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The National Gallery Online Shop Case Study

The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square is one of London’s – and the world’s – finest galleries. Founded by Parliament in 1824, it houses Western European paintings from the 13th to the early 20th century. The collection includes over 2,300 painting and some of the greatest masterpieces in the world. Paintings include those by Cézanne, Leonardo, Monet, Raphael, Rembrandt and Turner, to name just some.

The National Gallery, houses one of the greatest collections of paintings in the world.

Direct Commerce Chairty Trading Award Winner 2023

Transactions up by 18%

30% increase in Web Traffic

Deliverables

National Gallery Global Limited engaged with us for a completely new project on the Adobe Commerce platform in September 2021. Over the course of 10 months, we delivered a new website through several stages of release.

 

Multiple integrations were critical to this desire to scale efficiently. This included complex API integration to their back-office systems including their Tessitura ticketing and CRM system for Single-Sign-On, Personalisation and Membership recognition, Dynamics 365 Business Central for managing core data, Print-on-Demand (PoD) services via King & McGaw (giving users the chance to select a print, frame, and size before purchasing and be able to visualise the print in a room for scale) and personalised product integration via AltaImage (Taopix).

 

The project started with a detailed discovery stage to include workshops to define the measurement model, KPIs, Target Audiences and project scope

An engaging UX phase saw us agree clear customer personas, content modelling and wireframing before building out the site for launch. Testing was incorporated throughout including direct user testing – using tools such as Usability Hub and Treejack – from user journeys and menu systems, labelling to layouts

 We then went on to integrate Microsoft D365 as a phase 2 deliverable.

 

 Our digital marketing team created an in-depth State of the Nation report to help the client understand their marketing potential. This included the need to address pressing objectives like moving to a GA4 data model which brings its own set of challenges

 The new National Gallery Online Shop went live in June 2022. With a modern ecommerce store with quality UX and design at their disposal, the National Gallery is better placed to sell products, prints and gifts to online visitors from around the world.

Approach

We began by immersing ourselves in what is a national institution by spending time onsite learning everything we could about the business and of course admiring the amazing works of art

We worked with the National Gallery digital team through a series of in-depth discovery workshops, UI and content modelling, created wireframes and then worked these through to high fidelity designs

Persona development and using real life customers to do audience research and validation played a big part in shaping the site design and UX. This was something that the National Gallery team was passionate about and this made a real difference

Using data to create a measurement model that determined what success looked like was key to staying on track. This included identifying key KPI’s and using their data to inform the overall design and functionality of the site

Daily stand-ups, weekly project meetings and monthly executive leadership updates all helped keep the project on track

As the business had many stakeholders it was also critical to understand who in the business was accountable for what decisions and tasks. A RACI project matrix and Risk register played a big part in managing all collaborations

Their team had some strong resource in house that we were able to leverage meaning we could focus our time in the areas where we added the greatest value

"Williams Commerce did an excellent job understanding the complexity of this project including the need for a personalised SSO solution that integrated effectively with Adobe Commerce, and also improved the mobile user experience greatly despite having to work within a very tight deadline.”
Charlotte Fujimura, Senior E-commerce Manager at National Gallery Global Limited

Awards

direct commerce awards 2023

Technology

Microsoft
Adobe Commerce Cloud

Services

CUSTOMER SINCE

June 2021

PROJECT SIZE

On request

SECTOR

Arts & Culture​

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