Thames & Hudson
www.thamesandhudson.com
Thames & Hudson has specialised in publishing books since 1949. They publish approximately 180 new books each year and have a catalogue of over 3,000 titles. This continuing growth meant their website expanded organically (over a seven year period). The decision was therefore made to approach Red Snapper for a website redesign.
Our first challenge was a full website audit, to identify the accessibility issues associated with over 3,000 pages of content. Our second challenge was to turn this into an information design strategy for improving the website’s structure and user accessibility. We also faced the challenge of updating the visual design, technical attributes and database (the new website has to ‘talk’ with a 3rd party database, which manages online orders and subsequent distribution).
Along with a clean design, a logical navigational structure, an improved search and e-commerce system, we also improved user accessibility by introducing a number of innovative java widgets.
These include an interactive showcase panel on the home page, which allows the user to scroll through book categories and drill down to pages of interest. Expandable menus were incorporated into the books category page, allowing users to gain an overview of all that’s available. On book pages themselves a ‘look-inside’ showcase panel allows users to browse visually through a book. We also included the ability to open videos within pages, and social media links encourage viral promotions.
Behind all of these achievements the book database is updated automatically overnight so that users can enjoy much faster loading page speeds and a completely up to date catalogue. Above all, we have enabled Thames & Hudson to manage their expanding catalogue online, to the benefit of the user.
Background
Thames & Hudson has specialised in publishing books since 1949. They publish approximately 180 new books each year and have a catalogue of over 3,000 titles. This continuing growth meant their website expanded organically (over a seven year period). The decision was therefore made to approach Red Snapper for a website redesign.
The Challenge
Our first challenge was a full website audit, to identify the accessibility issues associated with over 3,000 pages of content. Our second challenge was to turn this into an information design strategy for improving the website’s structure and user accessibility. We also faced the challenge of updating the visual design, technical attributes and database (the new website has to ‘talk’ with a 3rd party database, which manages online orders and subsequent distribution).
Our Solution
Along with a clean design, a logical navigational structure, an improved search and e-commerce system, we also improved user accessibility by introducing a number of innovative java widgets.
These include an interactive showcase panel on the home page, which allows the user to scroll through book categories and drill down to pages of interest. Expandable menus were incorporated into the books category page, allowing users to gain an overview of all that’s available. On book pages themselves a ‘look-inside’ showcase panel allows users to browse visually through a book. We also included the ability to open videos within pages, and social media links encourage viral promotions.
Behind all of these achievements the book database is updated automatically overnight so that users can enjoy much faster loading page speeds and a completely up to date catalogue. Above all, we have enabled Thames & Hudson to manage their expanding catalogue online, to the benefit of the user.
