New electronic ticketing system on display at zoological society

New system brought in to help create extra revenue for charitable work

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has revamped the technology behind its web site to improve ecommerce sales.

The organisation, which operates zoos including London Zoo and Whipsnade Wild Animal Park, has overhauled its ecommerce facilities, integrating electronic point of sale and stock management systems with a new electronic ticketing system.

Nick Napier, ZSL’s head of IT, says the organisation wanted to use the site more intelligently.

‘We did not have the information available on the old site to reflect the diverse nature of the activities that ZSL is involved with,’ he said.

‘As well as the new information, we can now do things such as allow users of the site to get an eticket that can then be validated when they get to the zoo, and we have plans for a full integration of that system in the future.’

Web development firm Other Media was responsible for the changes to the site.

When an item is purchased online, the ecommerce technology now automatically passes that data through to warehouse and sales systems.

‘Once the warehouse system has processed that, it passes data back to the web site so the stock numbers on the web site are accurate,’ said Napier.

Sian Pickles, ZSL’s web editor, says that before the ticketing system was installed, ZSL was paying commission to third-party vendor lastminute.com on every ticket sold online.

‘With the new system we get to keep all of the money on each ticket to go towards our charitable work,’ she said.

Napier is considering additional web site integration projects.

‘We will be looking at a much fuller integration of our eticketing system, with tighter links between our web site and the society’s membership functions,’ he said.