UK's Natural History Museum carries out evaluation of their new-look website using Snap
June 2006
The UK's Natural History Museum recently chose Snap software to find out their web users' views and opinions on their new-look website. This national museum, which is in the world top 10, receives over 9 million hits a month to their comprehensive website. After a major re-design in May 2005, the NHM wanted to determine the impact of this upgrade on their website audience and implemented Snap's Internet module to achieve this. The survey results were extremely positive, achieving a higher than expected response rate and useful pointers for the future.
After outsourcing a web study in 2003, and finding out the types of people that visit their website, the NHM re-designed the website to cater for the 5 main audiences highlighted. The Interactive Media team decided that research was needed to test the assumptions generated from the first survey, the impact of the re-design and to collect further demographic information on each of these audiences. The survey was also needed to support the case for funding for the coming year.
An existing Snap user prompted the purchase by recommending the software for its ease of use, web ability and professional looking questionnaires. The Museum decided to create a pop-up survey that utilised the capabilities of the software incorporating branding, conditional questions and routing. A pop-up survey was attached to each landing page and a cookie was implemented so that it could only pop up 6 times on each computer. Mike Lowndes (Interactive Media Manager) explains "The set up of the survey and the analysis capabilities in Snap are very slick."
The survey was on the site for less than a month, as the results were needed for a report due in mid March. Within that time, the survey received a fantastic response rate of 1,253 replies, higher than the usual standard of 5%. The results strengthened the predictions already made, which the team was extremely pleased about, as these are what founded the re-design of the website. The findings also generated some great pointers for the future; for example site users stated that they would like to see more calendars, online exhibitions, geographical information, maps and ID guides. Some of these suggestions and ideas are being looked into and will be implemented in the future.
The Interactive Media team has big plans for user research using Snap, and aims to conduct a follow-up survey within the next 6 months, "Having Snap means that we now have control over when surveys are conducted. We already have a couple of licences but are looking to extend this in the future and roll-it out to other departments such as Internal Communications and Membership."
For further information visit http://www.nhm.ac.uk.