The Met’s Journey in Digital Innovation with scandiweb

When art meets technology, the possibilities are endless. 

This case study explores how strategic workshops and tailored data solutions enhanced The Met’s data ecosystem, bridging technology with art to create a seamless digital experience.

It highlights the effective collaboration between scandiweb and The Met, focusing on practical solutions in digital analytics. Learn how this partnership improved online interactions and data management at one of the world’s most prestigious art institutions.

About the client

Founded in 1870 and nestled in the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) is a world-renowned treasure trove, housing over two million works that span 5,000 years of global culture. 

The Met maintains a diverse online presence through various domains, each serving a unique purpose:

• A primary website (DIGITAL) for exploring The Met’s vast collection, special events, publications, and more. It serves as the main digital gateway to the museum’s offerings.
• Transactional platform for engaging with the Met. Here, visitors can purchase memberships and admission tickets to the museums or make donations to support the institution.
• Store dedicated exclusively to selling art reproductions in print form. This site offers a range of printed artworks for those looking to own a piece of the Met’s collection.
• Comprehensive online store offering a variety of art reproductions. This site sells a wide array of items, including clothing, home decor, books, stationery, and gifts.
• Site that’s home to the Thomas J. Watson Library. The website provides access to one of the world’s most extensive art libraries.

scandiweb x The Met

In 2021, scandiweb began its partnership with The Met, initially providing development services. This collaboration represented the first step in a growing relationship between a leading tech agency and one of the world’s most renowned art institutions.

The partnership evolved significantly by May 2023, when scandiweb’s Analytics team was tasked with an urgent project for The Met. With the impending sunset of Universal Analytics (UA) in July that year, the team had to quickly migrate the museum’s website data to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). This project was both time-sensitive and critical for maintaining the client’s online presence and data analysis capabilities, ensuring accurate measurement of their marketing efforts and results.

Analytics workshop in New York

scandiweb conducted a series of essential workshops at The Met Museum, specifically aimed at teams responsible for the Met library, digital, and retail infrastructures. These workshops were initiated to provide crucial help and education regarding their data ecosystems. Discussions focused on current data collection methods, exploring potential improvements, identifying existing flaws, and examining how data is shared among different departments.

The outcome of these sessions was highly productive. We developed a strategic plan to implement a comprehensive tracking and data collection system. This new system aimed to integrate the museum’s varied data streams, ensuring a cohesive approach while maintaining distinct overviews for each department. This plan marked a significant step towards enhancing data-driven decision-making and overall efficiency at The Met.

Project goals

The primary objective was the seamless transition of the Met’s Analytics infrastructure from UA to GA4. The collaboration between scandiweb and the Met teams focused on the following specific goals:

Data validation and verification

Ensuring the integrity and quality of data collected in GA4 properties. It involved advanced validation and verification processes to maintain data integrity, along with regular monitoring and auditing to quickly identify and correct any discrepancies. This commitment to high-quality data is fundamental for informed decision-making and optimizing the Met’s digital engagement strategies.

Data governance and documentation

Adhering to data governance best practices, thoroughly documenting the infrastructure, and ensuring team-wide understanding and agreement on the principles and standards. This is crucial for reliable data collection and its use in decision-making.

Team-specific data capture

Tailoring data capture in GA4 to the unique goals and online presence focus areas of individual teams.

Comprehensive user journey tracking

Implementing full-user journey data tracking across various Met web experiences and user interaction points. By capturing a wide array of data points, from initial website visits to deeper engagement actions, the system provides a holistic view of the user’s experience and journey.

Custom DataLayer and GA4 setup

Developing a dataLayer and GA4 setup that aligns with each team’s requirements for detailed or high-level user behavior tracking, considering their respective budgets. It ensures that data collection is customized to capture either detailed or high-level user behavior insights while also being mindful of the different budgetary constraints of each team.

Data visualization

Visualizing data to make complex information easier to understand and interpret, enabling more effective insights and decision-making. A robust analytics tool with visualization capabilities would allow for intuitive and insightful representations of exported data, which can enhance data analysis and decision-making processes.

Unified analytics for multiple websites

Establishing individual GA4 properties for two out of the five websites of The Met and creating roll-up GA4 properties for all domains to consolidate data collection under one umbrella, in line with the comprehensive user journey tracking goal.

Challenges

Scope and scale 

The project’s large scale naturally led to a dynamic scope, with changes occurring as the project progressed. The involvement of five different domains under the Met indicated a vast amount of information to be managed, which required extensive time from the scandiweb team to understand the website architecture and content distribution.

