The British Museum eCommerce Shop – A New Look for a World-Renowned Institution

'As always, it was a pleasure to work with the dedicated and talented Williams’ project and leadership teams on this project. We are delighted with the early results, especially the aesthetic changes, the accessibility improvements and the many SEO enhancements. We look forward to the next phases of work and planned developments, confident of Williams’ expert guiding hand through the process.'

-Tom Costello, Head of Commercial Income at The British Museum

A Museum-Worthy Digital Experience: How Williams Commerce Refined the British Museum Shop for Today’s Ecommerce Landscape

The British Museum needs no introduction — one of the world’s most visited and respected cultural institutions, it attracts millions of visitors each year. Its online shop plays a vital role in supporting the museum’s mission, offering beautifully curated merchandise that reflects the Museum’s global collections.

Challenge

While the project was initially scoped as a visual refresh using Adobe’s latest Hyvä theme, it quickly evolved into something more ambitious. To meet the British Museum’s wider commercial, performance and user experience goals, the transformation became more akin to a full site rebuild — addressing not just design, but also deeper technical enhancements aligned with the ecommerce team’s priorities.

From the outset, the British Museum’s ecommerce team had a clear set of priorities:

Visually align the shop with the main Museum website to create a more seamless brand experience.

Improve site speed and performance to ensure a faster, smoother customer journey.

Increase revenue by delivering a more intuitive and optimised user experience.

Like many other organisations, the British Museum had also seen a major shift toward mobile-first browsing. As a result, every objective came with an added emphasis on mobile performance — making sure the new site would be just as powerful and elegant on smaller screens as it is on desktop.

Solution

The Hyvä theme for Adobe was selected to help the British Museum Shop to take full advantage of this modern frontend framework known for dramatically improving performance, reducing page load times, and simplifying development. Hyvä strips away unnecessary complexity, allowing developers to build fast, lightweight Adobe Commerce stores with clean code, while still delivering a rich user experience.

We began the discovery process with a series of workshops, including:

An Objectives & Priorities workshop, mapping business goals and user expectations.

A Data Deep Dive, leveraging GA4 user behaviour, Adobe Commerce revenue data, and conversion paths to inform design decisions.

A Persona Validation session to better understand audience types and how they interact with the site.

Armed with actionable data, the Williams Commerce team moved into wireframing guided by a well-prepared reference document from the British Museum’s ecommerce team that clearly outlined brand guidelines and design preferences. This strong foundation, paired with our deep experience in the Arts and Culture sector and real-world user insights, enabled a focused, collaborative, and insight-led design process.

The process culminated in the final design unveil, always a highlight for both the Williams Commerce team and the client. Thanks to the thorough discovery process and data-driven decision-making throughout, the design was met with positive feedback from the British Museum team.

The most complex integration challenge involved working with the British Museum’s third-party payment provider which was solved by engineering a bespoke solution that delivered a successful outcome for the client.

Results

The new British Museum shop site launched in May 2025. While still in the early days post-launch, Lighthouse performance metrics are already showing strong signs of success, such as accessibility and SEO scores of 100, as well as significant improvements in mobile performance and best practice scores.

Importantly, the site now feels like a seamless extension of the main British Museum main website and the foundation is now in place to support future growth and revenue gains with a fast, modern and fully aligned ecommerce experience.

Mathisse Johnston was the lead project manager for this exciting project and says, “It was a real honour to work with such an internationally recognised and prestigious brand like the British Museum. Their internal team were superb to collaborate with; clear, engaged, and full of insight. Seeing all that effort come together in this new site has been a real highlight.”

With the new site live, attention now turns to post-launch support and continuous optimisation, including improvements to POD (print-on-demand) and managing shipping by country.

The partnership between Williams Commerce and the British Museum continues and we are excited to see how the new shop helps support the Museum’s global audience.

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