artistic end, developers and designers take the ideas and content they are given…
Redesigning a museum website is an exciting and engaging process. Reorganization and restructuring the information architecture is as satisfying as finally cleaning out and reorganizing…
In our last article, we explored ways museums organize educator content. We considered how, in thesame way that a museum must organize its physical space…
Drive up to any museum at mid morning or early afternoon, and you will probably see a collection of school buses parked outside. Inside, you…
While studying illustration at Rhode Island School of Design back in the late 1980’s, I encountered a show at the RISD Museum on the contemporary…
Your latest museum exhibition took months, maybe years, to plan. It may have come with a hefty price tag which, thankfully, enough businesses, individual donors,…
Museums are all about classification. The rise of the modern museum was highly influenced by the uber classifier himself, Francis Bacon. Whether you visit a…
I spend the better part of my days in WordPress, building prototypes, structuring content, and architecting the arrangement of museum websites. I recently discovered a…
No matter how you slice it, museum websites are complex technological systems. Today’s website platforms offer amazing capabilities such as easy content updating, ecommerce, searching…
Our previous article Anatomy of Museum Information Architecture analyzed some of the challenges of organizing content rich websites. Because museum websites are so chock full…
It is often said that “people don’t read on the web.” Not true. You’re reading these words after all. What is true is that people…
Imagine squashing a glorious Rembrant into a matchbox. A horrible thought! But when we display works of art in tiny rectangles on a website, we…
We’ve written previously about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for museums. We’ve also produced a video about the “long-tail” effect and how museums in particular can…
Here at Cuberis we’re big fans and practitioners of WordPress. But admittedly, one of its weaknesses is how hard it can be to manage images…
Museums are chock full of stories. Every object in your collection is there for a reason. There is so much more to tell than can…
Museum websites are chock full of content. Not only do they offer standard business information such as location, contact, and hours of operation, but they…
One of the guiding principles we followed, in developing the new Cuberis framework for museum websites, is a focus on Low-Code/No-Code solutions. Over the past…
Does your museum’s website allow you to nimbly adapt to changing circumstances? Can you easily spin up a digital exhibit? Are you able to cross…
When museums across the country had to close their doors during the coronavirus crisis, we saw a renewed emphasis on digital content as a way…
When museums had to close during the COVID-19 pandemic, many found new and innovative ways to keep their missions alive online. Whether with custom microsites…
One of the silver linings of the 2020 shutdowns was watching how clever museum professionals rose to the challenge of keeping their missions alive and…
During the COVID-19 shutdowns, museums scrambled to find ways to continue their missions while physical access to their collections, resources, and programs were closed. Many…
NOTE: Since this article was publish Google announced that it would be sunsetting their Tour Creator. Here is a link to a resource listing alternatives…
How do you keep your school-aged children engaged with learning while schools are closed? This is the question millions of parents around the world are…
Hello again from Cuberis. Our “INSIGHT: On Art & History Websites” newsletter has been on a bit of a hiatus for the past several months,…
When it comes to our buying decisions we all want things fast, cheap, and great. But real world economics always requires trade offs, and when…
George Bernard Shaw once said that, “the single biggest problem in communicationis the illusion that it has taken place.” Art and history oriented, collections-integrated, museum…
During the Museums and the Web 2019 conference, we, along with Sara Goss and Rachel Clark from the Michigan History Center, presented the workshop “To…
In this month’s Museum Digital Insights newsletter we’re going to discuss the role of audio in your museum’s content strategy. We’ll focus on podcasts, but…
Integrating your museum’s collection with your existing website is no easy feat and at times can seem very daunting. However, it is worth the effort….
When we work with museums to build new websites or optimize their existing web content, we like to kick off the project with a content…
Every museum is unique. Each has a specific collection that no other museum can claim and the stories about this collection drive its brand. Museums…
One of the persistent challenges of museum website design and content strategy stems from the vast quantity of content that museums have to manage. A…
You might be surprised if you knew how often your museum’s website delivers impactful experiences to visitors all over the world. Most of these experiences…
As I’ve noted in a previous article, there are an astounding amount of inactive museum blogs out there. My colleagues and I recently studied 1,306…
Every so often I’m in line checking out at the grocery store when the cashier asks, “would you like to add one or two dollars…
Behind the scenes at your local museum, curators, researchers, and historians make fascinating discoveries that deepen our understanding of our world’s greatest cultural treasures. This…
In recent years, museums have made great strides to seamlessly integrate their collections with their existing websites. Cost-prohibitive technical limitations have been replaced by the…
In preparation for a report we’re putting together on museums’ digital technologies, I scoured over 1,300 museum websites, asking each one the same question: Do…
A website is a powerful marketing tool. It can be equipped with sophisticated marketing systems designed to convert visitors into customers, or in the case…
FROM Back in December, my colleague Eric Holter asked in his monthly newsletter if a museum’s blog really matters. (Spoiler: It really does). One of…
For many museums, one substantial type of essential work that is often repurposed in some form on the website is the exhibition catalogue. These 200+…
When contemplating the future of museum software, just consider how radically all software has changed in just the past decade or so. Remember when installing…
Back in the day when production assets actually took up physical space, keeping track of these materials was a bulky yet simple process. I began…
All museums aim to make an impact. Many resources are poured into preserving, protecting, and promoting a museum’s collections, programs, and resources. All in the…
Your museum puts a lot of thought into how to communicate with donors through traditional means, like donation boxes in the physical space, galas and…
It’s probably not an overstatement to say that search engines have entirely changed the modern world. I recently made an off-hand comment about the Yellow…
After another great Museum and the Web conference, I wanted to take a minute to look back at a common phrase that ran through many…
Warning: Contrarian point of view ahead. Proceed at your own risk. We live in an era of big data. Everything we view online, every search,…
It came as no surprise to me that the small conference room was already packed ten minutes before “Recent Collaborations, Experiments, And Preservation From The…
A content strategy for museum websites should be simple, but it’s by no means easy. You have no shortage of fascinating stories to share, but…
Museums are finding innovative ways to use social media and to create fun and meaningful content. Perhaps the best example of really treating social media…
Did you ever wonder where museums came from? Who enabled such vast collections of treasures – artistic, historic, and scientific – to be gathered together…
Why is it that, when it comes to actively using a blog, most museums seem to have concluded that “The juice just isn’t worth the…
Last month we evaluated the struggle many museums have in articulating a cohesive digital content strategy. We suggested that one of the main barriers is…
Last month, I wrote about how the technical barriers that have limited the ways museums can produce compelling stories with rich content and are quickly…
It’s time for museums to start thinking hard about how they will take advantage of the rich media and layered storytelling possibilities that current technological…
There is no question that the web has made it possible for museums to radically extend the reach of their collections. Today, anyone with Internet…
I love history. And I love how museums enable us to make deeper connections with our past. And so, as a long time digital strategist…
Earlier this year the Hirshhorn Museum debuted Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, an exhibition that drew record-breaking crowds within the first two weeks of opening. One…
One of the greatest challenges a digital strategist for museums faces is aligning the museum’s overarching mission with its core operational needs. My last article…
Education has a central role in fulfilling the mission of a museum. When looking at the navigation menu of a museum website, usually the third…
Museums are profoundly generous, giving institutions. Behind the scenes, you continually give of yourselves as you preserve, protect, and promote our valued cultural objects and…
Museums face tough decisions in determining how best to invest their limited resources in digital strategy. The pace of digital change, and the availability of…
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