Boosting commerce at the museum
The brief
Project aim: Boost income at the Fort Nelson and Leeds gift shops (both offline and online) for the Royal Armouries.
"The Royal Armouries is the United Kingdom's national museum of arms and armour, and one of the most important museums of its type in the world.
Its origins lie in the Middle Ages: its celebrated core collection originating in the nation's working arsenal, assembled over many centuries at the Tower of London".
Project objectives:
Identify and remove any barriers to engagement at the stores.
Work alongside retail teams to plot better customer journeys while evaluating existing brand and retail strategies.
Design a toolkit with guidance for retail designs. (This included: point of sale (POS), signage, visual merchandising advice).
Create a new e-commerce website which converts traffic into sales.
Impact
Empowered staff
…through easy-to-use guidelines and templates that can be adapted and reused.
Long-term value
Our consultancy services consider long-term, repeat rewards. We created value-for-money, legacy designs to be implemented in the future.
Increased sales
…through both the website design and physical gift shops.
Credit: Royal Armouries
Retail design: consultancy
Buttercrumble conducted a range of research methods, alongside the Armouries’ team, to evaluate assumptions and determine the best solutions.
The Royal Armouries provided Buttercrumble with useful ethnographic insights which Buttercrumble employed to create retail product maps and customer maps. We helped to identify different profiles and how they interact with the space.
Following this, Buttercrumble updated the suite of retail guidelines to cover the store at Leeds and Fort Nelson. This outlined retail brand values and point of sale design. It also identified when, where and how to use the different types of point of sale. We needed to ensure that key products were highlighted and their story was told (storytelling is an important value for the museum).
Guidelines preview
Buttercrumble reviewed the retail spaces (online and offline). Through this, we highlighted areas of improvement and worked through these with the commerce team.
The Armouries’ team had limited design experience and was limited by the software available. So, we designed a set of retail brand guidelines, a “picture of success”, and easy-to-use templates. We also included customer journey reviews and store planning so it was a holistic approach.
E-commerce design
Following creative consultancy, Buttercrumble partnered with the Royal Armouries to redesign the Royal Armouries e-commerce shop.
The previous website was not responsive across devices so the new design has helped reach a wider customer base. We worked closely with the museum team to ensure the usability and accessibility of the design and that it communicated directly to their global customer base.
We’re in it for the long-run!
Did you know?
We also worked closely with Leeds Dock and The Royal Armouries to create a giant Snakes & Ladders board (with a medieval twist) on the plaza outside of the Armouries. This was a time-limited activation to create a buzz and encourage engagement from visitors over the school holidays. Click here to read more about this project.
