Auckland Zoo has launched their new, refreshed website today. Zoo visitors can now purchase tickets online, as well as Friends of the Zoo annual memberships. I love the new design of the site, very modern, aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate. The "animals" tab is very nicely done and looks great. Not all species at the zoo are listed (which isn't surprising, seems to just be the most popular animals) but hopefully more will be added in the future. Overall a huge improvement over the old site in my opinion (I was slightly confused at first how to view the zoo map but soon realised that if you click on the "Welcome to Auckland Zoo" bubble when you enter the site, a page pops up with information about keeper talks, how to get to the zoo, food and drink, the map etc.) The site is also much more useable on mobile devices than the old one which is great to see.
It's not a bad website, I like the animal encounters feature. Very accesible and easy to read. I also like that the majority of news in the news sections is actually 'news', not just clap trap about some music event they're hosting or an award they've won for tourism etc. This is a vast improvement on what their news section was like a couple of years ago. I like the link to vidoes on the animal pages, however I spoke to a zoo host a while back and was told the most frequent questions from visitors relate to the animal's names. Not only has the info about the animals been scaled back, it doesn't list their names like it used to (it was still listing their names a couple of weeks ago on the old website). You can understand for animals that breed frequently that this is difficult to update reguarly but there's no reason they can't list the names of their three lioness or the names of their three female giraffe etc.
I agree with your comments @Zoofan15. I think the animal encounters feature is especially useful on mobile - being at the zoo and having the keeper talk times for the day on your phone is really handy, especially because they automatically update and are easy to get to. I would really like to see an Auckland Zoo app, so for example visitors could get notifications on their phone when keeper talks are on. They probably just wanted to have the new site up and running as soon as possible, so hopefully more information about the animals will be added later. Something else I noticed that was missing from the new site (or maybe I just can't find it?) is the zoo maintenance page which had animals that were off display or exhibits that were under construction which was helpful.
