Concerns of ‘digital divide’ across cultural organisations

A noticeable gap in website performance exists between the best and worst performing cultural organisations, a study has found.

A report by digital agency Substrakt assessing website traffic data across 76 cultural organisations in Europe and North America during 2023 found that the "digital divide" is particularly stark when it comes to revenue-focused pages.

It said the findings "should be a wake-up call", particularly for the UK sector, which is dealing with an increasingly challenging funding environment.

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"The gap is especially apparent when comparing the performance of organisations in the ‘large’ group (with more than 1.5 million sessions in a year) with those in the ‘small’ group (fewer than 500,000 sessions in a year)," the report states.

"These organisations don’t just have less traffic to their websites; there are also noticeable differences in performance across key commercial and revenue metrics."

The study found significant differences in conversion rates—the proportion of sales per visit—with an average of 6.3% on desktop and 2.7% on mobile for organisations in the large group compared with an average of 3.5% on desktop and 1.8% on mobile for organisations in the small group.

Meanwhile, the average year-on-year increase in memberships sold for large organisations was 44%, compared with a 10% decrease in small organisations.

In terms of donations, the revenue of organisations in the small category decreased 56.3% year on year, compared with a 40% decrease for organisations in the large category.

"There is a worry that as the funding environment for cultural organisations becomes more restrictive, smaller organisations, in particular, will be less able to invest in maintaining and improving their digital experiences, which will only see this gap in performance continue to widen."

Era of mobile

The analysis also found that website visitors are likelier to use a mobile device than a desktop computer, with the report stating that "mobile’s time is now unarguably here".

Mobile traffic in 2023 was responsible for the most traffic, the most ticket purchases, the most ticket revenue, the largest number of donations, and the most membership sales.

"It is clear that mobile is now the primary mode through which most users engage with cultural organisations’ websites," the report states.

However, the shift towards mobile traffic being by far the largest proportion of visitors to institutional websites was found to be not always reflected in how cultural organisations think and talk about their websites.

"Many procurement priorities, design conversations, and testing still focus on desktop as the primary mode of experience," the report states.

"Often, this is justified on the basis that desktop traffic is still the most important or valuable in terms of where people engage most deeply and spend their money.

"Whilst it’s true that proportionally, non-mobile traffic is ‘worth more’ per session than mobile traffic, it is also true that mobile is responsible for the majority of both traffic and revenue, and it is mobile traffic that is continuing to grow year-on-year.

"So, we would suggest that mobile experiences should be the sector’s primary focus and priority."

Looming structural issues

While mobile traffic has grown significantly year-on-year, the study found no equivalent increase in mobile conversion rates or average order values.

"With both of these key revenue metrics being notably lower for mobile traffic compared to desktop traffic, the continued expansion of mobile traffic as a proportion of the people visiting your website presents a challenge when it comes to sustaining and growing revenue.

"This report does not look at underlying behavioural factors which may explain this discrepancy, but it’s clearly an area the cultural sector needs to gain a better understanding of in order to explore effective potential mitigation strategies in the near future."