Flexible web maintenance solves challenges and delivers ongoing success for Zoo New England

Zoo New England, a non-profit organization that manages and operates Franklin Park Zoo in Boston and Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Massachusetts, needed assistance optimizing their three websites and maintaining them on a daily basis.

Challenge

With three different websites to maintain, two different zoos to promote and a non-profit budget – Zoo New England (ZNE) needed a partner who was able to work with their existing platform and leverage their internal resources effectively. ZNE asked for help with integrating a new e-Commerce solution, optimizing their platforms for performance and ongoing support for their team to maintain their websites – as timely updates are necessary for their attractions.

Services:

CMS customization HTML/ CSS coding Ongoing maintenance & support Accessibility testing & compliance Digital design E-Commerce integration

Zoo New England, a non-profit organization that manages and operates Franklin Park Zoo in Boston and Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Massachusetts, needed assistance optimizing their three websites and maintaining them on a daily basis.

Services:

CMS customization HTML/ CSS coding Ongoing maintenance & support Accessibility testing & compliance Digital design E-Commerce integration

Challenge

With three different websites to maintain, two different zoos to promote and a non-profit budget – Zoo New England (ZNE) needed a partner who was able to work with their existing platform and leverage their internal resources effectively. ZNE asked for help with integrating a new e-Commerce solution, optimizing their platforms for performance and ongoing support for their team to maintain their websites – as timely updates are necessary for their attractions.

Responsive screens showing improved video functionality

Strategy

Sanger & Eby developers quickly familiarized themselves with how the Zoo New England sites were built in Umbraco, and worked with the Web Master at the Zoo to understand her capabilities and skill set. While the client team was quite capable of making content changes in the CMS, they needed additional support with programming, style sheet changes and larger projects.

After assessing the need, our team scoped a flexible project agreement designed to provide monthly support to ZNE billed on a time and materials basis. We also created a separate plan for project-based work, such as work to integrate the new e-Commerce solution, and finally, a plan for remote website management support.

Front end and back end screenshots of the new e-commerce functionality

Tech stack

The following languages and platforms were used to bring this project to life:

Languages

HTML5
JavaScript
C#
CSS3
Custom Responsive CSS

Frameworks/tools

ASP.NET
Bootstrap
jQuery

CMS

Umbraco CMS
Umbraco Membership Module

API/integrations

AWS Hosting
Accesso Passport® Online Ticketing integration

Results

As of writing, we have worked with Zoo New England to tackle a number of important projects across their three websites. These projects include: switching e-Commerce and ticketing Systems, assisting with image and text formatting through CSS changes and editing numerous components on the site. In addition, we worked with ZNE throughout the pandemic to create and manage Member Microsites that proved extremely useful when the Zoo was forced to close for months and communication needed to pivot.

Our work with Zoo New England continues to impress the client and deliver strong web metrics and positive feedback. Most importantly, it has built a relationship where our client now brings us pain points and challenges and we brainstorm solutions together – exactly the kind of partnership that we strive to develop!