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Scaling ecommerce operations to meet growth expectations

CLIENT

The British Museum

INDUSTRY

Tourist Attractions

CAPABILITIES

Magento Implementation

Navision Integration

247 CloudHub Integration

Adestra Integration

Print-on-Demand Services

 

Implementing a new platform to enable the British Museum to take advantage of growth opportunities in ecommerce.

How can museums ensure they are ready for the opportunities of the digital age? By implementing a Magento 2 platform with all the features needed to meet current requirements while futureproofing operations for the advances in software and hardware that are coming in the near-future, like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, machine learning and voice search.

MODERNISING THE BRITISH MUSEUM’S ECOMMERCE PLATFORM

The British Museum in London is dedicated to human history, art and culture. It’s permanent collection numbers some 8 million works, and is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. Having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire, the museum documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present day.

The museum’s website site attracts over 20-million online visitors a year, and revenue is generated online from tickets for exhibitions and events, store merchandise, memberships, print-on-demand services and donations to the work of the museum.

The British Museum appointed us to develop a powerful and secure e-commerce platform which could scale easily to meet growth expectations. They wanted the new online store to offer shoppers a ‘single basket view’ of items purchased at checkout, and be capable of integrating with a wide range of retail services through API’s in future.

 

A NEW RESPONSIVE STORE FORMAT

The forces rocking the technology world – cheaper devices, varied screen sizes, miniaturized mechanics and increased computing power – are prompting a rich period of experimentation in both exhibit design and ecommerce. For many museums, digital advancements are attracting a diverse range of visitors and are changing the way audiences learn about art, science and nature.

In ecommerce, for example, some museums are making their extensive back catalogue of fine art prints and posters available to online shoppers. With stylish interactive ‘roomsets’ available to help viewers assess imagery in situ, flexible frame choices and easy ordering for home delivery services, these items are especially appealing after a visit, and frequently represent a bridge to the wider store offering.

We created a fresh, responsive design and applied it to the British Museum’s new online store, enabling online shoppers to use desktop, mobile and tablet devices to buy products. Magento’s backend system was integrated with Navision warehouse (ERP) and customer management (CRM) software to enable a “single basket view”, Adestra for email marketing automation, and WorldPay for transactions.

END-TO-END PRINT-ON-DEMAND SERVICES

To make a curated selection of posters and fine art prints available to consumers from the British Museum’s archive, we developed an online ‘print-on-demand’ service in collaboration with King & McGaw.

We created a customised category landing page to enable visitors to quickly navigate to the most popular posters and prints from a range of over 400 designs.

Shoppers could add purchases to their basket and an order inventory feed sent purchasing and delivery data to King & McGaw’s fulfilment system for print-on-demand customers.

A FLEXIBLE NEW PLATFORM POWERING THE BRITISH MUSEUM'S DIGITAL EXPERIENCE

247 Commerce has successfully enabled the British Museum to offer a scaleable ecommerce solution, with their new platform succesfully integrated with their ERP, CRM, email and Print- on-Demand solutions.

Powered by Magento, the platform provides a stylish and seamless shopping experience with a single basket view at checkout and a polished user interface enabling staff to exercise a high level of control over the museum’s ecommerce operations.

Visitors can now purchase a wide range of merchandise from the museum’s new online store, from books to gifts to prints, in a sleek, modern shopping experience using the digital device of their choice.

With a cloud-based Magento platform, the British Museum are well-placed to take advantage of digital opportunities now and in the near-future.