The Henry Ford Makes Massive Artifact Collection Available Digitally with Sitefinity
Challenge
To improve the digital customer experience with its websites, mobile apps, kiosks and floor exhibits, The Henry Ford set out to consolidate data from more than 40 disparate websites and micro sites accumulated over 15 years into a single user experience.
Solution
The Henry Ford leveraged Sitefinity CMS to enable searchable, global access to digital images and videos of its vast collection of artifacts.
Result
Since launching the new site, visits have increased 12 percent, digital collections usage is up 155 percent, and referrals from social media are up more than 100 percent. With simplified site maintenance, the IT team can focus on innovation instead of maintenance tasks.
Full Story
Challenge
The digital collection is an important part of The Henry Ford experience. At any given time, only 5% of the collection can be exhibited on the museum floor. Digitization of the collection is vital to ensuring guests can experience all 26 million museum artifacts at any given moment.
However, managing the digital experience was a time-consuming endeavor. The entire collection was about 1.7 terabytes worth of information, with content, images and videos for many of the items. Beyond simply handling all of that data, the website itself had to live up to modern expectations—including responsive design to serve the 60% of visitors coming from tablets and mobile devices.
Sitefinity was the total package and delivered the capabilities and value we needed. With Sitefinity, what we’ve created is a truly scalable foundation that enables us to transform and meet the needs of our audience—with no technological limits
Matt Majeski
Managing Director and Chief Digital Officer at The Henry Ford
Solution
“Sitefinity was the total package and delivered the capabilities and value we needed,” explained Matt Majeski, Managing Director and Chief Digital Officer, The Henry Ford.
Sitefinity enabled the team to create relationships between stories that the digital content team had developed and the raw data that existed in disparate systems. Additionally, The Henry Ford digital team was able to consolidate search across all data sources, making the user experience easier and more enjoyable.
“We’re seeing more and more organizations ask us to help them untangle and consolidate multiple sites to create a unified experience,” Peter Ferraro, Solutions Architect at Perficient Digital, added. “Sitefinity is an ideal solution to power this digital transformation.”
Result
• Overall website traffic has grown 12%
• Digital collections usage is up 155%
• Social media referrals have climbed 100%
• Website maintenance and content management can be performed 50% more efficiently
Additionally, the Sitefinity platform unlocked a new ecommerce revenue stream opportunity. The Henry Ford can now sell high-resolution images of artifacts via mobile, ecommerce and kiosk applications, which has driven a 24% growth in online revenue.
“With Sitefinity, what we’ve created is a truly scalable foundation that enables us to transform and meet the needs of our audience—with no technological limits,” Majeski said.