If you’ve ever been to SeaWorld, you know how incredible the experience is inside the park. We’re talking lifetime-memory-I-want-to-be-a-marine-biologist-that-dolphin-understands-me-as-a-person kind of experience. SeaWorld came to us and posed a very challenging question: Can you replicate that amazing experience on our website?
Oh, yes we can.
There is serious, huge dollar competition in the theme park world. Not every brand can spend a billion dollars on their technology platform. SeaWorld couldn’t.
So instead, they had to outthink and outmaneuver the bigger players to create a well-crafted, responsive website with ultra-rich content and easily accessible information to lure consumers (see what we did there?) and make the online experience a pre-cursor to the live one.
Working alongside SeaWorld’s marketing, digital experience and mobile development teams, we designed every function and page of content so that the experience was universally consistent - whether it involved food, family or fun. We integrated menus, shopping, the authentication process, ticket purchases, and live experience details so that it was not only easy to find (for the visitor), it was easy to post (for the park administration). Now it’s a complete experience on the presentation side and it’s been hooked up to the back office in a way that’s easy to update and enhance. Any follow-on project can focus on product and pricing innovation, rather than getting bogged down in complicated processes, moving the workflow from four weeks to four days.
When SeaWorld decided to “replatform” their entire portfolio onto the newest version of Sitecore, it allowed them to integrate behavioral analytics to uncover visitor habits and needs. It also created ways to efficiently develop a faster time to market, while elevating the brand’s visual language. Verndale fully integrated Sitecore with a custom ecommerce solution that required minimal rework for the SeaWorld team. To top it off, we created a series of modules that could easily be repurposed for use in future sites.
SeaWorld is more than just SeaWorld. It’s a collection of parks including Discovery Cove, Busch Gardens, Sesame Place and more. While each brand is unique and has its own needs, they collectively share the same back-end system we designed. That means our system must not only be robust, it must be flexible as well.
Once the master site was in place, we began rolling it out on a park-by-park basis - loading content, trouble shooting and staying on-call for whatever was necessary.
We are currently an extension of their staff, augmenting development resources, and building and managing a pipeline of new projects that will help SeaWorld continue to evolve the user experience across all parks and sites.
We tend to think of innovation as something that “blows us away”. But sometimes innovation hides in plain view and just makes our lives easier.
We took disparate, older technology and completely reorganized, untangled and redesigned it in a way that benefitted anyone who touched the environment - from visitor, to administrator, to content author. SeaWorld is now learning things through lenses they never had at their fingertips. They’re looking at new ways to offer packages, discounts and competitive merchandising opportunities. The rides look more exciting. The food looks more interesting. It’s easier to make decisions, whether you’re a planner who browses until you finally feel satisfied you’re making the right decision for your one unforgettable family trip or you’re an impulse shopper who is in the parking lot and looking to go inside.
