Sky Bet – Optimising the Bet Slip (Case Study)
Over time, it was becoming increasingly difficult to make product developments and optimisations to the visual look and experience of Sky Bet’s Bet Slip due to age and complexity of the code which was leading to a decline in customer experience, especially in the key in-play area.
As part of a wider project to refresh the global UI, an opportunity arose to re-build the Bet Slip and with that, apply a fresh new UI. This would form the starting point for a series of going optimisation projects led by the product manager and myself to start pushing a smoother and more exciting experience for the customer.
Following internal workshops and stakeholder engagement, designs were drafted and continuously user tested to deliver incremental change so we could monitor impact and improvements eventually leading to a Quick Bet feature which delivered a significant uplift in stakes/margin.
Getting Started
As part of the wider ‘New UI’ project, a refreshed look was applied to the current Bet Slip.
This was part of a ‘quick fix’ as more in-depth work was being done behind the scenes to re-write the Bet Slip.
As this technical work was being carried out, we were able to perform the following research with our customers…
But what do our customers want?
We did a range of research activities to better understand the problem space and opportunities:
Stakeholder Interviews
As part of the research, we talked to internal stakeholders to gather their expectations, ideas and pain points around bet placement.
Co-Creation Session
As part of the bet slip research process, we had a customer co-creation session.
We invited 5 participants aged between 25-65, 4 male & 1 female. Most participants used a combination of two bookies - Sky Bet & William Hill or Sky Bet & Bet365, with an exception of one heritage online Coral customer.
We asked them about what the most important thing is when placing a bet. And what are the good and bad examples within the current experience.
Competitor Analysis
We also looked at the competitor landscape to understand what works and what doesn’t for other betting apps.
Internal Workshops
We got together stakeholders across the business and encouraged them to think outside the box. Participants were asked to create storyboards for typical bet placement scenarios, isolate pain points and brainstorm solutions.
Ethnographic Research
We conducted a Contextual Inquiry, observing 3 groups of two friends.
Our goal was to observe natural pre-live and in-play betting experiences while watching England play Brazil. Participants were asked to follow their routine for bet placement and bet tracking, as well as any research or gaming if applicable.
Design Reviews
We held regular design review sessions to keep everyone involved in the process and to ensure what we were proposing had buy-in from all levels and that the designs were ‘in scope’ when it came to development effort.
The Next Steps
Beginning Designs
Following the research, we were able to put together a list of problems and opportunities that were prioritised with the help of the Product, Tech and Experience teams.
The direction was to make improvements to the main ‘big’ bet slip whilst also looking into introducing a ‘quick’ bet slip that would help address the need to optimise the experience for in-play customers.
Again, the work being done by the tech teams on building the new bet slip was vital to enable us to experiment with these new ideas.
The ‘Big’ Bet Slip
Following the initial re-skin the tech team began rebuilding the entire bet slip from scratch which in turn allowed us to begin to make improvements to the look and feel but more importantly to the user experience.
Using the findings from all of the user research, we began to explore where we can incrementally start improving things. To date, these have included:
Overall UI Styling improvements
Moving the Multiples to the top
Improving information hierarchy
Improving Free Bet Journey
Introduction of Price Change Settings
Keeping the ‘Place Bet’ checkout buttons in view
Improving and simplifying error handling
None of this work would have been possible without the great work by the tech team.
The ‘Quick’ Bet Slip
One of the major ability that the new bet slip platform has enabled is the idea of introducing a ‘Quick Bet’ function where a customer is able to place a bet quickly without having to leave the page they are viewing – a vital tool in our quest to improve the betting experience for in-play customers (our hypothesis).
We were fortunate that one of the engineers created a proof on concept whilst working on the bet slip platform which enabled us to design and usability test in tandem with the development so we could understand limitations and functionality in a real world from the start.
Our original goal with this piece of work was to get something out to live customers with reasonable confidence from usability testing and to not impact stakes negatively and then we can start to incrementally test and improve the feature.
Getting Out to Live Customers
Once the quick bet slip was built, we identified various experiments to try to see what was most effective. These included:
Initial release: Singles and straight-line accumulators
Experiment V1 – Multi Switcher: Allows users to easily switch between multiple type directly on quick bet slip
Experiment V2 – Singles Only: Allows users to place singles only through the QBS. In the original version we allow users to place straight line Accas too but in this variation you will be prompted to open the Full Bet Slip..
QBS vs no QBS experience
Further Testing
More planned tests
After gathering the learnings from the aforementioned experiments, we hope to get the quick bet slip out to 100% of customers but we also have the following tests planned in to keep progressing the feature:
Quick stake buttons rather than having to type in manually. This includes multiple tests to see what type of stake banding is most effective.
‘Meatball’ menu to allow user to adjust their settings
Improving the navigation between minimised ’cart’, quick bet and full bet slip
Get in touch if you would like to discuss in more detail.
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