Historic Newspapers
Digital Transformation Lead
Historic Newspapers publish carefully researched and collated collections of reproduction newspaper pages. Covering sports teams’ history, military history, royal history, music, film, tv and other interests. There are over 350 titles in the catalogue for sale on their own D2C ecommerce site.
They also own the world’s largest private archive of original old newspapers dating back over 200 years also for sale on their site.
Direction
Coordinated design, engineering and SEO teams across the rebrand, product redesign and re-platform of this 20 year old business.
Oversight
Managed budget, implementation of a new book publishing CMS, integration with third party API and Shopify Plus build.
Delivery
Launched on time and budget with 280% uplift in sales volumes, roll out to five International markets and set up for future growth.
After being acquired by the personalised book publisher Wonderbly in 2023, it was felt that the products could appeal to a younger and more global audience.
Additionally, they wanted to align Historic Newspapers with the Wonderbly catalogue by offering the customer more design and colour options as well as deeper levels of personalisation.
Design oversight of the updated book cover templates
Refining the product page UX to accommodate the book personalisation options
We implemented a new book publishing CMS allowing more cover and colour options and quicker roll out of new titles.
We integrated Wonderbly’s print-on-demand API which renders each personalised book and sends to their global network of print service providers for fulfilment and shipping.
Project involved liaison with operations on physical products; including the new packaging.
The nine month project launched on time and on budget.
I extended my time with Historic Newspapers for three months to empty the backlog of features which were deprioritised for launch.
The redesigned products are selling strongly. Especially in the new global markets.
