Dundee Science Centre:A Community Gathering Place for Science Inspiration and Discovery
CONVERSION
REVIEWS
Dundee Science Centre first learned about AnyRoad at the Scottish Tourism Alliance annual conference in Edinburgh in 2022, after hearing about the success that AnyRoad has had working with Johnnie Walker Princes Street. At that time, AnyRoad was best known in Scotland for being the #1 solution used by whisky distillery visitor centres.
Dundee Science Centre is a charity and lifelong learning resource for the local community. Their goals are to help families learn together, support the formal school curriculum, advance the science communication profession, bring together science and the public, and
help others to do the same. They are funded by the Scottish Government, local council, trusts and corporate sponsors and supplemented by revenues generated from ticket sales, events, and hospitality.
Dundee Science Centre was using a basic online ticketing solution which had been custom-built for them by a website developer. They were able to sell tickets and process payments online, but they had outgrown the solution’s capabilities. They were facing several limitations and challenges.
- Walk-up tickets were sold separately through their retail POS system. As a result, they did not have a cohesive view of their ticketing performance or visitor journey.
- They captured only minimal visitor feedback. So, they did not know what was or wasn’t working about the experiences and management lacked the information needed to make data-driven decisions.
- With multiple stakeholders, donors and a boardto answer to, they lacked the data and insights necessary to measure or prove whether they were achieving their purpose of advancing science in the community.
- They knew very little about who their visitors were, where they were coming from, or what was their relationship with the Science Centre.
- In addition to offering science centre tour experiences, they also regularly hosted onsite events such as birthday parties, holiday-themed events, and temporary exhibitions. These were managed manually outside of their ticketing system, creating extra administrative work for the team.
- Unable to offer promotions on ticket sales or introduce a membership facility.
While not a brand experience in the sense of promoting a physical product, Dundee had many of the same objectives and challenges as the hundreds of brand homes that AnyRoad was working with.
- Dundee Science Centre implemented AnyRoadin October 2023. In the 10 months since go-live, Dundee has welcomed over 60,000 visitors, achieving a 74 post-visit Net Promoter Score (NPS) and a best- in-class 79% brand conversion. They incorporated AnyRoad’s add-on functionality, selling thousands of “Gift-Aid” donations to reclaim an extra 25% in tax rebates. They’ve utilized AnyRoad’s events platform for several holiday-themed events and special exhibitions, simplifying and standardizing event execution for the team.
- Dundee learned that 50% of their visitors are first- time visitors and almost 20% of visitors opt-into receive future marketing communication and invitations to events at the centre.
- They’ve received thousands of post-visit survey responses that include staff compliments, areasfor improvement, general feedback, and specific, actionable insights. The huge volume of qualitative feedback received – 2x the number of responses in 10 months compared to the number of Google reviews since opening in 2000 – has helped them prioritise areas for improvement and inform management decision-making.