The challenge
Edinburgh Zoo is Scotland’s second most popular tourist attraction (after Edinburgh Castle). The zoo welcomes more than 600,000 visitors each year.
Their team approached Nile to redesign the online ticketing journey.
As a charity, Edinburgh Zoo also wanted to improve the conversion of donations and gift aid and ticket sales.
One of the things we liked most about Nile is that they weren’t afraid to tell us that some of our ideas probably wouldn’t work or it wasn’t a good idea to pursue them.Jon-Paul Orsi, Digital Manager, Edinburgh Zoo
How we helped
The zoo team had a clear destination. A mobile-first, simple, user-friendly customer journey that increased sales included donations and gift aid.
The customer end journey would recycle traffic through social media, newsletters and the mobile app. We recommended a complete UX review to stress-test the team’s prototype and ideas.
A thorough review established that most visitors were unaware of the mobile app. Online and offline experiences felt worlds apart
Our insight showed the proposed end-to-end customer experience was as passive as window shopping.
Visitors who booked online in advance were still required to queue on arrival. A lack of context and guidance made the journey within the prototype confusing. It was likely to cause significant drop-offs.
There was a lot of potential waiting to be unlocked.
A lasting impact
Nile went beyond the zoo’s original UX brief. We provided recommendations that reflected the entire digital landscape.
We were able to find gaps in previous thinking and highlight design flaws likely to reduce the conversion rate.
The Edinburgh Zoo team were delighted with the outcome.
We didn’t want someone who came along and just said yes. They challenged some of our ideas and regularly came up with creative suggestions of their own. In terms of a partner, Nile was reliable and invested in the project – we felt like we had their full attention, they came with ideas and they really worked to understand what we needed.Jon-Paul Orsi, Digital Manager, Edinburgh Zoo
