You're asking some very hard questions. Questions that may not have been
answered, at least quantitatively. However, I can give you a general
picture.
1. What is the cost (staff time)?
I probably spend 15 hours a week maintaining and expanding our pages. Some
weeks I spend all my time (when I initiate a new project), other weeks I do
nothing. Our page is quite large. (www.usc.edu/lacmnh)
2. Do pages bring in visitors?
Yes. How many? No way of knowing unless you survey them. However, I get
eMail every now and then from people who say that they visited the museum
as the result of seeing the web page. In fact, I got one today. The text
follows:
>X-UIDL: 807896030.015
>Date: Tue, 08 Aug 95 05:04:02 0600
>From: Neal (I deleted the address)
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.1N (Macintosh; I; 68K)
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Visited museum
>X-Url: http://cwis.usc.edu/lacmnh/hart/harthome.html
>Business took me to LA last week. Having seen your web page, I drove up
>to the Museum. Quite a place. Especially enjoyed the Russell paintings.
>Best regards,
>Neal
Comments like this mean a lot. I think that one could safely say that for
each person who takes the trouble to send a comment back to a web manager
that they visited the museum, many more actually do so without comment.
We don't yet use our pages to generate income. We are going to be
purchasing our own server sometime in the next month or so. We presently
are guests of USC, and as guests, I don't feel comfortable really getting
into the money making end of things. But any giftshop which puts out a
mail order catalog should be able to do business on the Internet. My
credit card number is kept on file in at least one Internet shop and I do
frequent mail order business with them.
I will be happy to assist you if you have questions. Feel free to contact
me either by phone or email.
Jim
>The Museum that I work for is considering putting up some WWW pages,
>but wants some information in the field of cost-benefits before it
>does so. If any one could help me on the following points, either
>through their own experiences, or by directing me to published
>material, I would be very grateful.
>
>1. What is the cost overhead in staff time of maintaining web
>pages? I know this depends a lot on the size, but a rough rule of
>thumb, hours per megabyte per month would be useful (if anyone has
>done this kind of audit!).
>
>2. Do web pages actually generate an appreciable increase in
>visitors, or do most museums with web pages view it as widening
>their public access, rather than income generation? How many people
>each month access your web pages on average?
>
>3. What is the success of museum shops on the web, and what form
>has proved the most profitable?
>
>Thanking you all in advance.
>
>Alan E West
>[log in to unmask]
--------------------------------------------
Jim Angus
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Molecular Systematics Laboratory/Web Manager
900 Exposition Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90007
(213) 744-3317
[log in to unmask]
http://cwis.usc.edu:80/lacmnh
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