The National Museums Scotland (NMS) is Scotland's national museum service. It boasts five museum sites throughout the country as well a national collection centre in Edinburgh.
The Brief:
To create a website that would create a customer-focused experience that complemented the physical experience of visiting any of the museums. In keeping with NMS' brand values, the emphasis of the website content was on storytelling and providing the context of objects and their relationship to other museum objects. In short, the aim was to create a world class ‘Online Museum’ which attracted and was relevant to a wide audience, both within Scotland and beyond.
The Solution:
This project focussed on two key areas. The first was the online branding for the National Museums and each of its individual museums. Innovation Digital worked closely with NMS' design agencies to translate the brand online.
The other key element was user experience. It was imperative that the website encouraged its users to both visit the Museum but also for those unable to visit, it created a sense of being there. To this end extensive user research was carried out, involving multiple focus groups and usabilty testing with regular visitors, tourists, academics and families.
The website is built on the Innovation Digital CMS. We also provided search engine optimisation and web copywriting training to NMS.
The Results:
The new website provides a fully integrated online experience for all six National Museums Scotland locations including the National War Museum and the National Museum of Flight. Since initial launch of the website, further development has included a What's on section and an online shop to support NMS' commercial activities.