Unique requirements of the main domain

Unlike typical eCommerce sites, the DIGITAL domain did not engage in eCommerce activities, making standard eCommerce dataLayer requirements irrelevant. 

scandiweb developed a custom tracking strategy and dataLayer events specifically for this domain, focusing on unique elements like art objects and supporting content.

DataLayer implementation delays

The dataLayer implementation, handled by Met’s internal development team and another partner agency, experienced slowdowns. To address this, immediate dataLayer QA was conducted upon deployment to the staging environment, and a comprehensive report was created for a unified view of requirements and QA results. This approach, supplemented with video meetings, provided clear, visual feedback to the development team for efficient issue resolution.

GA4 data accessibility and infrastructure complications

The Met team required access to raw GA4 data. Initially, the plan was to use Microsoft Azure, aligning with Met’s existing ecosystem. However, due to the complexity and unreliability of transferring data from GA4 to Azure, the strategy shifted to using Google’s BigQuery.

Server infrastructure and GTM management

The DIGITAL website’s split infrastructure, partly on cloud servers and partly on physical servers, presented unique challenges. Each server had its own Google Tag Manager (GTM), necessitating simultaneous work in two different GTM containers for the main website. To streamline this process, changes were made in one container and then replicated in the other to minimize time spent on changes.

Approach and solutions

Audit of existing GA4 properties

We conducted detailed audits to identify errors in The Met’s current GA4 instrumentation. This step was crucial to ensuring accurate data collection and involved implementing necessary improvements based on our findings.

GA4 property setup and dataLayer requirements

Our team developed the GA4 property setup and dataLayer requirements specifically for The Met’s needs. This included integrating GA4 with Google Ads, Search Console, and BigQuery, and creating dataLayer requirements for various teams.

As for the DIGITAL domain, which is not a commercial website, we took a non-traditional approach. 

Recognizing the core purpose of the website as a digital showcase of the Met’s art objects, scandiweb focused the analytics setup on tracking user interactions with these art pieces. This strategy aligned with the website’s primary goal of presenting the museum’s vast collection in a digital format.

In addition to art objects, the website features various types of supporting content, including audio guides, museum maps, blogs, articles, research, and learning materials. scandiweb categorized this as “supporting content,” recognizing its role in enhancing the visitor experience and directing traffic to the art objects. This content, often interconnected through backlinks, plays a vital role in guiding visitors through the website and encouraging deeper engagement with the museum’s digital offerings.

Full user journey data collection

To capture the complete user journey across The Met’s domains, we established a single GA4 property for data consolidation. This involved configuring internal domains and custom adjustments in Google Tag Manager to ensure comprehensive data collection.

Historical UA data export and BigQuery setup

We assisted The Met in exporting historical data from UA, dating back to 2019, and importing it into BigQuery. This process was essential for preserving past insights and enabled advanced analysis of GA4 data within BigQuery.

Additionally, by integrating the roll-up property with the BigQuery data warehouse, we ensured a smooth transition of GA4 data into BigQuery. This integration provided The Met’s team with direct access to raw GA4 data, a key asset for conducting in-depth and advanced study of analytics data.

DataLayer quality assurance

After strategizing the data layer requirements, we provided quality assurance services as The Met implemented the new dataLayer events. This step ensured that the data layer was developed correctly and that the events and parameters were accurately stored.

Custom event data collection setup in GA4

The development of dataLayer events was a prerequisite for initiating the transmission of data to GA4. To achieve this, we configured custom event tags within The Met’s GTM, facilitating a seamless and efficient data flow into GA4. This setup was instrumental in capturing and organizing event-driven data, enhancing the overall analytics capability of The Met’s digital platform.

Business intelligence setup for library store

For The Met’s Library domain, we customized GA4 exploration reports and standard reports to meet specific requirements. This tailored approach played an important role in providing relevant insights for the Library’s unique digital presence.

Results

The Met successfully transitioned its analytics infrastructure from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, ensuring data integrity and enhancing decision-making capabilities. The comprehensive user journey tracking across various Met web experiences provided a holistic view of user interactions, crucial for optimizing digital engagement strategies. Additionally, the custom DataLayer and GA4 setup tailored for different team requirements significantly improved the accuracy and relevance of user behavior insights.

The project also achieved unified analytics for multiple Met websites, streamlining data collection and analysis under a consolidated framework. Advanced data visualization tools implemented during the project made complex information more accessible, aiding in more effective decision-making processes. Finally, overcoming challenges like unique domain requirements and infrastructure complexities, scandiweb helped The Met enhance its online presence and data governance, marking a significant advancement in its digital journey.

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