9xb - Creating Online Success

When the Thackray Museum approached us, their site was very dated, uninspiring, and certainly not reflective of the experience you get from a visit. They were looking for a new site to showcase the museum's exhibitions and collections in a fun, friendly and informative way and to appeal across a number of different target audiences including school children, teachers, researchers, conference organisers and the general public. Accessibility was a key concern as they planned to enter the Jodi Awards which recognise the best use of technology to make collections and learning opportunities accessible to people with a learning disability.

"The previous site definitely lacked the "wow" factor and really didn't do justice to the museum. With the potential to be a powerful marketing tool it was important to get this site right. Unsure of the possibilities of the web, the Thackray team needed some guidance on putting together the brief for the website. Following an initial "Immersion Day" which involved meetings with key stakeholders to understand their individual needs from the site, we presented our "good practice guidelines to inspire ideas and then worked closely with core team members to develop a comprehensive website brief."

Emma Sharman, Marketing Manager and Project Consultant.

"With a thorough understanding of the needs of each department, we created a website with clearly defined areas, targeting the different user groups. It now captures the excitement of the museum, provides a lot of relevant information and enables the Thackray Museum staff to update & control all areas of the website. We were also pleased to be a part of the website's launch event, where 300 balloons were released offering anyone lucky enough to find one the chance to win some great prizes."

Chris Kell, Business Development Manager and Account Director.

"We needed a design that would bring the museum to life through the web, appeal to a number of very different users groups, and work hard to entice people to visit. The biggest challenge, though, was how to incorporate a lot of information, show off a number of features and channel users to different areas of the site without losing the impact of the design. The use of high quality images, flash animation and interactive features adds the wow factor and the homepage very quickly directs people to the areas of the site relevant to them."

Jay Heaviside, Account Designer.

"This was a really interesting project to work on, whilst all our sites comply with accessibility legislation, this one needed to go the extra mile and compete for an award for its accessibility. Access keys enable browsers to navigate the site without using a mouse and every image has a long description to help those using a screen reader. We also needed to make the site easy to use by the Thackray team and through the comprehensive content management system, they can update and control all areas of the website and with every new page created they can customise the page title, url, keywords and descriptions ensuring its optimised for the search engines."

Jonathan Beeley, Account Developer.