Sally and Kardo x Tamsin talk English Heritage
We chose The Team because you didn’t just pitch to the people in the room.
You pitched to the curaturial team, the site managers, the people who make us an authentic brand.
Back in 2015, the Government awarded English Heritage £80m to improve and protect the 400+ historic properties in its care.
In this episode of films celebrating our 40-year history, Brand Activation Director Sally Tarbit and Experience Design Director Kardo Ayoub talk to Former Head of Digital at English Heritage, Tamsin Burwell. You can watch the full conversation in the video below.
Challenge
In early 2014, discussions were under way to split English Heritage.
By April 2015, English Heritage had separated into two separate bodies.
One, a new charity, retained the name of English Heritage. The other, a public body, would become Historic England.
Approach
The new business plan required significant growth in admissions and membership income, with additional targets around commercial activities.
So, English Heritage approached The Team to help bring the incredible story of England to life.
Our goal:
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To create a new digital brand and an immersive digital user experience.
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To inspire every user to develop deeper engagement with the wealth of content, products and services available to them.
The original English Heritage website homepage
Due to the wide range of visitor needs, personalised content was required in order to increase visitor numbers.
The website also needed to be sufficiently versatile, to cater for the various locations involved.
We worked in close collaboration with English Heritage from the outset, workshops were a great source of inspiration!
Wireframe showing the proposed layout of the new English Heritage website.
Creating personalised content was key in this project.
User journeys were identified against the 3 task-driven personas mentioned earlier (experience seekers, culture seekers and families.)
We carried out workshops to understand the needs of each persona. These needs were then tested with users and consumers to identify the direction of the site structure and content.
This hand-drawn wireframe shows the proposed ‘Find Places to Visit’ page
Due to the ‘hard stop’ of this project, time was of the essence.
We ran a two-week agile design sprint with English Heritage’s development, strategy and content teams.
The sheer volume of material was one of the project’s biggest challenges!
During this time we considered the different activities and opportunities available at each of English Heritage’s different locations – many of which have very different visitor offerings.
Outcome
Through well-informed experience design, we created a truly engaging digital brand and user experince for English Heritage.
Based on user location, we created a simplified navigation and personalised homepage. This helped to drive targeted marketing and increase visitor numbers.
New homepage for the English Heritage website.
Informed by audience insight, we build an intuitive, flexible, responsive website.
This new platform weaves together all 438 English Heritage sites into one aspirational digital experience, bringing the story of England’s past to life!
We created a more engaging experience with user-friendly navigation. This established global design principles on structure, pace and interactions, ensuring consistency across all digital platforms.
The modular, flexible page design reflected the new strategy, proposition and purpose. It effectively promotes the membership offering and attracts the identified target audiences.
This modular approach lends itself to flexibility in both page structure and design. It allows for the addition of seasonal messages as well as tailored landing pages for various campaigns throughout the year.
Stats
UXUK Award Winner, 2015
Best Entertainment & Leisure Experience
Why was the project so sucessful?
3 words: Bredth, Depth, Authenticity
To launch with so much incredible content was a real achievement.
It was made possible thanks to the sustained and joyful collaboration between The Team and English Heritage.
