Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/878567
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER 2017 Gaming XV BY DINOS STRANOMITIS BACK in the late 1990s, the first online sports betting firms started to appear on the scene. At first, their pages' look and feel was limited to listing matches from top football leagues alongside a promo code, with bet- ting on match winner as the only available market. Live betting wasn't considered at the time, and wagers were accepted only until kick off. At the dawn of a new century, the com- panies gained pure online customers and enough experience to understand what a sports betting online page should look like. At approximately this time, the industry accepted two groundbreaking ideas that ended up having a huge impact on user experience. We will refer to the first one as 'the British approach' to pay respect to its origins – it was basically a way to direct the user through the betting procedure in a well-managed journey. This approach of- fered tremendous benefits to advanced users who knew exactly what they were looking for. However, it wasn't well suited for users who primarily wanted to check the odds on numerous matches at once before placing a multiple bet on a slip. This is where the second improvement came in – reorganising the screen to fit the main menu on the left, betting slip on the right, and the list of possible bets in the middle of the screen. We will refer to this alignment as 'the European approach', since it was pioneered and championed mainly by Europe-based providers (especially those located in Northern Europe). Thereafter, sports betting sites assumed a mostly standardised format that is still rec- ognisable today, with three frames dominat- ing the layout. While some revolutionary in- novations, such as live betting, were devised in this period, the basic layout remained more or less unchallenged. The main area of progress was intense proliferation of content – new markets were added, the number of matches skyrocketed, while useful widgets were added to sites, including statistics, live scores, pre-populated bet offers and score centres that emulate game action. Some providers went as far as to include a video streaming service to allow customers to watch the selected game live. Mobile technologies provided an opportu- nity to take online gaming to another level, opening a new chapter of industry history that is still underway. Mobile devices quickly overtook desktop computers as the primary means of accessing online gaming content, a process that is not unique to the sports bet- ting industry. In fact, it would be difficult to find any strictly PC-based online industry in this day and age. Despite this fact, a number of sports betting providers continue to think in desktop terms and insist on creating a classic PC version with three columns before considering the needs of mobile us- ers, treating their mobile customers as an afterthought, even if they are clearly in the majority. At Altenar, we have come to embrace the industry trends and are investing in the UX aspects of our product, where a 'mobile first' attitude is no longer good enough – we now take a 'mobile only' approach. In our pro- jects, we start from the smallest four-inch screen and expand our design to larger for- mats step by step, ensuring that navigation remains logical and simple in every version. For this reason, we have decided to distin- guish the new mobile version of our site from the classic desktop version and evolve that interface as the future of our sportsbook front-end across all devices. Even land-based betting shops will soon be forced to adapt to the 'mobile only' reality. Customers might still visit the shops, but they will use their smartphones to complete their slips before validating them over the counter and paying for them. We firmly believe in the genuine entertainment goal behind gaming, as opposed to feeding one's addiction, so in our opinion, the only reason a player would visit a betting shop is to socialise with other sports fans over a cup of coffee, as otherwise they can do all of their betting online and on their mobile. With this in mind, we can't envision large traditional terminal shops surviving for much longer, as they don't fit this vision of the world, where all sports betting goes through mobile devices and waiting in a queue is no longer acceptable. As live betting has become more and more prominent, to the point of outperforming pre-match, the presentation of content has also had to adapt, with live and pre-match betting options being complementary to one another, as opposed to being treated as separate products. This has eliminated the awkward situations that once plagued punt- ers, who would browse the English Premier League matches on a Saturday afternoon only to find out that the games were about to begin and the bookmaker couldn't take any pre-match bets. They would then have to navigate all the way to another 'in-running' section, even if the game kicked off seconds ago. With our premium and extensive live sports content, the merging of pre-match and live betting is a must for Altenar and for this reason, we have already implemented this approach in our mobile solution, with the unified concept also coming soon to desktop. Current trends suggest an even greater focus on all aspects of player experience. In general, behaviour analysis and automated personalisation are the ongoing areas of focus for improvements in the industry, where content adaptation and anticipation of player needs is key. This is where Altenar is focusing its current research and develop- ment efforts. We are improving our product by tracking the user journey, analysing the choices customers make and measuring how satisfied they are. We are working towards a position where we will be able to prevent players from de- veloping a gambling addiction and measure the level of entertainment whilst rewarding it automatically. As soon as we complement this vision with automatic classification of players into risk categories, and combine it with Altenar's existing comprehensive bonus tool, free-text search and geo-IP driven content configuration, we will achieve a significantly improved player experience whilst delivering increased profitability for our customers, which is our number one product goal. The sports betting user experience