Anna Lowe

Anna is Co-Founder and Director of Partnerships at Smartify, a digital platform that makes museums accessible for a global audience through innovative technology and engaging storytelling.

Previously, she worked in arts education for the London Borough of Camden and the National Museum of Fine Art, Argentina.

In 2019 Anna was appointed by UK government as a Trustee at the Tate, making her the youngest ever trustee of a UK national museum.

She is also a Trustee of Hope in Tottenham a youth charity that provides counselling, mentoring and art programmes for young people in Tottenham, North London.

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Speaking at the Digital Income Summit
Tuesday 29th June

Exit through the digital gift shop

In 2020 UK online retail increased by 46.1% compared with 2019, forming new habits that look set to endure.

For museum shops, the increased importance of online shopping has meant a renewed focus on delivering a user-friendly online shopping experience. Historically museums have been slow to embrace e-commerce and typically only 7% of total sales in the sector come from online.

In this context Smartify worked with the National Gallery and the StoryFutures Lab based as Royal Holloway to design and deliver a customer-centric shopping experience that could act as an aggregator across museums. The objective was to deliver a reliable and customer-centric shopping experience to maximise museum revenue.

We were particularly interested to learn whether audiences are more inclined to buy merchandise if it is linked to collection items, digital tours and narrative experiences, rather than in a separate e-shop. This presentation shares the results.