Surrey Museums Partnership

Surrey Museums Partnership approached Atelier because their previous website contained sparse information about the local museums, galleries, events, and locations it was meant to represent. They needed to become the single point of contact for everything related to Surrey’s museums and galleries, requiring a website that would significantly raise their profile and status as the definitive voice for cultural heritage across the region.

The partnership’s goals were ambitious: to launch something new and exciting that clearly displayed messages about local arts and culture while catering to a wide audience requiring easy-to-use, intuitive navigation.

Individual galleries and museums wanted the website to help raise their individual profiles, acting as a vehicle to drive traffic to their own dedicated websites and physical locations. For the partnership as a whole, a more dominant web presence would help generate further partnership working across the region while providing an advocacy tool for their services.

Our design approach focused on creating a clean and uncluttered experience that maximised white space, allowing key visual elements such as imagery, iconography, and design components to stand out from the page.

We used SMP’s vibrant brand colours to place strategic flashes of colour throughout page layouts while maintaining a clean white background. This approach enhanced accessibility by ensuring each page remained clear and easy to read throughout the user journey.

The development work centred around building unique and interesting ways to display key information to visitors. This included interactive maps with pop-up addresses and location information, image carousels and accordions to break down large blocks of text into digestible content.

One of the main pieces of functionality was a directory-style filtering tool allowing visitors to discover museums and galleries based on their specific interests and needs. Individual venue pages pull in key information including interactive maps and detailed facility information, while direct integration with Culture 24 software enables the website to display relevant local events within the Surrey area.

Accessibility was deep-rooted in the design, page layout, and functionality from the project outset to meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards. We incorporated accessible colour contrasts throughout the website in terms of styling and page designs, ensured the website could be easily navigated using only a keyboard. We also removed any automatic movement so the website remains controlled solely by the user.

Our SEO and launch strategy involved supporting the team with content migration for all core pages and individual museum and gallery pages, then completing necessary SEO optimisations to ensure Google could easily find, read, and index the website correctly. As the site underwent significant structural changes, we implemented 301 redirects to ensure a smooth transition from the old site to the new. Using Google Tag Manager, we established comprehensive tracking to help Surrey Museums Partnership benchmark future website performance and measure ongoing success.

The new website achieved an impressive 81% increase in new users, demonstrating our success in attracting fresh audiences to Surrey’s cultural offerings. The website bounce rate decreased by 20%, indicating that visitors found the content engaging and were motivated to navigate deeper into the site, exploring multiple museums and galleries rather than leaving after viewing just one page.

Surrey Museums Partnership successfully became the definitive digital hub for Surrey’s museums and galleries, providing exactly the single point of contact they envisioned. WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance ensures inclusive access for all visitors, regardless of their abilities or assistive technology requirements.

The comprehensive website provides a strong foundation for ongoing partnership development and cultural advocacy across the region, positioning Surrey Museums Partnership as the authoritative voice for cultural heritage in Surrey.

• Directory filtering tool enables intuitive discovery of museums and galleries based on visitor interests
• WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance ensures inclusive access for all users
• Culture 24 integration provides dynamic local event information across Surrey venues