In today's experience-driven world, organizations that prioritize visitor experience gain a significant competitive advantage.
Whether you're managing a museum, tourist attraction, retail space, or cultural venue, developing a coherent visitor experience strategy transforms casual visitors into loyal advocates.
This guide will walk you through the essential steps to create visitor experience a strategy that aligns your operational capabilities with visitor expectations.
What is a Visitor Experience Strategy?
A visitor experience strategy is a clear plan that guides how your organization connects with visitors—starting from the moment they find you online to long after they’ve left your space.
Unlike basic customer service, which often focuses on single interactions, this strategy looks at the entire visitor journey, both in person and online.
It outlines your goals, key projects, timelines, and who’s involved. It also covers important areas like education, technology, signage, accessibility, and safety.
Think of it as a roadmap that helps you deliver consistent, meaningful experiences that reflect your mission and values.
Steps to Crafting Your Visitor Experience Strategy
Creating an effective visitor experience strategy requires a systematic approach. Follow these key steps to develop a plan that works for your specific organization:
Step 1:Conduct an Experience Audit
Start by honestly evaluating your current visitor experience.
Walk through your space as if you were visiting for the first time. What feels confusing? What delights you? Where do you notice bottlenecks or frustration points?
Review recent visitor feedback, online reviews, and staff observations to identify patterns. Document both strengths you can build upon and gaps you need to address.
This baseline assessment provides crucial context for your strategy development.
Step 2: Define Your Organization's Purpose and Branding
Clarify what makes your organization unique and what specific impact you aim to have on visitors.
This includes revisiting your mission statement and core values to ensure your visitor experience aligns with your fundamental purpose.
Your branding should inform how visitors perceive and interact with your organization.
Consider how your visual identity, tone of voice, and key messages should be expressed throughout the visitor journey.
When your purpose and branding are clearly defined, they provide a consistent framework for all visitor interactions.
Step 3: Agree on Overarching Goals
With your purpose and current state clearly understood, establish specific visitor experience goals.
These might include improving accessibility, increasing educational impact, enhancing visitor satisfaction scores, or creating more engaging digital touchpoints.
Make these goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound).
For example, rather than "improve accessibility," set a goal like "implement three new accessibility features for visitors with disabilities within the next six months."
Getting stakeholder consensus on these goals ensures organization-wide commitment.
Step 4: Draft a Detailed Strategy Plan
Transform your goals into concrete initiatives with clear action steps. For each initiative, specify:
- Detailed description of what will be implemented
- Required resources (budget, staff time, technology)
- Team members responsible for implementation
- Timeline with specific milestones
- Success metrics to evaluate effectiveness
This detailed planning transforms abstract goals into an actionable roadmap. The plan should address all key components of visitor experience, from pre-visit marketing through post-visit engagement, while considering the diverse needs of different visitor segments.
Step 5: Continuously Update Your Documented Strategy
A visitor experience strategy should be a living document that evolves with your organization and visitor needs. Establish regular review periods to:
- Evaluate progress toward your goals
- Assess new visitor feedback and changing visitor demographics
- Incorporate emerging technologies and industry best practices
- Refine approaches based on what's working best
- Add new initiatives as needed
This ongoing process ensures your strategy remains relevant and effective rather than becoming outdated. Regular updates also help maintain staff engagement with your visitor experience priorities as they evolve.
Key Elements of an Effective Visitor Experience Strategy
To craft a comprehensive strategy, you need to consider every possible element that can impact the visitor experience.
Keep in mind that these elements can intersect. For example, it’s important to consider how different technology solutions could positively impact each of these aspects.
1. Education and Community Goals
Every great visitor experience starts with purpose. What do you want people to learn or feel during their visit?
Your organization probably has specific educational goals, awareness objectives, or community impacts you hope to achieve.
These fundamental purposes should shape everything else in your strategy.
For example, if a key goal is helping visitors understand environmental conservation, this theme should flow through your exhibits, programs, signage, and even gift shop merchandise.
