Why It’s Time to Redesign Your Museum’s Website (& How to Get It Right)
A modern museum website does more than look good. It drives ticket sales, boosts donations and connects you with visitors before they walk through the door. Here’s what you need to know about a museum website redesign.
By Jeff Ficker
Your website is your museum’s most powerful tool — and maybe its most overlooked.
It’s where potential visitors go to plan their day, where donors learn why your work matters, and where members come to stay connected. But for many museums, the website feels like a dusty back gallery: a little neglected, maybe hard to update and quietly screaming for attention.
We get it. Redesigning a website can feel daunting, expensive or like something that can wait. But here’s the reality: a modern, well-structured website isn’t just nice to have — it’s essential to driving ticket sales, increasing donations and delivering the kind of experience your visitors (and donors) expect.
So if you’re wondering whether it’s time for a redesign — or how to do it without being overwhelmed — here’s our take.
Museum Websites Matter More Than Ever
In an attention economy, your digital presence isn’t secondary to the in-person experience — it’s part of it.
- Visitors start online. From checking hours and exhibit details to buying tickets and reserving tours, most people interact with your website before they step through your doors. If the process is confusing or clunky, they may not show up at all.
- Tourists need easy, actionable info. Many of your visitors are already in the city looking for things to do. Your website should help them find your museum, quickly understand what’s on view and map out a visit. Think: mobile-friendly directions, clear tour times and nearby dining recs or itineraries that make it easy to say yes.
- Donors do their research. Major donors, corporate partners and foundations will look at your website before taking a meeting. A credible, professional digital presence reinforces your impact and makes your mission tangible.
- Members want more. Your most loyal supporters expect a better online experience — exclusive content, member-only events, smooth renewal flows and updates that feel personal and relevant.
- Search engines drive discovery. If your exhibits, programs or venue rental options aren’t showing up in search results, you’re invisible to thousands of potential guests. Good SEO isn’t just for blogs — it’s for every page.
Why So Many Museum Websites Fall Behind
Museums are doing amazing things — but often on tight budgets and limited internal bandwidth. We regularly see:
- Websites that are hard to update, leaving marketing teams stuck in backlog
- Legacy platforms or patchwork builds that make even small fixes expensive
- Web presences that no longer reflect the institution’s identity or vision
There’s also a lingering perception that websites are just overhead. But that misses the bigger picture: a good website does the work. It sells tickets. It prompts donations. It answers questions before someone picks up the phone.
Museum Website Best Practices That Actually Work
Over the years, we’ve worked with all kinds of cultural institutions — from art museums and science centers to university museums — and we’ve learned a few things that hold true across the board:
- Make updates easy. Your team shouldn’t need a developer just to post a new event, swap out an image or create a new exhibition page. If your CMS is clunky or over-engineered, updates get delayed — or skipped entirely.
- Tell your story visually. Use bold imagery, video, illustrations and design to draw visitors in, whether it’s a behind-the-scenes look at a restoration, an immersive exhibit preview or a striking artifact that stops the scroll.
- Design for mobile first. It’s not optional — especially when your audiences are discovering exhibitions through Instagram, reading event updates on their phones in line for coffee or forwarding membership perks from a text thread. If your site can’t load quickly, resize intuitively or make content easy to explore on a 5-inch screen, you’re losing visitors before they even set foot in your galleries.
- Incorporate clear CTAs everywhere. Visit. Donate. Join. Rent the venue. Don’t bury the lead. Your site should make it simple to take the next step — no matter what page a user lands on or what device they’re using.
- Build with SEO (and AI) in mind. From exhibit pages to blog posts, every piece of content should be structured to support how people, search engines and AI tools discover and describe you. This isn’t just about rankings — it’s about visibility, credibility and staying relevant in how culture is found online today.
What a Great Redesign Process Looks Like
Done right, a website redesign doesn’t feel like a black hole of time and budget. It’s collaborative, creative and (dare we say) fun. Our process usually looks something like:
- Discovery: We dig into analytics, audience research and stakeholder insights. What’s working? What’s broken? What do you wish you could do online?
- Strategy and Sitemap: We shape the structure and flow, balancing what visitors need with what you want to say.
- Design: This is where the visual magic happens. We translate strategy into an experience that feels like your institution. Every page is designed with your audience in mind, balancing storytelling with clear paths to action.
- Content: We work with your team to plan, organize and refine content that supports your goals.
- Development and QA: Behind the scenes, we build a site that’s fast, flexible and future-proof. From accessibility and mobile responsiveness to SEO and load times, every detail gets tested and fine-tuned.
- Ongoing Support: After launch, we’re still in it with you: optimization, new features, whatever comes next.
It’s an Investment — with Real Return
A great website saves your team time and frustration. But more importantly, it drives:
- Ticket sales and memberships
- Donations and corporate support
- Better engagement with your community
We’ve seen it firsthand with institutions that needed a digital presence that matched their mission, their ambition and their audiences.
Want some inspiration? Check out Our Favorite Museum Websites (And What You Can Learn from Them) — a roundup of smart, beautiful sites with ideas worth borrowing.
Thinking About a Site Redesign?
We’d love to hear what’s working on your website, what’s not and what your dream site could do. No pressure — just a smart conversation with people who get it.
Jeff has nearly 20 years experience as a journalist and content marketing strategist. At Casual Astronaut, he oversees the agency’s team of editors and art directors, who collaborate with a network of writers, photographers and videographers to produce content with a journalistic approach. He has launched marketing programs for numerous global brands, including The Ritz-Carlton, CBS Television, UPS and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
A contributor to Travel + Leisure and Sunset, Jeff is a former adjunct faculty member at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Jeff lives in Phoenix but flees to Copenhagen every summer to escape the desert heat. Outside the office, he volunteers as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) in Arizona’s foster care system.