The flourishing of the Internet has made the operation of websites featuring cultural content a focal point for discussion among cultural workers. The Culture Portal Sustainability Workshop, held by the Culturemondo Network Asia-Pacific Secretariat Program under TELDAP’s International Collaboration and Promotion of Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program, came to a successful conclusion on June 11, 2010; the workshop brought together operators of cultural portals from Australia, Britain, Singapore, and Taiwan in a relaxed atmosphere to consider and discuss strategies for operating websites on cultural subjects.

Deputy program director Lee Der-Tsai makes opening statement on how ancient culture and information technology have given rise to an array of possibilities in Taiwan

In their opening statement, TELDAP deputy program director and Executive Director Lee Der-Tsai of the Academia Sinica Institute of Information Science, in addition to summarizing the framework and achievements of TELDAP also stated, with feeling, that although Taiwan occupies no more than 0.02% of the earth’s surface, it accounts for 2% of the world's biodiversity; and that being located at the crossroads of Asia and the Pacific Ocean, it is also startling diverse in terms of human culture. Through the Internet, ancient Asian culture has met with the latest information technology in Taiwan, giving rise to a wider array of possibilities.

James Quo-Ping Lin, Chief of Exhibition Service Division, National Palace Museum, gives his presentation “Strategy to the Sustainability of Cultural Website”

Sebastian Chan of Australia’s Powerhouse Museum touched on a number of problems with the establishment of websites. He opined that many operators of cultural websites lack clarity about the goals, target audience, and other aspects of their own websites, often merely taking the broad "masses of society" as their assumed audience. Taking a 19th century currency exhibit as an example, if a website can be designed for and connect with those with a particular interest in currency and 19th century currency in particular, it will be much more able to find its audience, gaining more word-of-mouth and positive notice. And to test whether or not a website is successful, using Google Analytics and other web traffic analysis tools can help website operators find out if their own operational strategy can successfully build bridges between the museum institution and audiences.

For the first of the afternoon practice sessions, Ms. Anra Kennedy of Britain’s Culture24 was invited to share her “Content + connections=audiences” practice course. Kennedy presented case studies of several of Culture24's successful museum websites.Knitting - Victoria and Albert Museum, Dulwich On View, Cooking Exhibition and others were designed with themes that site users were interested in, combined with the use of blogrolls, interactive promotional activities, and systems for sharing materials with members, giving site members ample opportunities to interact with each other, resulting in them spending more time contributing to the websites' content. She further noted that surprising and unconventional promotional materials are sometimes better at reaching a mass market and increasing a website's name recognition.
 
James Quo-Ping Lin, Chief of the National Palace Museum Exhibition Service Division, with characteristic sophistication and wit, lifted the veil of mystery from the operation of the NPM website for the audience. The National Palace Museum is a national leader among museums and in the fields of culture and creativity, which extends to its operation of the museum’s official website and its digital content. With connections and communication, and the creation of narrative and game-based content, the NPM is, step by step, becoming what Philip Kotler defined as a “communicative museum.” The NPM has also actively taken advantage of "Information Technology Month" and other events to communicate with Internet users at exhibitions, acquiring information about users from through questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, and other qualitative and quantitative methods in order to make adjustments to the operational strategy of the website. Lin also stated that website operations require both specialists and the participation of all departments within an institution. The NPM carries out interdepartmental coordination work and quality checks of NPM website content at Website Operations Group Meetings headed by the Deputy Director.

Anra Kennedy drew on her own experience with the Culture 24 website’s undertaking of the “Museums at Night,” event. Culture24, a cultural website supported by the British government, provides British museums and cultural enterprises and institutions with a platform for disseminating information, and is highly valued by aficionados of British culture. Through the Culture24 website and the efforts of news editors, information on Culture24’s recently-concluded “Museums at Night” event received exposure on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. It bears noting that the implementation of this project coincided with the critical moment of the announcement of the results of the recent UK general election and the resulting negotiations between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on the formation of a coalition government, when the entire country’s attention was focused on politics; this makes it all the more impressive the event succeeded in earning prominent coverage in The Guardian and other mainstream media, on a low budget and with the efforts of fewer than ten people.

During the course, Kennedy listed several key questions to consider about cultural websites, and asked participants to discuss the operation of their own websites and problems they have encountered in small groups. Participants discussed how decisions about culture websites’ content positioning (“Which content?”), the target audience ("who would you reach out to?") and how to directly reach it (“Where is your audience?/How do they communicate?") and the design of promotional activities for the website (“which tools/networks?") can, through gradual steps, substantially increase web traffic.

For the second activity, Sebastian Chan was invited to leave the practice session "Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Cultural Website." Chan first introduced the widely used web traffic analysis tool Google Analytics (Google Analytics Report Enhancer— ROI Revolution) and how the Goal Funnel function can be used to set clear goals for user page visits ("What do you want the user to do?"). Giving the Powerhouse Museum search page as an example, Chan said he wants users to first visit the home page→ access the collection object search engine→ click to read object information; that completes a successful page visit.By observing the time and regional origin of site traffic, further analysis of why visitors leave the site can be conducted as a basis for enhancing and improving page content. Additionally, Chan also briefly discussed the concept of Social Media Measurement. With the popularity social networking websites, many cultural websites have also gotten on the social media bandwagon in an attempt to get closer to their target audiences. Unofficial social media measurement tools have therefore gradually taken on value as references. For instance, by entering the keyword of a cultural website on various social media measuring tool websites (such as WHOS TALKIN, How Sociable?, and Openbook), you can find out the visibility of a website and what comments have been posted about it on social websites. Chan also specially noted several measurement tools for Twitter, a major social website in Europe and the Americas:

‧ Ad.ly Analytics— See how many people have actually browsed a post, and improve post content.
‧Klout Observe a cultural website's message circulation and level of influence on Twitter.
‧ Twitalyzer— Find out a cultural website’s level of influence on Twitter, influencer type and region, and other information.
TweetPsych— Analyzes post content type, and can be a reference index for improving the balance of the text of messages.

The workshop was a success, with over 60 cultural workers participating. The participating guests agreed that the difficulty of operating cultural websites is not to be underestimated, as it is not easy for such websites to attract funding and public notice. Therefore, when operating a cultural website, cultural workers must first have a comprehensive plan, understand who the audience for website is, look at the website's content to find ways to create "links" between the website and the audience, and flexibly make appropriate adjustments to the operational strategy; doing so can raise the quality of the website and achieve the goal of operational sustainability.