Phaidon

Phaidon Press is one of the world's leading publishers of books on the visual arts.  Phaidon has a long and distinguished history as an art book publisher. The company was founded in Vienna in 1923 by Dr. Bela Horowiz and Ludwig Goldscheider and named after “Phaedo”, Socrates’ pupil who spoke on the immortality of the soul.

The Brief

eShopworks and creative agency The Tin were charged with balancing an ambitious creative brief and the high design values associated with Phaidon against the equally demanding technical and commercial objectives of increasing online sales.

The design strategy was to preserve the pleasure of browsing, which forms a key part of the purchasing experience for Phaidon’s design-conscious consumers, by creating a simple and uncluttered interface that is as visually appealing as it is functional.

The WORKSsitebuilder solution

The result is a sophisticated transactional ecommerce website, powered by WORKSsitebuilder, which retains Phaidon’s values of quality and beauty, while providing customers with an intuitive browsing and buying experience.

The design and navigation employs the language of colour to signpost the different sections of the website. Customers are guided through Phaidon’s extensive list of titles covering everything from art, architecture, photography, design, performing arts, decorative arts, contemporary culture, fashion, film, travel, cookery and children’s books. Brand consistency is maintained by referencing the visual signatures used in Phaidon’s seasonal catalogue.

Integration was undertaken with worldwide distributors to allow for the seamless, real-time transfer of product, order and shipping data between customer, site and distributor.

Complex discounting, merchandising and international pricing rules are controlled from within the WORKSsitebuilder administration to allow for powerful control of site merchandising in different territories.

Integration with the Phaidon Press internal book publishing system was undertaken to allow for asynchronous updates of print catalogue and website content to deliver consistency of content between different systems.

The Result

The new Phaidon website launched to critical acclaim. The aim of driving increased targeted search engine traffic has been fulfilled, and the customer catalogues browsing and purchase process have been significantly improved.