First-of-a-Kind Digital Catalogue

Christie's

UX / Concept / Digital Transformation

CHALLENGE

Transform Christie’s iconic print catalogue into an immersive digital experience to excite new buyers.

Role

Project Lead: Led concept, design, and development across teams in New York and London.

Strategy

Bring clients closer to art from outside the gallery than ever before

As Christie’s needed to address the high cost and constrained reach of shipping its coffee-table book-like catalogues around the world, the team was tasked with creating a high impact digital counterpart. The limitations of both print and the firm’s current digital offerings became the framework for this first digitally native auction catalog. Print was limited by a lack of rich media and storytelling space (due to cost). The current digital offerings lacked the editorial and inspirational qualities of print. The project would fuse engaging features such as 360° views with a deepened breadth and scope of content into a premium editorial experience aimed to spur quick adoption of this new format.

Execution

Identified quick wins to maximize impact

Creating marketing for auction requires extraordinarily quick turnarounds. Rather than developing new technologies to present art to clients the team mined existing feature sets and focused on designing more intuitive and fluid interactions. Working with existing functionality dramatically increased the project’s efficiency while optimizing the features’ placement within the customer journey and improving UI drove a significant increase in feature usage.

Rich Media

Seamless integration of 360° views and high-definition zooms

In-line interactive rich media deepened engagement and brought clients closer to the artwork from outside the gallery than ever before. Combining these features with traditional editorial content resulted in a much more immersive experience. This new catalogue format provided a grater value to collectors as they sought to gain as much information as possible about artworks featured ahead of auction.

Fluid Interaction

Intuitive touch scrolling with dynamic navigation

Transitioning the print catalogue into a digital experience required rethinking how users would navigate content. Interconnected panels were employed to help clients browse more easily through an extensive amount of information. Each lot's cataloging was defined within bold black bars, clearly identifying transitions from one artwork to another. Inversely, content was highlighted against clean white to create a simple yet highly impactful presentation.

Results

Extended Christie’s marketing reach to drive an increase of new buyers

By expanding the breadth and scope of content featured 2X (vs. print counterparts) and providing a richer, more intuitive experience this new catalogue format was able to gain quick adoption and reach a larger audience. Not only did the digital catalogue greatly aid in the successful sale of the works featured, but it also significantly reduced costs via a more efficient marketing mix. In Addition, the project contributed to a 26% increase in YOY spending by new buyers.