September 2025

Featured updates

Visitors get to your content faster

Now, when a visitor selects your organization on Explore, they land directly on your home page so they can start enjoying your content right away. In testing, we saw that this simplified path increased content interactions by 14–20%.

What’s new:

• Start Guide button and splash page were removed for quicker access to content
• The Info page (which includes your description and hours) is linked from the top of your home page
• Visitors can set their app-wide language preference on Explore

Although removing the splash screen means less time for visual branding, the increase in speed and improved navigation help more visitors engage with your content faster than before.

In-guide search pilot

The Connects team wants to make it easy for visitors to discover the content that interests them most. Until now, quick access to guide content has depended on lookup numbers or QR codes, but those aren’t practical for every object or gallery.

With the new in-guide search, visitors can type a title, artist name, lookup number, or keyword to jump directly to relevant content. This helps reduce friction and gives visitors more ways to explore.

We are currently piloting search with a small group of organizations. While it may not appear in your guide yet, we’ll learn from visitor data and partner feedback and will refine the search experience before expanding access more broadly. In the meantime, take this opportunity to make sure your most important content is in your guide, ready for visitors to find it. We’ll keep you updated.

CMS Updates

• A new option lets you download a QR code to send people directly to your guide home's page. You can use this code, or the associated link, on your website, digital channels, or promotional signs. For more, see Download promotional QR code. 
• Creator and audio records don’t support images, but the CMS content forms made it look like they should. We’ve simplified things to reduce confusion. And, creator life dates appear in parentheses, to better match how it looks in the app.
• If you need help in the CMS, the blue help bubble at the bottom of your screen is your one-stop shop. You can review suggested articles, search for a topic or question, or click the Ask tab to send an email to the Connects support team.
• Exhibitions introduce the Items they contain using different section titles (e.g., Highlights or Works on View). To make sure this title fits your content, we’ve removed the default option. Now, you can choose the title that works best for each exhibition.