The importance of capturing museum visitor feedback

21st January 2025

If you’re a museum, gallery or heritage institution you’ve probably got thousands of people coming through your doors every year. Hopefully they’re satisfied with their experiences—but do you have a way of finding out?

Every organisation within this sector wants to provide their guests with the best exhibits and educational content possible, but too many miss out on the opportunity of improving museum experiences with feedback.

Why collecting visitor feedback is essential

Getting a clear understanding of who’s coming to your institution, what they enjoyed the most and what didn’t interest them allows you to develop the content you offer, adapt how you promote it and deliver maximum value to your visitors.

Collecting museum visitor feedback digitally (or in person) provides you with:

• A clear understanding of your target market
• Knowledge of what they like and dislike about your exhibits and their general experience
• A strategy for developing your exhibitions with quantitative and qualitative data, rather than assumptions and anecdotes
• A way to demonstrate to senior stakeholders that exhibits are popular and successful, and that marketing campaigns are providing a return on investment

READ MORE: How museums can identify and reach their target audience

Methods for collecting visitor feedback

There are a number of things you can set up to start collecting museum visitor feedback digitally or in person.

1. Send follow-up emails to any visitors that booked tickets online
2. Surveys to previous attendees
3. Put in place feedback points
4. Ask visitors in person

1. Send follow-up emails to any visitors that booked tickets online

Although many museums and galleries are free to enter, most also have paid exhibitions that visitors have to purchase tickets for.

Email addresses can be captured during the digital checkout process, or at physical kiosks where tickets are available—although in the case of the latter you won’t be able to compel a visitor to provide their email address.

Once you’ve secured these contact details you can send them follow-up visitor feedback forms - and reminders too! Don’t be afraid to send multiple emails to people that don’t complete the form first time.

Send the first one a day after they attended (if you know when that was), and a second one a week later. We wouldn’t recommend sending more than three follow-up emails requesting feedback.

Consider offering incentives for completing the form, such as discounts on future exhibits or relevant prize giveaways.

2. Surveys to previous attendees

Already have a big database of contact details for previous visitors that you haven’t previously asked for feedback? Create a survey and share it with them via email or text message.

Because this won’t be linked to a specific exhibit, you can ask broader questions about their visitor experience, for example questions about the standard of facilities, cleanliness and which exhibitions they enjoyed the most.

3. Put in place feedback points

Feedback points, whether they’re digital or analogue, are a great way of gathering visitor feedback en masse.

Attendees will be drawn towards bright and colourful displays, so make sure your feedback points stand out and are easy to see. This could be in the form of feedback buttons or, for a low-tech solution, coloured post-it notes or chalkboards. You could also place printed question sheets around the building asking things like ‘What did you enjoy most about your visit today?’, ‘What was your favourite exhibit?’ or ‘What do you think could have been improved?’

READ MORE: The role of technology in museums and how it's enhancing visitor experiences

4. Ask visitors in person

One of the problems with digital surveys or feedback points is that they’re easy to ignore—that isn’t the case with a real person.

Consider having employees ask visitors directly about their experiences, both in regards to specific exhibits as well as for general feedback. Although some people will simply say no thank you, most will be happy to give their opinion, but make sure you only take a few minutes of their time at most.

Analysing and acting on visitor feedback

Collecting feedback is important, but it needs to be analysed and acted upon to yield any real value.

Before you put in place a visitor feedback system make sure you’ve got a plan of what to do with it once you have it. Consider the following:

• Who is responsible for actioning insights gained from feedback? Assign a Feedback ‘Champion’ if there’s no obvious person to manage this process.
• How and where is this feedback going to be stored? If you have multiple sources of feedback, such as online surveys, on-site feedback points and in-person interview results, how will you make sure this is all stored centrally?
• What steps are in place to protect the data privacy of your visitors? Only ask for information about the person that’s required for processing the feedback and any necessary follow-up communication. For example, if they win a prize draw you might need their address, but in most cases you wouldn’t require that information.
• How and when will you review the results of feedback? Set up a visitor satisfaction work group, headed by the Feedback Champion, to meet regularly to review insights and consider how it can be actioned.

Case Study: ResourceSpace + The Ashmolean Museum

Visitor feedback might help you to create more engaging exhibitions, but a dedicated Digital Asset Management solution will help you build them. 

ResourceSpace is trusted by some of the world’s leading arts and heritage institutions—including English National Ballet, Historic New England and The Walters Art Museum—to manage the vast quantities of digital content they possess.

If you’d like to find out more about why we’re the DAM of choice for the arts and heritage sector you can book your free demo below, or launch your free DAM system within minutes here. We even have a free museum system template ready to go so you can imagine how ResourceSpace could work for your institution.