Designing the Royal Academy's website around the needs of key audience groups, to create smooth user journeys and increase conversion.
Introducing the Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in 1768 to promote painting, printmaking, sculpture and architecture. Today the Royal Academy encourages the creation and enjoyment of visual arts through exhibitions, education and debate.
The challenge
The Royal Academy’s website had reached five years old; innovative when first built, the site had become tired-looking and difficult to use. The Royal Academy therefore required an on-brand, engaging and user-friendly new website. A site designed specifically to fulfill the needs of its visitors, guiding them to the relevant information quickly and intuitively. The website also needed to further explore online ecommerce possibilities and allow the RA to display copyright information for images.
What we did
We began by analysing the needs of each of the Royal Academy’s main audiences; using this initial research to shape the content, promotions and navigation for each identified need. We also facilitated the growth of online revenue by introducing integrated on-site ecommerce (including ticket sales and income from memberships, donations, the RA Magazine and international supporters). To add interest we created dynamic banners using the Royal Academy’s artwork, these included an additional tag, which when opened, displayed the copyright information.
The results
The Royal Academy’s website has been well received by visitors and supporters, who like the freshness of the design and the clear navigation. The statistics also reflect the success of the redesigned site, with unique visitor numbers nearly doubling in the first six months and revenue consistently growing month on month. Our annual interactive site for the RA’s A-Level Summer Exhibition has just been launched to support the RA’s offline promotion of this event.