Drawing over three million visitors per year, Trinity Church Wall Street has an online challenge that’s probably familiar to many mission-driven organizations: a wide range of audiences, each with their own interests and needs.

As a major historic landmark and tourist attraction in New York City, Trinity Church Wall Street has a vast audience base, including international tourists (Alexander Hamilton’s gravesite is there), active churchgoers, music lovers, art historians, academics, and community groups. Each has different interests and purposes, so delivering unique personalization as a way to serve discrete audiences with different needs is paramount. Forum One has been working with Trinity for over four years to optimize its approach to website personalization, by creating online experiences that spark engagement.

Using AR to take engagement to the next level

Most recently, in collaboration with Trinity and Cortina Productions, Forum One supported the development of an Augmented Reality (AR) experience integrated with the website, that offers visitors a limited number of interactive tours of the Church’s art, architecture, and history, including the multiple stories hidden in plain sight in a new stained glass window at the entrance to the church.

AR experiences that offer choice and selection 

To provide experiences that meet the needs of differing by major audience groups, the AR experience features three tour options: 

• A cemetery tour, highlighting notable figures like Alexander Hamilton 
• An exploration of the stained glass window 
• An explanation of the stories and sacraments depicted around the altar

The interactive experience allows visitors to engage with Trinity’s rich history in a new and innovative way. To develop the AR experience, Forum One and Cortina Productions took a phased approach, first launching a beta version, and then making content available through Contentful, a headless CMS. This approach enabled Trinity staff to independently manage and update the AR experience’s content.

Leveraging a taxonomy-driven approach, the app drives traffic to more in-depth content on their website, creating a deeper level of engagement to connect in-person visitors to their digital offerings.

Delivering results

Expertly executed digital personalization enables Trinity to authentically connect with diverse audiences on an individual level. The AR platform received more than 10,000 views in the first four months after launch, engaging onsite visitors with informative and interactive insights. The success of the AR experience demonstrated the potential of digital technologies to enhance the visitor experience at historic sites and landmarks.

The collaborative effort between Trinity, Forum One, and Cortina Productions in creating the AR experience exemplifies the power of immersive digital experiences to transform how visitors engage with cultural and historical institutions. 

By leveraging technology and creative collaboration, museums and landmarks can create innovative experiences that transcend physical limitations, offering visitors a deeper and more interactive understanding of their surroundings.