Finding the motivation behind a click: definition and implementation of a website audience segmentation

Paper
Elena Villaespesa, Tate, UK, John Stack

Published paper: Finding the motivation behind a click: Definition and implementation of a website audience segmentation

Understanding our audiences is a key element in the design of the digital experiences we offer. Our digital strategy principles aim for an approach that is audience centred and insight driven. The Tate website gets approximately 1.5 million visits a month, and while analytics and other tracking tools provide a huge amount of data about user behaviour on the website, there are some limitations in getting to know the motivations and experience behind a click.

In order to get a better understanding of who comes to our website, we have carried out substantial research divided into two phases whose methodology and results is explained in this paper. The first phase consisted of the analysis of the motivations and usage of the online collection. There is a wide range of reasons behind the visits to this section of the website, from research to looking for inspiration or remembering with emotion an artwork seen during a gallery visit. Moreover, visitors have different levels of art knowledge; therefore, the information required and content needs vary. This audience-research work helped to define our second piece of research, a survey for the whole website aimed to better know our online visitors and, as a result, define a segmentation that classified website visits based primarily on the motivations driving users to the site, but also taking into account a set of variables such as knowledge of art, vocational connection, online behaviour, and the connection of a particular website visit with the gallery experience. The nine segments defined at the end of the research were: personal interest research, student research, professional research, inspiration, enjoyment, art news, repeat visit planning, first visit planning, and organisational information.

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