The Royal Academy of Arts
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.
What the Royal Academy needed
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 e-commerce possibilities and allow the Academy to display copyright information for images.
What the OTHER media 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 e-commerce (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 site 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. Forthcoming projects include creating an online space to display the Summer Exhibition entries.