Inspiring a visit at every scale.

In 2015 the Museum of Science and Industry needed a new website. Mobile's share of the website's 5 million+ users had increased from 7% to 30% (and later 60%). The 8-year-old site incorporated many forward-looking "mobile tolerant" features, but these were no longer enough.

The Museum's Marketing and PR team and also come to what’s now an obvious realization: The great brass doors on the front of the Museum weren't the true front doors of the institution, the website was. Every communication had the same call to action: "Go to msichicago.org." The website was important. It needed to inspire, inform, and convert. It seemed so obvious in hindsight.

The site relaunch was the first step in a larger digital guest engagement ecosystem. Knowing who guests were through online ticket and membership sales was the first step in establishing a robust CRM, guest segmentation, and marketing automation platform. It was also the best way to understand advertising spend efficacy. At less than 15% online sales, this was not happening.

To convince leadership to fund the relaunch, we ran a 4-week rapid research process. We conducted guest research, interviewed internal stakeholders, talked with experts, and reviewed website analytics. The key finding that convinced leadership: online ticket buyers were spending $5 more per guest than those that waited to buy their ticket at the building. Converting just 10% of counter ticket sales to online sales would pay the project in a year.

With a strategy in hand, we set out to find the right partners to bring it to life. Instead of attempting to find one agency good at everything, we split design and development into two different scopes to bring the best of each together into one superteam.

Leveraging our network, we lead a 5-week rapid global RFI and RFP round for design and a parallel smaller RFP for development. Dogstudio, a design firm from Belgium, was selected for their ability to convey a sense of place and emotion in their work. Busy Noggin, based in Dallas, was selected for their deep knowledge of TYPO3 content management system and leadership in the open-source community. An additional criteria: We would need to coordinate their work on a tight eight-month schedule. Would they be collaborative and empathetic partners? (They were.)

Over the next eight months, we led the 20+ person team across the three organizations, coordinating via Zoom and Slack (which we'd later disseminate across the Museum).

Building upon the Museum’s Strategic Plan there were three key goals:

To this end, Dogstudio focused on conveying the same feeling of awe and amazement a guest has during a Museum visit. It wasn't about showing photos of grand spaces, it was about creating a feel for what it was like to be engaged in those grand spaces. This had to be matched with the right tools for the guest to understand, plan, and purchase their visit. Inspire then convert.