Cimex wins Silver in W3 Awards

06 January 2009

Digital agency Cimex has won a Silver in the W3 Awards for creative excellence on the web.

The award is in recognition of agency’s online optimisation of the Royal Armouries website (www.royalarmouries.org).

When the Royal Armouries Museum (RA) originally approached Cimex to review its website and online customer experience, its online presence did little to complement the museum’s world leading approach to offline experiences.

The website suffered from the following:

• The existing website was passive and did not offer the RA a full range of services
• Content was static and offered a ‘brochure view’
• The website offered no personalisation or other online sales tools
• Despite its offline popularity, the website offered no online booking facilities
• No integration with STAR, the RA’s collections catalogue

RA wanted a website that was Web 2.0 technology rich, using community tools to reinforce and extend its offline reputation to visitors of its website.

As well as raising online sales and increasing footfall, the new website also had to deliver the RA’s wide range of educational resources, all of which are supported by exhibitions and events, such as its world leading collection of arms and armour.

The RA also wanted to increase online sales conversions via e-booking and increased footfall, but also build a website which attracted corporate sponsorship and research.

Ensuring that the website was fully compliant with the Disabilities Discrimination Act (DDA) via a website evaluation audit was also a high priority for the RA.

Cimex provided total redevelopment of the RA website, that involved expert user reviews, IA and wireframe work, design, bespoke CMS development and hosting. Cimex also had a hand in the remaining elements of the project, such as the migration and production of new content, providing the RA with guidance on writing for the web.

Information architecture was a particular challenge during development, in that the RA website had vast amounts of material, all of which had grown organically over time. During an expert website audit review, our usability teams streamlined user journeys and lessened any fragmentation of content.

As well as developing a streamlined CMS platform which offers an improved online customer experience, the new website now exploits Web 2.0 features and applications to provide users with as immersive and engaging an experience as the offline museum. The linking together of locations, events and dates will also help the RA attract new funding, by showing sponsors examples of past events at specific locations and dates.

The educational areas of the site will offer teachers the downloadable resources they require both from a key stage curriculum perspective and from advanced searching. Events and education ‘progRAmes’ will be linked via a community system and allow the booking and sharing of feedback and educational resources.

The RA is now able to offer its world class collection and expertise to as wide an audience as possible and take advantage of the revenue earning potential with an optimised sales platform that promises increased conversions.

Cimex is now one year into a five year relationship with the Royal Armouries as its digital solutions partner. Both organisations are committed to dedicating each new year to key areas of the website, such as education and research, collections integration, personalisation and community.

A Web Content Manager at Royal Armouries Museum said at the time of the launch, ‘Accessibility, engagement, education and simplicity were the main requirements for our new website. Cimex delivered all of these and more - they understood our organisation resulting in a site that reflects our ethos, our standards and our values, the very essence of the Royal Armouries.’

Find out more about the W3 Awards at www.w3award.com

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