Exit through the gift shop’ - Bridging the gap between your offline and online experience
20/12/2024 - Insights
There are increasing opportunities for these organisations in the arts, culture and heritage sector to convert that growth and thrive in the digital world.
Providing a good online experience can build a strong connection with those who enjoy visiting them in person by engaging with these people throughout the year. They can also tap into audiences who may never visit in person but are deeply engaged online.
And so, it’s not surprising that audiences now expect a consistent experience across both digital and offline channels. It should always feel like they are interacting with the same brand regardless of the medium.
The unfortunate truth is that while for many organisations the offline experience leaves visitors inspired and informed, their online experiences can be forgotten and are less compelling.
With the opportunity to increase revenue, your online experience should not be overlooked. In fact, it can be a significant lever in helping you achieve your goals. So, where to start?
A strong ecommerce store to complement your on-site gift shop at your venue can help you generate additional revenue and bridge the gap between your online and offline experience.
The importance of having an online shop
Though delivering an exceptional experience for visitors is the priority, this expands beyond the four walls of your venue – be it a museum, gallery, theatre or another type of heritage or cultural institution.
Today’s audiences seek more digital touchpoints alongside established physical ones. Extending this experience through an online shop can strengthen your relationship with these audiences.
It can help enhance brand engagement, giving you the chance to sell items directly to customers, rather than through a third party. This means you can take control and deliver experience-led commerce for people interested in what you have to offer.
Furthermore, an ecommerce website makes it possible to deliver the same positive experience visitors enjoy online all year round. Since there is no need to travel to your venue, they could make additional purchases and discover more options than they would have solely through visiting your physical gift shop. For galleries it would be especially difficult to sell all the art in store but selling custom prints online (via integrations to providers such as King & McGaw) can be a positive revenue source.
A solid ecommerce setup can therefore add to your income and enable you to continue to do the great work you do.
You can also embrace ticketing through ecommerce, enabling people to buy tickets for events or exhibitions online before attending your venue. Offering a ‘single basket’ solution that allows them to buy products and membership at the same time can drive incremental growth.
Perhaps most importantly though, a user-centric ecommerce experience helps people engage with your organisation in a way that makes them feel part of it.
Key takeaway:
Not delivering a consistent experience across all channels puts barriers between you and your customers. You should want to make every one of them feel a connection to your organisation and so it’s important to ensure you have the right touchpoints in place to achieve this.
Personalisation and Membership recognition
When it comes to feeling part of it, personalisation can play a central role.
Delivering personalised messaging and experiences for users can boost loyalty and enhance that feeling of connection. But it can also increase revenue and conversion rates, with 80% of customers more likely to make a purchase when offered a personalised experience.
Key takeaway:
In arts and culture, having a membership section of your site can develop that sense of connection, especially when enhanced by relevant product selections, discounted shop pricing, ticketing details and information for members.
The benefits of click and collect
Solutions such as click and collect offer another way to bring together your physical and digital experience.
Click and collect can boost footfall in-store, with one study finding that 49% of consumers were likely to buy additional items when visiting a store to pick up an order made online. Moreover, click and collect can improve conversion rates, with customers who use this method said to spend around 14% more than those who do not.
Shipping costs can be reduced when click and collect is adopted, while there is also evidence to suggest click and collect reduces return rates. With such benefits, it’s little surprise the popularity of click and collect has accelerated in recent times, with over 15% of UK ecommerce sales fulfilled via click and collect in 2023. This is almost double the rate of click and collect purchases before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Click and collect has obvious benefits for arts and culture organisations. By having customers shop online and then physically visit your location to collect their purchase, this actively bridges the gap between offline and online and can allow customers to engage more readily. Some challenges here can be having your shop inside of the ‘pay line’.
Key takeaway:
Wherever possible it’s best to ensure your shop and café are accessible to customers before entry. If you can’t do that click and collect may still be possible using a collection desk or locker type solution.
Covering the whole user journey
At Un.titled, we have a strong track record of aligning offline and online shopping experiences for arts and culture clients.
We do this through looking at the user journey in its entirety. This is to deliver a digital experience that is fluid, consistent and aligns with the physical experience visitors have had on-site. For us, it's all about delivering a seamless experience that brings ecommerce flawlessly into the mix.
We have worked with The National Gallery to create a new online shop to better serve their visitors through digital channels. The shop included a complex API integration to The National Gallery’s back-office systems, while we also integrated the organisation’s Tessitura ticketing and CRM system for single-sign-on, personalisation and membership recognition.
When completing this work, we looked to immerse ourselves within The National Gallery, spending time on site and conducting discovery sessions to help us flesh out the best UI and content for the new ecommerce store. With personas and our measurement model also forming part of our approach, we were able to tailor the experience online customers receive, as well as measure the success of our approach to deliver long-term growth for The National Gallery through the online shop.
Another important ecommerce project we completed with a leading arts and culture organisation was with The British Museum. We worked to take the previous ecommerce website and deliver a series of enhancements to better serve customers online, increase revenue and boost loyalty. We started with a detailed site audit, before removing security risks and completing upgrades to bring the shop onto a fully supported version of the Adobe Commerce Cloud platform.
We then developed a digital roadmap, before completing relevant UX and design work, configuration work, testing and deployment. This helped provide the British Museum with a stable, secure and enhanced ecommerce store that has delivered an 80% increase in ecommerce conversion rate. This complements the physical offering of the museum and ensures that the digital offering is as strong as it can be.
Bringing things together by ‘exiting through the gift shop’
When it comes to delivering an exceptional customer experience, it is vital arts and culture organisations embrace both online and offline channels. Without this omnichannel approach, there is a risk that disparate and disengaging experiences will push potential customers away.
If you are looking to bring together your online and offline customer experiences but are unsure where to start, get in touch.
