The Detroit Zoo
The Detroit Zoo has 125 acres of naturalistic habitats for more than 2,000 animals from anteaters to zebras and features award-winning attractions. At Real Big Marketing, we admire the stance taken by the Detroit Zoo; leading the way in wildlife conservation and animal welfare.
Problems to solve
The Zoo website was generally difficult to navigate and also lacked accessibility requirements for people with disabilities. It lacked structure and information, was built in Joomla, a system that was not working effectively for content generation, maintenance, or marketing.
With Detroit Zoo marketing team leadership and ideas already available we had the opportunity to provide quick impact. Instead of working through traditional brand and marketing strategy development, we approached this project with our more focused Enhance eXperience (EX) project management program and a full Accessibility Audit.
Our rigorous EX Audit quickly illustrates the gap between initial aspirations and what is actually required for an awesome user experience. The information included; competitive analysis, advantage analysis, information architecture research, workflow & wireframes, and styling adjustment requirements.
Accessibility Audits are also robust providing a full breakdown of UX, UI, and programmatic adjustments necessary to meet and exceed the needs of people with disabilities
Work Performed
Research from both projects resulted in modifications to site architecture, user experience (UX) streamlining, user interface (UI) styling adjustments, enhancements to the content creation process, and integration with third party platforms.
We launched the site in roughly three months meeting the clients brand expectations yet exceeding their architectural, UX, and UI requirements. Additionally, RBM meticulously implemented hundreds of accessibility requirements to ensure the website is easy to use for people with disabilities.
We successfully migrated all information from Joomla to WordPress, enhanced staff workflows for building content, and implemented several third-party systems to improve marketing and sales.
Since launch, our relationship has deepened. For 8 years RBM has provided reliable consistent support, updates, consulting, and programming. We work closely with the both the DZS marketing and IT departments to ensure all requests are met on-time and on-budget.