The Tate Museum published an interesting 17-page report, “Tate Website Audience Segmentation” (PDF file)
Number of people that use the Tate website before, after, and during a museum visit:
- 38% of visits to the Tate’s website are to plan a visit to the physical museum.
- 8% of the website visits come after going to the actual museum.
- 1% use the website in the gallery.
(from page 5 of the report)
It’s not surprising seeing only one percent of the website usage occurring in the gallery. After all, you are there to see the art. Not your glow screen. But perhaps there might be supplemental information that will help to enlighten the artwork being seen in person. Will the Tate be trying to increase that one percent?
The Tate also created segments of the different types of visitors:

Suprising to see is that only 2% of the Tate website visitors come to the site for enjoyment. Wow. Perhaps museum websites could stand to make their online collections more enjoyable. Check out the full 17-page report. They go into details on each of these different segments.