Case Study: Revs Institute®

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Preserving the Future of the Past for Meaningful Cars

Overview

Widely regarded as one of the top automotive museums in the world, Revs Institute®, in Naples, Florida, USA, is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the study and celebration of the automobile. It exists to foster a new level of understanding of the automobile not only as a technological device, but as an agent for social and economic change. 

Housed in the museum is a collection of over 100 influential automobiles that meet rigid standards for historic importance, rarity, technical, aesthetic, or social significance. Revs Institute also has an extensive archive and library of books, periodicals, photos, ephemera, brochures, advertisements and multilingual technical publications. The library is available as a resource to those interested in automotive history.

After realizing the power and potential reach of an app that would make the collections accessible on a digital platform, Revs Institute decided to enlist STQRY to help build it. The app has allowed automotive connoisseurs all over the world to access and explore the collection, thus facilitating the expansion of Revs Institute further into the world of digital experiences.

The Challenge

Revs Institute already had a significant digital footprint via the Revs Digital Library with over half a million digitized historic international racing images with thousands of images added online each month, digital exhibits, and digital kiosks in the museum galleries. 

However, Revs Institute wanted to continue to embrace technological advancements to deliver history in exciting and compelling ways. This created a two-fold challenge when thinking about their digital presence – they wanted to expand their digital footprint and make the automobile and library collections more widely accessible while providing educational opportunities for university students as well.

“Revs Institute wanted to create an app to increase our digital footprint while enabling different types of online/digital users access to the collections and content,” said Lindsay Mancuso, Special Collections Coordinator for Revs Institute.

The collection of automobiles housed in Revs Institute and its various library resources provides many educational opportunities for anyone interested in the subject. In order to make the collections even more accessible and further engage with car enthusiasts around the world, Revs Institute needed to dive deeper into digital experiences beyond what they had already embraced. Creating an innovative app was the best route to take.

However, Revs Institute had never created a mobile app before and staff did not have previous app development experience. They were familiar with digital components for cataloging, preserving, and presenting archival collections, but building an app was a new frontier. Revs Institute needed an all-in-one solution, like STQRY, to facilitate this project in order to be successful.

Revs Institute has been able to utilize the app to connect with new audiences on their mobile device to further support our mission. The mobile app has also enabled us to further fulfill our educational goals, providing tours and content for university and college students.

— Lindsay Mancuso, Special Collections Coordinator, Revs Institute

The Solution

Revs Institute enlisted STQRY to create their app, which needed to focus on educational resources and capabilities. “The goal of the app was to engage with car enthusiasts and educators, and to provide them with the opportunity to discover the collections on a familiar and user-friendly platform,” said Mancuso.

With this in mind, they focused on app features such as multimedia content and a customizable favorites section for users to save their favorite pages. In later development phases, they also added virtual tours of both the galleries and the individual interiors of the automobiles on display.

“As we moved past the initial launch of the app, we continued to add content with new educational resources, virtual tours, tours for off-site visitors, event pages, and push notifications,” said Mancuso.

Each of these features had the goal of interacting with visitors in new ways, keeping them engaged with the content and educated on the subject while on site and at home.

Building the app itself was a straightforward process with STQRY’s resources. Mancuso was impressed with the support she received, saying, “As we were creating our initial proposal for the app, the STQRY staff were eager and excited to assist in any way, going above and beyond to answer any questions we had.”

It’s also worth noting that they were able to create the app with no prior app development experience. “The various online tutorials and resources available have enabled us to explore many additional features within the app and how to use these features to our best advantage,” said Mancuso.

The Result

Revs Institute saw outstanding engagement rates from their community after launching their STQRY app. Mancuso noted, “We are seeing extremely high levels of engagement with our yearly average time on the app for users being over 24 minutes with over 56,800 pageviews as of June 30, 2021.”

They also received overwhelmingly positive survey feedback from users and found that most of them are currently using the app at home prior to, or directly after, visiting the museum in person in order to supplement the experience.

That level of engagement and satisfaction shows the power that these automobiles hold and is a testament to the power of technological innovation overall. “Revs Institute has been able to utilize the app to connect with new audiences on their mobile device to further support our mission. The mobile app has also enabled us to further fulfill our educational goals, providing tours and content for university and college students,” said Mancuso.

Revs Institute made it clear that they would recommend STQRY to any institute or collection that needs a reasonably priced app building tool with “excellent client support.” If that sounds like you, inquire with the STQRY team today to preserve the past into the future.

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