Introducing the Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts (The RA) 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. It was innovative when first built but become tired-looking and difficult to use. The Royal Academy therefore required an on-brand, engaging and user-friendly new website to drive awareness about the RA’s work and increase user engagement. We identified that the website needed specifically to fulfill the needs of the RA’s visitors, guiding them to the relevant information quickly and intuitively. The website needed to further explore online ecommerce possibilities.

What we did

The project commenced 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 facilitated the growth of online revenue by introducing integrated on-site ecommerce elements (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 supporting written 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.