Dear Core77 friends,
About 15 months ago I started a free web magazine, Inexhibit, focused on architecture, museums and art exhibitions.
My magazine is composed of separate sections for full lenght articles, news and museum reviews.
The articles and news sections are going very well, with audience constantly growing, links and citations from the NYT, the Guardian, Wikipedia, and so on, I am quite satisfied about them.
The museum reviews section (mymuseum) is giving me really a headache, instead: the audience is simply…flat and people don’t interact as expected (everyone can leave comments and ratings, but they do it very rarely); I have worked hard to made my best with it, all reviews are original, verified (the info are always validated by the museums themselves), I made all the stuff suitable for mobiles and so on, but it seems that nothing seems to produce some appreciable results.
I am beginning to guess I did some serious mistakes with this section, perhaps its content is not really appealing or its interface is dull…but I really don’t know which way to turn, definitely.
If someone could waste some time, have a look at it (the address is http://www.inexhibit.com/mymuseum) and give me your honest opinion, it would be absolutely great, and I will absolutely appreciate it!
Thank you in advance.
All the Best,
Riccardo
Thank you Keno!
There’s nothing to be sorry about, If I would have not wanted plain opinions I would not asked for them, so your review is totally OK.
The difference between mymuseum and yelp, tripadvisor, even Wikipedia is validation: the information provided are not from travellers but from museum professionals and all reviews are submitted to museums that can edit/revise/verify/update them; users can add their opinion to others in order to provide as many different point-of-views as possible, which has been done to combine Wikipedia’s logic to tripadvisor’s one.
Nevertheless, no doubt your get the point, if you deem the section messy and low-quality, it should be somehow so, and I have to take some serious action on that.
I would be sorry to entirely remove the section, it has been conceived to work together with the full articles, so if you see a coverage on an exhibition you are interest in, you can also get further information on where the related museum is located, its opening times and so on.
At the same time mymuseum is a very demanding effort, since there are thousands museums around, and it should give something in return, otherwise it all lost time and money for us.
Thank you for your book suggestions, I will get and read them carefully.
Thank again for your advise Keno, I truly appreciate your help!
Best,
Riccardo
Can’ t deny that absolutely true! Good point. 
I actually like the design of it. Very clean and professional looking. As for the effectiveness of the business itself, you should do research to make sure you have a niche to target.
Good luck man!
Thank you so much, Designsn!
Yes, following yours and KenoLeon’s advices (and critics, too) I now have a much better idea of what is working with mymuseum and what is not.
I know the content is good (I have written it, so I know that, albeit far from perfection, is not composed of crappy real estate-style reviews), but it isn’t always perceived so. That’s definitely MY fault and I should amend it.
Is there a niche for another museum reviews page? I deem yes, as long as it’s different from yelp, tripadvisor and so on, and even from Wikipedia; and as long as it provides something useful they do not provide, instead I am currently working on that.
About the suggestion to directly link the museum’s info pages on their websites, it is quite reasonable, I admit.
Nevertheless a standardized way to present such info could help people to find all they really need without jumping from a site to another, while trying to find information which are often split on more than one page (like the separate " Opening times" and “Getting here” almost all museum’s websites have) and sometimes even without including an interactive location map.
Again, thank you guys for your great support!.
Every help, suggestion (and critic too) is like fresh air for me.