Knowsley Safari Park launches app to enhance visitor engagement

The attraction will now benefit from new ways to engage its audience both on and off site, while better understanding how people spend their time during a visit

Knowsley Safari, the Merseyside-based attraction has launched a digital guide to enhance visitor engagement and its digital experience.

The safari park which is set in over 500 acres and welcomes more than 600,000 visitors per year selected n-gage.io as it’s developer partner after a short consultation.

The Northeast England company, which is led by Bryan Hoare and incubated by GCV Labs, was brought in to develop and implement a digital strategy that would see their attraction management software and mobile app technology enhance the Knowsley Safari Drive experience. 

It was also tasked with enabling the safari park to gain valuable insights into audience behaviour as n-gage.io aims to transform attraction experiences through its data insight-driven SaaS platform and visitor app.

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

Within a couple of months, n-gage.io helped launch the customisable visitor mobile app which had 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.

Duke said: “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recent technology advancements, and the changing expectations of our visitors, our existing app was rapidly becoming outdated.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.

He 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 Northeast England with other zoos and wildlife parks launching soon.