Turning Online Users Into On-Site Visitors: Visit Page Best Practices for Museums

Museum websites have a unique duality. Unlike many other digital platforms, their primary goal is to encourage visitors to come in person. Their website may feature engaging articles or archives, cool virtual experiences, or highlight important research, but the physical space remains the heart of the museum, home to priceless collections and host to educational tours and programs. While the digital experience is still an essential one, the main objective of most museums is to welcome people through their doors. 

That is why the Visit section of a museum website is extra important. Visitors are looking for a single page that clearly outlines everything they need to know: admission prices and hours, what they can and can’t bring, accommodations for nursing mothers or individuals with disabilities, and so much more. Then again, different people need to know different information, so how do you keep everything together without it ballooning out of control? Despite its importance, many museum websites miss the opportunity to provide clear, concise, and accessible visit information in one central place.

A Survey of Website Visit Page Trends for Museums 

As part of a recent engagement with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, we conducted a cohort analysis of other leading museum and cultural organization websites. The study focused on key elements of museum digital platforms including menu design, navigation, and the Prepare for your Visit page. We noticed a theme that several Visit pages on museum websites felt like long, endless scrolls. They’re often filled with lots of information, but a lack of structure or thoughtful design makes them difficult to quickly parse. Through this exercise of finding what is and isn’t working well and questioning why, we walked away with a strong sense of what makes a successful Visit page. 

Answer Visitors’ Top Questions

Who, what, where, when, how. When thinking about what information should be contained on the Visit page, these timeless questions are a strategic starting point. Though simple, they are the questions visitors will ask themselves before they arrive at the museum. These questions can take many forms, but for the Visit page, we’re prioritizing logistics:

• Where is the museum located? 
• What does it cost? 
• When is it open? 
• How do I get there? 
• Who can come along? 

If you are writing the content for this page, start by answering these key questions. 

You may have your content set, but you also need to think about how it is prioritized through strategic page design. You should make sure that the most important information (usually hours and admission prices) is at the top of the page and always visible. Don’t hide this information in accordions. And even if your admission is always free, point that out. Visitors want to have that information before they visit your museum, so make sure it is clearly stated. After all, free or reduced pricing is often an enticing reason for many to come!

Despite what you may think, duplicating some key content in different locations across your website can be helpful, as long as it doesn’t get confusing. Just because you have the hours on the homepage, doesn’t mean you should skip it on the Visit page. Presenting the information in different formats can also be helpful. For example, MoMA’s visitor guide provides a contained experience which includes a lot of content that can be found elsewhere on the site, but organized for a particular need (someone coming to the museum now).

Strike the Balance between Enough and Too Much with Accordions

Nearly every Visit page we studied used accordions. When you’re looking at a long list of content, the option of tucking away big chunks of it into a collapsable block sounds pretty appealing. That said, there are ways to do it well and plenty of ways it can go wrong.

Whenever you use an accordion, you’re asking users to click or tap to see more. While requiring an action like this can be a nice way to keep visitors engaged, whatever they see before interacting needs to accurately represent what’s inside. Let’s say a user wants to know whether they can carry a backpack around the museum. A generic heading — like “Guidelines” — doesn’t speak to its contents and the user could easily overlook it. Accordions that are organized well and labeled clearly — more like ”What You Can Bring in the Gallery” — can improve content organization and reduce cognitive load.

Also take care to make sure that the accordions are built in a way that everyone can use them. Test them with a screen reader and navigate through with only your keyboard to make sure they are meeting accessibility standards.

Our recommendation: use accordions, but strategically. Don’t have more than 7 or 8 and never add essential information there that visitors would be looking for at a quick glance. 

Guidelines & Policies

One large category that sometimes stumps museum stakeholders is where to put all the guidelines and policies that they often need to state, sometimes even for legal protections. Oftentimes these get lumped into a large accordion or series of accordions on the Visit page, without the key policies pulled out and clearly stated for visitors looking for quick guidance on whether strollers are allowed in the galleries or whether they can take photos with their new fancy camera. 

Particularly when you have an extensive list of guidelines, a successful approach can be linking to a larger guidelines and policies page with the information organized by clear headings and categories (which is also good for SEO/GEO), as seen on The Frick’s website. Just remember our earlier point about duplicate content: For essential guidelines, such as bags and security policies, consider also including this information on the main Visit page.

Help Visitors Plan Their Day

Planning your Visit is a big topic and depending on your museum’s particular offerings, might encompass a lot. Preparing ahead can include everything from directions and parking, what’s on view, amenities (dining, shopping), types of tours offered and at what times, etc. The goal for this content is to make it easy for visitors on the day of their visit, both logistically and emotionally. At the end of the day, you want visitors to get the most out of their time at the museum. Assess what is considered essential information that should be included on the main Visit page, but also what might warrant getting its own subpage. This is where in-page linking can be your best friend. 

• Setting Expectations — Setting the right expectations is especially important when a museum provides an experience that deviates from the norm. For the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, for instance, they do not have wall labels for every object on display and instead rely on audio and room guides accessible via QR codes throughout the Museum. In their use case, making sure visitors know to bring headphones and have a fully charged phone is key information that may not be applicable to other cultural organizations, nor assumed by visitors before arriving.
• Themed Itineraries — One trend we uncovered in our cohort analysis is the rise of themed itineraries, giving visitors different ways to experience a museum. When creating these, consider what makes your museum unique and the audience groups you want to serve. For example, if you have a garden, you might design a “Garden Lover” itinerary that highlights outdoor spaces alongside artworks featuring landscapes or floral still lifes. Or, if time is the constraint, you could offer a one-hour itinerary like MoMA’s thoughtfully titled “The Unmissables.”
• Keeping the Delightful — In our conversations with museum stakeholders and throughout our cohort analysis, we learned that it’s common for most visitors to arrive at a museum having done very little, if any, preparation about the type of experience they will receive. Though every museum operates a little differently and has its own quirks, people come thinking they know what to expect based on past experiences. The resulting surprise can be anywhere from delightful to disorienting. Balancing the element of surprise with the right amount of logistical information for expectation setting can be a challenge, but hopefully a fun one to think through.

Prioritize an Easy Mobile Experience 

Visitors often state that they want to “disconnect” while at a museum. They might be happy to pull out their phone for a photo, but otherwise want to spend their time and energy on the physical space around them. We truly love that for them, but also know that the website can, at times, meaningfully enhance the visitor experience. When thinking about what types of content should be considered from a mobile-first perspective, these come to mind:

• Maps — Include key features like restrooms and elevators. Enable common gestures like pinch-to-zoom and panning. Bonus points if the map is interactive, for example letting the user tap on a gallery to see what’s in it.
• Audio Guides — Provide basic controls, including play/pause, skip forward and backward (e.g. 15 seconds), and speed control. Let users access the transcript for greater accessibility.
• Artwork Information — This is especially important in the instance, like at the Gardner, where wall labels are not displayed in-situ and visitors are encouraged to access these via their phone in the galleries. They’ve addressed the need with digital Room Guides.

Ultimately, any content that is meant to be accessed while at the museum — member login and event schedule, for example — needs to be optimized for mobile. It’s especially important for this content to be easy to use and navigable on a small screen. We don’t want visitors to get lost in their phones or frustrated and ultimately give up. It needs to be intuitive to be a smooth piece of the whole experience.

Building a Successful Visit Page for Museums

Similar to building a successful navigation for a museum website, the first task of any organization looking to refresh their Visit page is to put yourself in the shoes of your visitors. Come up with a few key user journeys for various audiences. What would a family with small children need to know before coming to the museum? How about a person who requires a wheelchair or someone with low vision? What information would a student be searching the Visit page for? 

Beyond walking through the experience first-hand yourself, it helps to get an outside perspective. If you have the means to talk to visitors while they’re on-site, that can lead to some fascinating insights on their in-gallery experience. However, know that you’ll most likely encounter a positive bias in their responses. Not only are they enjoying a day at the museum, but it can be tough to give critical feedback to someone standing right in front of them. 

To counter that bias, gather feedback from additional sources: pop-up or email surveys, controlled usability testing, and website analytics. All of that data together can help give you the building blocks to ensure your visit page strikes the balance between being engaging and informative. By prioritizing clarity, accessibility, and thoughtful design, museums can ensure that visitors arrive knowledgeably at ease and excited to explore. 

A well-crafted Visit page is more than just a logistics hub, it’s the digital admissions desk of your museum.

When done right, it reduces friction, answers essential questions, and sets the stage for a memorable in-person experience. Ultimately, the Visit page isn’t just about driving attendance, it’s about shaping the visitor’s journey from the very first click to the moment they step through your doors.

Learn more about building a successful Visit page in a Case Study of our 2025 Re-Architecture project for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.