Designing a website to be the starting point for a wild adventure
Knowsley Safari Park has been a staple of family days out in the North West for over 50 years. They required a new mobile-first website that would do more than just inform visitors, but act as an online guide to the park while positioning them as more than just a drive-around attraction.
The old site was no longer fit for purpose. It was desktop only and a very cluttered experience for users, making navigation difficult as the hierarchy of information was unclear. The new site needed to better prioritise the needs of users while being easy for staff to update with up-to-the-minute news and information.
We began by assessing the needs of the user to establish an information architecture. Analytics, competitor analysis and user research told us that Opening Times, Online Booking and Visit Planning were the most important features for the majority of visitors. While other content such as animal profiles and park news were less important, they played an important role in keeping the user informed and led to longer dwell times on the site as excited visitors wanted to learn more about the park inhabitants before, during and after their visit. This helped us to develop a site map.
Working with an external development parter, we prototyped the site using paper and interactive wireframes in order to test the navigation models and site hierarchy.
One of the issues the park faced was its perception as a car only attraction, rather than a full day out with lots to explore on foot or by the parks' buses. In order to position the park as a full and flexible day out I proposed a home page carousel with would switch between DRIVE, WALK and RIDE. Clicking on each one would take the user to a landing page devoted to exploring the park in that way.
To simplify the navigation, the most popular links for Opening, Booking and Planning information were placed front and centre in a static footer under the carousel. The main menu was simplified to just five items, the a drop down mega-navigation introduced to make finding information more intuitive and visual. The facility was also added for home page takeovers which would drop over the carousel to promote special offers and events.
Then I worked on creating flexible page templates which could be used to host the rest of the site content such as educational animal profiles through images and video. New to the site, a blog page style was introduced that could be used across news and event article pages to allow the park to better inform its audience of its ongoing zoological and scientific programmes and simplifying the process of adding new content of site admins. This would encourage people to regular visit the site and gain a better insight of the day-to-day running of the park while allowing the content to be easily filtered by users.
With the UX of the site established, I set about creating a library of design rules and assets to ensure UI consistency throughout the site. This document acted as a guide for designers and developers and informed the creation of key page templates and branded content.
With the UX of the site established, I set about creating a library of design rules and assets to ensure UI consistency throughout the site. This document acted as a guide for designers and developers and informed the creation of key page templates and branded content.
