Our biggest challenge for ZSL was allowing the customer to navigate the site and shop, without noticing any of the complexity behind the scenes.
Introducing ZSL
The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is a charity devoted to the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats. ZSL’s scientists, veterinarians and animal management teams at London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo bring a wealth of skills and experience to practical conservation and the scientific research that underpins it.
The challenge
Following a corporate rebranding in early 2008, ZSL asked the OTHER media to help develop a new look for their website. The challenge we faced was to unite London Zoo, Whipsnade Zoo, The Biota Project and ZSL’s other research, conservation and educational programs under one cohesive brand.
With so many things happening on the one site, it was also vital that a visitor should not have to interact differently with various parts of the site. Thus if a visitor buys tickets or registers for a newsletter they shouldn’t have to register again to make purchases in the gift shop or give a donation.
What we did
Doing a full redesign allowed us to revisit ZSL’s navigation structure, which had outgrown itself over time. User experience was central to this process, with web stats being analysed to identify trends in user behaviour. From this intelligence, paper prototypes for the navigation were testing internally before the build. In-depth user testing near the end of the project resulted in slight changes to the basket functionality.
This attention to detailed has created a smoother checkout process and honed the online experience. Behind the scenes we integrated the ZSL website with multiple disparate systems: including ticketing, membership, retail and CRM. While sustained and targeted PPC campaigns helped increase visitor numbers and revenue during 2007.
The results
Online ticket sales and animal adoptions have proved extremely popular with the public: they now represent a huge revenue stream for ZSL. Average order value has remains constant over 2006 and 2007, while the number of actual orders has increased due to a higher conversion rate. Visitors have also stayed consistently high over the last two years.