HISTORIC ROYAL PALACES
Bringing history to life for a 21st century audience
MAKING THE PAST FUTURE-PROOF
Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) are the custodians of sites including the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace. Every day they bring six of the UK’s most extraordinary buildings and their stories to life. Visitors get to connect with the past and learn the truth about some famous – and infamous – characters. Once these palaces were only for the privileged; now everyone can visit. e3 was first appointed in 2016 to lead an iterative, agile programme of works, redeveloping the website, which now forms part of a wider digital transformation programme.
Providing the online push for 5 million tourists
HRP’s problem was that their digital platform and approach was as historically-focused as their attractions. They were keen to drive a personalised engagement strategy through rich story telling for five million target tourists from the around the world. They recognised that a significant overhaul of their website would be needed as part of a broader digital transformation programme to bring them up to date with consumer expectations.
Democratising the digital offer
Prior to this project, HRP were using separate mobile and desktop experiences, creating a large overhead for content entry, creation and maintenance. On top of this, over 50% of their web traffic was browsing via mobile, demanding a new mobile-first approach.
A digital momentum programme
Phase 1 of this project was to re-platform the existing custom CMS to Umbraco, providing the flexibility HRP needed to evolve the current website over time, with the end goal of a complete redesign as a secondary phase. As this re-platform was an interim update, we proactively investigated and proposed a solution to refactor their existing site to be fully responsive during the migration to Umbraco. This meant there was no immediate need to update the overarching information architecture and the look and feel of the site.
Refreshing the user experience
Following the re-platforming, HRP commissioned a third party to complete a discovery piece, leading into the full website redesign. We crafted a new user experience by building on this work, taking some elements forward but challenging and improving as necessary.
A DYNAMIC PARTNERSHIP
Multiple stakeholder management
HRP is a large and complex organisation with many competing business needs and stakeholder groups. As such, we led the project team in multiple workshops and engagement sessions to spread information and understanding throughout the organisation.
Hybrid development to build momentum through delivery
We took a hybrid Agile approach, front-loading much of the UX and design work to develop a suite of web components, which formed the basis of all new templates. These were tested extensively through face-to-face qualitative interviews and a variety of online tools such as VWO and Chalkmark. Development work ran along 2-week Agile sprints, of which we have just completed the tenth, reaching an MVP solution for internal beta testing and further content entry.
Strong partnership
HRP and e3 have formed a strong partnership with successful delivery of the re-platform and collaboration on the creation of multiple interactive campaigns. The future programme will focus on digital momentum projects to ensure swift delivery of new product innovations so that HRP remains relevant and keeps pace with consumer expectations.