ZSL London Zoo has unveiled its new eCommerce offering, with a content management system which allows the charity to promote its international conservation work.
Speaking to Rachael Smallwood, online trading manager at ZSL London Zoo, she described how an email from Amazon stating it was closing its Amazon Webstore platform, was the push needed to modernise the zoo's online presence.
"With the old site, we struggled to do anything and the back of house was so clunky and frustrating to use, while adding content was so hard to implement in a nice way," she explained. "So I was absolutely thrilled when Amazon emailed, because it was the perfect opportunity to start afresh."
The new site is fully responsive and very bright and image-heavy. "45% of shoppers are shopping on mobile, so responsive was super important," she added.
Smallwood was particularly keen to ensure the brand and shop worked together seamlessly and for customers looking for animal gifts to learn more about the associated animal and ZSL's conservation work.
The charity decided to launch its new website on the open-source Drupal platform. "It's more of a content-management system as opposed to commerce, but it was the perfect CMS to drive the educational and conservational message," she said.
"If a customer is looking at an elephant plush, we can inform them about Asian elephants and the work we're doing in Thailand and link back to the wider work ZSL is doing. While for shoppers interested in the zoo-keeper outfit, we can link through to the junior zoo-keeper experience days we offer."
Digital marketing agency, Catch Digital, designed the site on the Drupal platform and the transactional online store uses Drupal Commerce.
"Catch Digital, which designed One Direction's website, they got the brief and understood it wasn't just about the gift shop," said Smallwood.
She said the new website allows customers to use a gift finder and to search by animal, price or recipient, it also houses a wish list.
ZSL hopes to expand its reach beyond zoo visitors who have forgotten to buy something from the physical shop. "Next summer we will be launching iPad kiosks in the store with online exclusives, such as giant plush toys you can only get online. But we're using the main site to get out to a wider audience."
The eCommerce site will soon be shipping internationally around Christmas time to the US and further afield. "Our warehouse is in Whipsnade and we wanted to stagger the launch in case we got a tremendous uptake and they weren't able to cope."
Since its official launch last week, the new site has had over 10,000 visits, and while conversion is still low at 0.7%, the order value has been high.
"For customers shopping in the physical store, they wouldn't be able to take a bigger plush home on the tube, so the kiosks next year will be used to buy online and ship home and that service for international visitors will come into its own so they won't have to carry stuff back with them," explained Smallwood.
In a couple of week's time, the website will also be launching customised adoption kits. "Now we've got the new online platform, we're able to allow customers to create their own adoptions, instead of the bog standard package, they might be able to add experiences and make it more personal."
For more information, click below: