Introduction:
Sportnation.bet is an online bookmaker operating in the UK, known for its Rewards Programme: loyalty offer, where everytime you bet or play in a casino, you’ll earn points, just like air miles or a store card. The more selections you make and the higher the stake, the more you’ll earn. Regardless of whether you win or lose.
I was responsible for designing and prototyping an onsite store, where clients can spend their points on a variety of prizes: free bets, free spins, special offers or cash.
Throughout the entire process, I collaborated with the project manager, head of design and software developers.
The programme was nominated for 2019 EGR Operator Awards in the category “Product of the year”.
The Research:
Originally, the store was supposed to include mostly physical items (eg. electronics, watches or gadgets). The CRM team send an email with an invitation to a voting pole, asking what kind of items people would most likely be interested in. The research showed physical prizes didn’t interest the customers at all. Clients would rather spend their earnings on something more relevant to their activity on the website. After all, they came there to bet, not to shop.
Having that in mind, together with the Project Manager and Head of Design, we decided to include only the most relevant offers such as free spins and free bets and significantly narrow the items section. Later in the process, the items were completely dropped with the plan to add more options in the future.
In my opinion, similar products from competitors are quite confusing and hard to navigate. I aimed for a simple design, so the users can quickly find what they need on one page. All the important info needed to be easily accessible without having to be redirected to another page.
First, together with the team, we agreed on a wireframe. We chose a simple, clean grid layout with easily recognisable icons to identify different values. Based on that I designed the final layout for the stores’ main page and checkout.
The Design Process:
The Beta version of the Rewards Store had a dark colour palette which based on the Sportnation.com logo. Orange was the only accent and there were two types of icons: Free Bets and Free Spins. Each of them also had two variants: Regular and VIP.
Testers stated that the icons were too similar to each other and values were hard to differentiate. The main issue was the Free Spins section, where it wasn’t very clear what is the exact price of the item. Originally it was shown as a text in the CTA however, it proved to be a problem with bigger prices.
With the Head of Design, based on provided feedback, we decided to completely change the colour palette. I brightened the background and introduced more options for the icons: green for small value, orange for middle range and inverted yellow/dark grey for VIP. I tackled the problem of confusing prices by placing the values on the pictograms and placing the price below. I also added a pop-up window with the description of the promotion. Previously this info was available on another page, after clicking the icon. The initial idea was to keep everything on one page. In my opinion, one more step to get extra info was unnecessary.
The results and next steps:
The store was developed by a team of in-house software engineers. I collaborated with them to make sure it was as close to my design as possible. However, some additional changes and tweaks were added in the process due to the limitations of the platform and the technology we were using.
You can see the final product here: Sportnation Rewards Store
After The Rewards Programme proved to be a success, other available options were added such as bonuses or cashback. Sportnation also allows donating the equivalent of earned points to a chosen charity.
