Popular, nationally recognised visitor attractions like Knowsley Safari are turning to mobile app technology to transform their visitor experience. The Merseyside-based attraction, set in over 500 acres and welcoming more than 600,000 visitors per year, was keen to enhance visitor engagement while updating their digital Safari Drive experience.

Following a short initial consultation, n-gage.io, based in North-East England, was engaged to develop, and implement a digital strategy that would see their attraction management software and mobile app technology enhance the Knowsley Safari Drive experience while also helping the safari park gain valuable insights into audience behaviour.

N-gage.io has been working alongside Rachel Scott, head of marketing at Knowsley Estate and Ian Duke, Knowsley Safari marketing manager, along with their team, to develop and deploy the attraction management software and visitor mobile app across the site.

Led by entrepreneur Bryan Hoare and incubated by GCV Labs – n-gage.io aims to transform attraction experiences through its powerful, data insight-driven SaaS platform and visitor app. Within a couple of months, n-gage.io helped launch the highly customisable visitor mobile app to help enhance the safari park’s approach to digital visitor engagement.

With 1500 app downloads during the first week of launch, the attraction is now benefitting from new ways to engage its audience both on and off site, while better understanding how people spend their time during a visit.

Ian Duke explains: “We’d been looking for a solution to update our existing Safari Drive mobile app technology for our visitors but found it increasingly difficult to identify software in the industry that gave us the customisation and control that we wanted. While we’ve had great success with our previous app, like many other attractions, we found that with more recent technology advancements, and the changing expectations of our visitors, our existing app was rapidly becoming outdated.
“What attracted us to the n-gage.io solution was the highly customisable nature of the base app which could reflect our website brand, and the feature-rich operator platform behind the scenes that powers it and gives us so much more intelligence about audience activity on-site. While the app itself has so many engaging features, it’s also what we can do with the platform to deliver an even more interactive and educational experience that really attracted us to the software.”

Using the new software, the attraction is now able to not only enhance the previous safari drive experience, but create other engaging and immersive trail experiences, with triggered in-app content and notifications across the park. Ian added: “The fact that we can now manage our visitor’s interactive digital experience day to day, means we’re able to be far more innovative in our approach to on-site audience engagement.

“And from an operational perspective, we’re able to help our visitors plan and manage their day more effectively, from integrating with digital ticketing through to interactive mapping and wayfinding. “It’s really important for us to ensure that when we update our visitor technology it doesn’t detract from the physical enjoyment of being with us, but enhances the overall safari experience.

“Our digital approach against a backdrop of the park’s drive for sustainability has also helped to reduce the need for as much signage and be less reliant on things like paper maps and other printed information.

“The app is our visitor’s personal safari guide and helps them learn about our animals and conservation work in more detail bringing them closer to nature and also hopefully learning something new every time they visit.”

Bryan Hoare, founder and CEO of n-gage.io added: “We’ve been delighted to work with the team at Knowsley Safari and see how our technology can make a difference, not just operationally, but the positive impact it can make across their whole safari experience.”

Software and mobile apps developed by n-gage.io are already in use at Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park, Alameda Wildlife Conservation Park (AWCP), in Gibraltar, and Northumberland Zoo, in North East England with other zoos and wildlife parks launching soon.