Benchmark report: Cultural website performance (2025)

Welcome to the second edition of Substrakt's annual website benchmark report, analysing the website data of 87 cultural organisations from January to December 2024.

Substrakt is fortunate to work with a large number of arts and culture organisations in the UK, mainland Europe and North America. These organisations vary in size and encompass all art forms including theatres, arts centres, dance companies, museums, galleries, opera companies, orchestras and cultural visitor attractions.

For all of these organisations their website is one of their most important touchpoints, and Substrakt are often asked what ‘good’ looks like when it comes to website effectiveness. However, most general benchmarks available online don’t specifically address the arts and culture sector. To bridge this gap, last year Substrakt launched their first Cultural Website Benchmark Report, analysing data from 76 cultural organisations spanning a large range of art forms.

There was lots of positive feedback about the first report. Many people told Substrakt it was helpful to have this comparative data when considering the effectiveness of their own sites. Of course, the most useful data to measure against is your own past datasets, but benchmarks can help you to frame those datasets against the wider context of the sector.

This year Substrakt analysed over 140 million user sessions and 3.9 million ticketing transactions, which enabled them to once again identify trends in user behaviour alongside some examples of best practice. They welcome feedback, suggestions and comments on the report – please contact them:  benchmark@substrakt.com

Key findings

Traffic growth

There was a 29% year-on-year increase in website sessions, demonstrating continued audience engagement with arts and cultural institutions post-pandemic. Even when removing the new cohort of sites from the analysis, traffic grew by 11%.

Device usage

Mobile remains the dominant platform, accounting for 69.5% of all website sessions and generating 53.04% of revenue. However, mobile conversion rates remain lower than desktop, with a higher basket abandonment rate.

Acquisition channels

Organic search continues to be the primary driver of website traffic, contributing 44.3% of visits and 40.5% of revenue. Social media remains a low-conversion channel, while email boasts the highest conversion rate at 3.78%.

Commercial performance

Ticket sales increased significantly, with a 17.85% growth in transactions year-on-year excluding new sites, and a 39.28% increase looking at the total cohort
for 2024. Membership sales rose by 43.29%, and was particularly strong among smaller organisations, while online donations showed a modest 6.92% increase but a decline in total revenue.

User behaviour & engagement

Event pages are increasingly serving as entry points to websites, reinforcing the need for optimised event-specific landing pages. Engagement rates have significantly improved to 77.05%; some of this significant increase may be at least in part due to changes in how Google Analytics measures this metric. Video engagement remains low, but those who watch tend to finish the content.

Practical, actionable takeaways

Sometimes data analysis can fall into the ‘interesting but not useful’ category, and Substrakt's aim with these reports is to ensure there are some practical, actionable takeaways. It is in that spirit that they use the insights in this report to make the following recommendations:

Build with a mobile first mindset

With mobile accounting for nearly 70% of sessions but suffering from lower conversion rates, it is vital to focus on enhancing the mobile user experience. This includes improving purchase paths and the checkout process, and ensuring it is simple to navigate and use your website on a device with a small screen.

Continue to improve your SEO strategy

Given that organic search is the largest traffic driver (and despite the increase in AI summaries in SERPs) investing in SEO remains crucial. Focus on optimising for non-branded keywords, improving structured data, and ensuring high quality content to enhance visibility in search rankings.

Improve conversion on event pages

With a significant increase in users landing directly on event pages (32% overall), these pages should be designed for maximum conversions. Key actions include making CTAs clearer, ensuring ticket purchase options are prominent, and improving accessibility.

Review any basket abandonment issues

It is important to keep a close eye on basket abandonment rate, since an increase could indicate friction in the checkout process. Consider running some user testing to identify any friction points and consider all elements of the experience, including aspects such as making in-basket messages clearer.

Capitalise on online membership sales growth

The increase in online membership sales (+43.29% year-on-year) suggests a growing opportunity. You may want to review your membership offer and reconsider how you present it online - throughout key points in the user journey. For example by emphasising exclusive benefits and highlighting discounts within the purchase journey to encourage sign-ups.

Refine your content engagement strategy

While overall engagement rates have improved, video interaction remains low. You may want to test different formats, experiment with shortform videos, and ensure content is well-placed to attract user interaction.

Download the Benchmark Report (PDF)

Substrakt will be producing this report again next year, so they would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on the things you’ve found useful, less useful or would like to see more of. They also want to include more organisations in the 2026 report, so if you would like to include your organisation’s (anonymised) data then
please drop them a line. For both of the above please email: benchmark@substrakt.com