E-commerce image library
Natural History Museum, London
The Natural History Museum is home to the world's largest collection of life and earth science specimens. From the famous T-Rex to many lesser known but equally intriguing creatures, this renowned museum has some 70 million pieces of historical interest.
Hugo & Cat was asked by the museum to design and develop an e-commerce image library and management system to sell licensing rights for 40,000 of its illustrations, drawings, paintings and photographs.
The challenges
As the gatekeeper to some of the world's most treasured specimens, and in the interest of revitalising the collection, it was a primary goal of the Picture Library team to make the collections more accessible, inspiring, and faster to license.
Our approach
Having analysed the audience types, we identified a lack of customers from the cash-rich creative industries, and set out to attract their interest, whilst maintaining a sympathetic eye for the brand's culture and heritage. Using the themes of the collections as our creative inspiration, we developed the Picture Library website based around rapid search technology and journeys that showcase ideas, artists and subject matters. Imagery is used to inspire ideas and navigate content, offering both exploratory and search driven journeys, light boxes, rights calculation, account management and secure online payment.
Behind the scenes, we developed and implemented integrated workflow tools, automatic invoicing and customer relationship management. We also integrated the site with various existing systems, including invoicing.
The results
The impact of the new site has been huge. Users have instant access to thousands of the greatest images from the museum's collections and they can search, buy and download in an instant. The integrated site statistics show customers accessing the site from across the globe, rapid growth in account sign-up, and strong numbers of repeat visits. Revenues from the creative industries have increased considerably, and the transfer of the audience online, has improved internal workflow, saving the museum valuable time and resources.