artrepublic

was a successful art ecommerce business but it needed a clear brand identity that spoke to its customers

Red Panda by Tom Lewis (one of the works I added to my wishlist during this project…)

 

Context

artrepublic (now Artfinder) is an online gallery selling a huge catalogue of high quality art prints and original works by established artists and newcomers.

Challenge

artrepublic felt they did not know enough about their customers and potential customers to be able to speak to them in a voice that resonated, and to be confident that their website and end-to-end journey was truly meeting their needs.

Delivered

I ran combined qualitative and quantitative methods to build a picture of artrepublic’s customers that was both nuanced and robust. With the insights of 20 interviews and over 300 survey responses I was able to articulate:

  • The range of mindsets that artrepublic customers have when buying art and how this affects their behaviour

  • How the company needs to speak to its customers in order to resonate with those mindsets

  • Top priority areas of the website for improvement, with detailed UX wireframes for how they could be improved

This project was highly collaborative as the insights had big implications for all areas of the business, from artistic liaison who managed the relationships with exclusive artists to the logistics team who got artworks framed beautifully and sent to customers.

I engaged with all these teams to understand their perspectives and needs. I maintained this engagement throughout with research immersion workshops and early findings playbacks where colleagues could ask further questions and challenge findings.

Towards the end of the project, I collaborated with a content designer to support her work in crafting the brand voice and messaging. I also communicated with artrepublic’s development agency to ensure that my design recommendations were implemented effectively into their website.

“Polly came highly recommended to us and I do not hesitate to recommend her to others. She was collaborative in her approach, ensured she understood the challenges we had a business, and made sure that her insights were insightful and actionable. Work was delivered on time and to a very high standard, and Polly also connected us with an excellent copywriter to take the project forwards.

At the beginning of the project, Polly worked with me and my team to clarify our brief, and to make sure the project would deliver what we needed it to. During the research phase I was kept up to date, and was invited to join all of our user interviews too. As Polly started to synthesise the information collected, she suggested taking a mindset/use-case approach to our segmentation/journey- this was slightly different from what we’d originally planned, but she worked with us to explain why she was recommending it, and it was the right decision.

The work Polly did ended up underpinning a brand relaunch and website overhaul, improving on-site discoverability of a large catalogue, and our conversion rate. We merged with Artfinder this year and we continue to use the insights from the project.”

— Charlotte Bearn, Managing Director, artrepublic (now Artfinder)