The gambling industry is going through a major change in 2020. Due to the coronavirus crisis, the future of bricks and mortar casinos is now severely in doubt.
Many casinos might not be able to reopen once the pandemic starts to ease, with people increasingly going online in order to have a bet instead.
As a result, this might be a good time to consider opening a new online casino. But what are some of the things to keep in mind when you are designing an online casino site?
1. Targeting your audience
At the heart of all the design choices you make for a website should be your target audience.
Most online casinos aim to capture a specific subset of people, rather than just people who like to bet. Maybe your online casino will be mainly targeted at younger people, or female gamblers.
After deciding who you are trying to reach with your website, you can make specific design choices to make sure it is an attractive place for these people to visit when gambling.
Your casino needs to stand out if you are going to convince the best affiliates to market your brand. With so much competition across the industry, this is extremely important.
Ultimately you want your online casino to be a pleasing place to have a fun experience, so getting the design right for your target audience is a must.
2. Optimizing for mobile devices
COVID-19 has led to a rise in interest in online casinos, with mobile betting particularly up.
Anyone who is designing an online casino site now should therefore place a strong focus on it being accessible on mobile devices.
This is the least people expect now, with all games needing to run smoothly on devices such as smartphones and tablet computers.
Some new online casino sites focus completely on mobile and that could also be a smart move given this seems to be the direction of travel for the industry right now.
Games that are added to your online casino site’s library should work just as well on mobile devices as they do on a desktop computer. Keep this in mind during the design process too.
3. Keep download speeds as low as possible
As well as expecting websites to run smoothly on mobiles, casino customers want these sites to load up extremely swiftly. This is the case no matter what device they use to play games.
Most people will only have the patience to wait a few seconds for a website to load. If it is too slow, they might opt to go to a different online casino website in order to gamble.
There are lots of things that can be done when designing an online casino site to keep download speeds low. One of them is to restrict the use of animation and avoid auto-playing videos.
Images can also be optimized so that they do not affect a site’s download speed too much. Aim for the website to be loaded up in around three seconds as a guideline.
The speed a website loads is also one of the factors involved in how it ranks on search engines.
4. Clear and concise information
Potential customers should be able to see all the information they need about how to join within a matter of moments of landing on your casino website for the first time.
It should not take more than a few minutes to complete the sign-up process. Making this as quick and simple to go through as possible makes it more likely that people will join.
If they feel that it is taking too long they might well give up and go to another rival site, so this is something you cannot afford to get wrong when designing a new online casino.
Promotions for these new customers should also be placed front and centre. This is one of the top ways that people are attracted to casino sites, so make sure the offers are appealing.
5. Don’t try to design an online casino cheaply
Quality costs money in most industries and this is the same when it comes to website design.
Users will be able to tell if corners have been cut as it will have an impact on the experience they have when visiting an online casino.
Creating a new online casino can be very expensive – the cost of various factors will soon start to mount up – but the website itself should not be considered an area to reduce costs.