Without clear purpose, even the most polished experience feels hollow.
2. Visitor Demographics and Learning Motivations
Understanding who actually visits your site—and why they come—is essential for creating experiences that resonate.
Museum researcher John Falk has identified five different motivations for visiting a museum:
- Explorer
- Facilitator
- Experience Seeker
- Professional
- Recharger
Your strategy needs to accommodate all these different visitor types. Rechargers might need quiet spaces away from crowds, while Explorers will appreciate interactive elements and deeper information layers.
Recognizing these motivations helps you design experiences that satisfy everyone.
3. Sensory Learning Experiences
The neuroscience of learning teaches us that we retain information when our brains are creating more neural connections. This happens through active learning, emotional learning, and engaging more of our senses.
Consider ways to bring emotional stories and a multisensory experience to your site. For example, you might create an audio guide app with tracks that feature voice actors.
As Valérie Chartrand from Parks Canada puts it:
What makes a good guided tour? It allows visitors to discover the history of a park or historic site in an interesting and engaging manner through the use of audio, video, text, photos, and maps. It’s accessible, and free from barriers of use for all visitors. It reveals details of elements along the tour that visitors would not have encountered without the app. The information shared adds a deeper meaning and significance to visitors’ experience of a place.
4. Languages and Accessibility
Knowing your visitor demographics is important when crafting multilanguage experiences.
Depending on your location and budget, you might try to satisfy the most popular 2 - 5 languages for your visitors. You can create multilanguage content for your mobile tour guide app, important signs, and your marketing campaigns.
It’s also important to meet any accessibility requirements and cater to hearing-impaired, vision-impaired, and handicapped visitors.
Be sure to review your wheelchair accessibility, transcribe your app’s audio content, offer materials in braille, and more.
5. Technology
Today's visitors expect certain technological conveniences. Look honestly at your current technology and identify where you might need updates:
- Can visitors buy tickets online and skip lines?
- Do you offer mobile guides for information and wayfinding?
- Can visitors access digital collections or supplemental content?
- Do you have interactive exhibits that engage different learning styles?
Technology should enhance human interaction, not replace it. The best visitor experiences strike a balance that serves both tech-savvy visitors and those who prefer traditional approaches.
6. Safety and Basic Amenities
A visitor can’t have a great experience without the basics.
Review your site safety, capacity planning, and bathroom sizes and availability. You can use visitor research surveys to find out about negative experiences.
Not everything can be easily solved, but you’ll be able to set goals for long-term planning, such as adding another bathroom.
If you have a mobile guide app, make sure to add safety features, such as alerts for when trails are closed.
Joey Martin from Sequoia National Forest observed the practical impact of their trail guide app:
I have no doubt that the alerts and the app have helped reach users and save lives on the trails, as well as tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars.
7. Retail and Dining Experience
The for-purchase items and add-on experiences that you offer can have a massive impact on the overall visitor experience.
Make sure that you’re offering products and books that will help visitors learn even more about the subject or time period. And of course, curate fun gifts for all ages.
Try surveying visitors to find out their thoughts on your gift shop and cafe. Were they expecting to see other products? Were they disappointed? Is there a fan-favorite product that you can expand upon?
8. Staffing
When there aren’t enough staff members, the visitor experience can suffer. Long lines lead to frustration, which leads to bad reviews and negative word-of-mouth.
When staffing is limited, consider where technology might help without sacrificing that human connection.
Self-guided tours and interactive kiosks can complement staff interactions rather than replace them entirely.
9. Environmental sustainability
Today's visitors increasingly value organizations that demonstrate environmental responsibility.
In fact, a recent study found that 78% of U.S. consumers say that a sustainable lifestyle is important to them. Therefore, your strategy should include initiatives such as:
- Energy-efficient lighting and climate control systems
- Water conservation measures throughout your facility
- Waste reduction and recycling programs
- Sustainable gift shop products and packaging
- Educational components about environmental stewardship
These practices not only reduce your environmental impact but also demonstrate your values to visitors who increasingly make choices based on sustainability concerns.
10. Marketing and At-Home Experiences
The visitor experience continues outside of your museum or cultural site.
For some visitors, their first experience of your brand is your marketing, so make sure it communicates emotions and information that you want to convey.
Meanwhile, other visitors will continue to check out your website and app after their visit, so be sure to provide ways for them to deepen their experience at home.
Benefits of Having a Visitor Experience Strategy
When your organization has a clear visitor experience strategy, you can experience the following benefits:
Greater Community Impact
When you align your strategy with your mission, amazing things happen. Visitors don't just pass through—they connect deeply with your content and carry those impressions back to their communities.
Museums and cultural sites with strong experience strategies often become vital community resources rather than just tourist stops.
In fact, institutions with clearly defined experience strategies are twice as likely to report strong community engagement compared to those without such strategies.
Increased Funding Opportunities
Grant applications almost always ask for the same things: clear goals and detailed implementation plans.
Having an established visitor experience strategy means you've already done this hard work, making your organization much more attractive to potential funders.
Improved Marketing Alignment
We've all experienced the disappointment of something not living up to its advertising.
A visitor experience strategy helps ensure that what you promise in your marketing actually matches what visitors experience when they arrive.
Surveys show that businesses with aligned sales and marketing teams experience an average of 36% higher customer retention rates compared to those without alignment.
This suggests that consistent messaging and seamless interactions contribute to improved customer experiences.
Enhanced Interdepartmental Collaboration
Creating a great visitor experience isn't just the job of front-desk staff or tour guides. It requires input from everyone—curators, educators, facilities teams, technology specialists, and more.
A comprehensive strategy brings these perspectives together.
Organizations that establish cross-departmental experience committees often experience increased staff satisfaction and improved interdepartmental collaboration.
This leads to a more cohesive and effective working environment.
Positive Word-of-Mouth Growth
There's no marketing more powerful than a friend's recommendation. When visitors leave having had an exceptional experience, they become your ambassadors.
Research says that 88% of people worldwide trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other form of marketing.
That means every “wow” moment you create has the potential to ripple out far beyond your walls.
The Walt Disney Family Museum’s Visitor Experience Strategy
The Walt Disney Family Museum shows how these principles work in practice.
Understanding the diverse needs of their audience, they've created multilingual tours available in ASL, audio descriptions, and several languages.
Their approach seamlessly integrates technology with human interaction. Digital guides complement rather than replace staff engagement.
By focusing on accessibility and inclusion, they ensure every visitor can connect with Walt Disney's story regardless of language or ability.
The museum regularly surveys visitors and adapts their offerings based on feedback. Their strategy extends beyond the physical space to include robust online content that engages visitors before and after their in-person experience.
The result? Consistently high visitor satisfaction and strong word-of-mouth recommendations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between customer experience and visitor experience?
Visitor experience focuses on immersive, educational interactions that last longer than typical customer experiences. Visitors seek meaning, learning, and connection rather than just completing transactions.
How do I measure visitor satisfaction?
You can measure visitor satisfaction through post-visit surveys, online reviews, return visitation rates, membership conversions, and direct observation of engagement. You can use kiosks to gather feedback throughout your venue, providing immediate feedback collection while the experience is still fresh in visitors' minds.
What industries benefit from a visitor experience strategy?
Museums, historic sites, zoos, botanical gardens, theme parks, national parks, visitor centers, libraries, universities, and corporate campuses all benefit from visitor experience strategies, as do any organizations that welcome visitors to physical or digital spaces.
Power Your Visitor Experience Strategy with STQRY
In today's competitive landscape, a robust visitor experience strategy makes all the difference. STQRY provides the tools you need to transform how guests interact with your venue.
With STQRY, you can develop multilingual mobile guides, interactive kiosks and digital labels, and comprehensive online collections that extend beyond physical walls.
Connect with audiences like never before! Our intuitive platform seamlessly integrates these elements while providing valuable analytics to continuously refine your approach.
Ready to elevate your visitor experience?