Venda Helps The Metropolitan Museum of Art Store Provide Enhanced Website Experience

Venda, the world's largest on-demand SaaS convergent commerce provider, today announced that it worked with The Metropolitan Museum of Art Store to redesign its website and better translate the Museum experience across its online platforms.

The Met Store first partnered with Venda in 2008 to build its online shopping presence and, as such, was familiar with the company's ability to create flexible, scalable websites supporting a high volume of users. When the Met's merchandising department decided to redesign its retail platform to better reflect the style of the Museum's expanded content site, which relaunched in 2011, the team turned to Venda to execute the project. In addition to becoming more closely aligned with the content site, The Met Store wanted to better leverage existing assets, such as the high-quality product photographs featured in its catalogues. It was also important that the new website provide The Met Store's customers with a more logical shopping experience, with features like rollover navigation and more comprehensive category pages.

Venda managed the end to end project working closely with The Met Store's designer and in-house team, allowing the Met's staff to take advantage of Venda's open platform to develop and deliver enhancements independently. Due to this ongoing collaboration, The Met Store was able to launch its new look under an aggressive timetable, ensuring all elements were ready by September 2012 the traditional start of its holiday shopping season. The Met Store also has plans for future innovations with Venda, including the possibility of tapping its mobile capabilities to extend its storefront to smartphone and tablet platforms.

"Since its inception, The Met Store has focused on creating a connection to the Museum by offering merchandise inspired by its vast collection," said Brad Kauffman, vice president and general manager of merchandise and retail for The Met Store. "As online has increasingly become a preferred shopping channel, it was critical that our website reflect this synergy in look and feel and also include the functionalities necessary to provide the best online shopping experience. Working with Venda, our redesign accomplished this and more and we are extremely pleased with the finished product."

"In today's e-commerce age all retailers must view their online property as a key element of their overall growth strategy, and this is particularly true for an iconic brand like The Met Store," said Eric Abensur, group CEO at Venda. "With this redesign project, it has provided online shoppers with a more intuitive experience and also strengthened its visual connection with the Museum's web presence. Venda is happy to have played a role in this initiative and look forward to continuing our collaboration on future enhancements."

About The Met Store
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been engaged in the sale of art reproductions and publications since its founding in 1870. The Met Store's mission is to stimulate appreciation for and advance knowledge of art through product merchandising, while generating operating income to support the Museum's educational programs and its collection, preservation, study, and exhibition of art.

About Venda
Venda is the world's largest on-demand ecommerce provider. Processing over £1Bn of transactions annually, its highly flexible convergent cross-channel platform offers retailers the scalability, stability and security for deploying world-class ecommerce sites. With over ten years' experience and a presence in the UK, US and France, Venda helps global retailers increase revenues and deliver a return on investment faster than traditional 'buy and build' methods. Its expertise in multi-channel commerce and knowledge of payment regulations in different countries allows retailers to expand quickly into new markets.

As of January 2013, over 100 brands of all sizes use Venda's platform to handle millions of transactions each month. These include Universal Music, Fat Face, TK Maxx, Tate, Laura Ashley, Emma Bridgewater, Jimmy Choo, Paperchase, Royal Doulton, Wickes, Clothing at Tesco and Orange. For further information please visit http://www.venda.com or join the discussion at www.twitter.com/vendauk.