Located on Great Russell Street in Central London, The British Museum was the world’s first national public museum. Since opening its doors in 1759, progress has been the Museum’s watchword.
The Museum’s collection brings together the cultures from around the world. With almost 8milion works, it’s one of the largest of its kind. For the future, it has ambitious plans for global collaboration to reimagine its displays, delivering new digital and public programmes. The Museum’s shop allows everyone to share its insatiable curiosity.
The British Museum welcomed over 4.5 million visitors in 2022/23. Thanks to continued support from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport it can provide free admission to its permanent exhibitions. To continue its other important national and international work, essential finances come from special exhibitions, donations and retail sales.
The Museum’s online shop features some 4,000 products including books, catalogues, replicas, jewellery, textiles and stationery. From beautifully crafted kimonos to kitchenware based on the museum’s collections, it represents a unique online shopping destination.
The Museum recognised the importance of digital sales to reach audiences around the world. It prioritised attracting new visitors and helping them choose and purchase items from their exceptional catalogue. Increased sales and improved profitability contribute to the Museum’s important cultural and community engagement projects.
To support these aims, the shop’s Adobe Commerce Cloud site needed updating to improve user experiences, customer service and efficiency. The existing solution was unstable, performing poorly and outdated.
The first step was to complete a detailed technical audit. This quickly identified opportunities to deliver immediate improvements to the shop’s performance.
With ongoing support and robust service levels agreed, the shop’s team could focus on further development sprints to achieve even better results.
Following upgrades with full testing and deployment, the shop has moved to a current version of Adobe Commerce Cloud. The path is now clear for performance improvements and future development plans.
The next phase was to collaborate to develop a digital roadmap for growth with the help of our in-house experts. This included a discovery project and an in-depth audit of user experiences and needs, mobile performance and accessibility. The result was a clear framework to achieve the next level of digital sales. Our collaborative approach has enabled us to build a strong, lasting relationship with the client.
Regular updates and progress meetings have kept everyone up to date as the requirements and implementation plan developed. Our thought leadership, ecommerce experience and expertise have contributed to the Museum shop’s vision for the future.
Together, we are now ready to move ahead with their plans.
Our work covered:
Accessibility. Good accessibility principles improve user experiences and make a site easier to use for everyone. It was important to review and update the shop’s site to meet the latest standards of digital inclusion.
Navigation. To simplify the Museum’s well-stocked online store an attractive mega menu layout makes everything easy to find. The team can showcase their most popular products and display categories, sub-categories, sidebars, fresh content and images.
Click and collect. Choice improves customer service so click and collect shopping is popular. Orders placed online from Monday to Thursday are available for collection from the Museum the next day. Collections for orders placed from Friday to Sunday are available on Monday.
Integration. Maintaining in-store stocks and meeting growing demand online is important for any retail operation. For the Museum, this required seamless integration of Adobe Commerce Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Cross-team collaboration ensured inventory updates, saleable quantities and visual merchandising were all successfully synchronised.
Payment gateways. Ensuring customers around the world can choose their preferred payment options supports the shop’s plans for growth. Adding payment gateways for Worldpay, Apple Pay and Google Pay will provide streamline online payments.
User experience. Having enhanced the functionality and performance of the Museum’s online shop, the focus is now on the user interface (UI/UX). An audit has already shown a clear route to improve customer journeys through design, structure and navigation. With the Museum’s complex operations, understanding all the implications is an important part of the planning process. As we move ahead, each stage will involve a thorough process of review and challenge.
Carbon score. As part of the Museum’s commitment to a low carbon future, we will also reduce page weight and provide energy efficient hosting. This will deliver cost savings.
Digital marketing. With the digital foundations firmly in place, we are set to implement a comprehensive digital marketing strategy to reach new audiences and increase sales.
2021
Arts, Culture & Heritage
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