The quality of the user experience offered by any website needs to be carefully managed, monitored and optimized. This is because modern web users are savvy about what makes a site work well, and will ditch any that offer a substandard UX in favor of better designed competitors.
Modern casino sites have got the optimization process down to a fine art, as evidenced by the way that the top sites have enjoyed stellar growth in the past year. So here is a look at what techniques and tactics are used by operators to enhance the UX of online casinos.
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Responsive design for interface flexibility
The interface is at the core of any website’s UX, and this is certainly true of the best USA online casino sites ranked here.
Responsiveness has been a must for any site worth its salt for some time now, with the dominance of smartphones for browsing meaning that interface elements need to adapt to encompass different screen sizes and input options on the fly.
This is handled particularly optimally by BetMGM, as its site easily accommodates touchscreen devices measuring a few inches across the diagonal, as well as being suited to use on laptops and desktops with larger display areas and landscape orientations.
Whichever device you use, the interface needs to ensure that the most useful elements are preserved at all times, while paring back aspects that are less important to avoid clutter.
Rapid load speeds
Page load speeds are another thing which all websites need to get right, and online casinos know this more than most, since they are reliant on winning over new customers quickly and also keeping existing players happy when they return.
Once again this ties into the predominant use of mobile handsets and tablets for playing casino games online. Wireless devices like these cannot expect the same kind of connection speed or consistency as wired equivalents, and so if pages are over-encumbered with content or backend elements are not optimized, they will feel sluggish when playing portably.
This is an area of UX optimization where even a few tenths of a second can make all the difference, so top casino sites are not only built to be lean and efficient at the page level, but also hosted on high end infrastructures that are capable of serving customers quickly no matter where they are located.
Liberal use of CTAs
An old but still relevant piece of web design advice is to include a call to action on every page you publish. This is something that online casino operators have embraced wholeheartedly, and it speaks volumes about the way they approach UX optimization.
Take the Borgata Online site, for example. It has a large line-up of featured games on the home page, as well as a scrolling header with different deals, offers and events front and center. All of these have button-based CTAs included, either all the time or when you mouse over them.
The fact of the matter is that visitors will be more likely to click through to see what the games have to offer if there is a call to action compelling them to do so. Of course it helps that people who head to casino sites tend to already be engaged with what they find there, but it is still sensible to give them that extra nudge, rather than being more passive.
Color use & clarity through contrast
Casino sites have an interesting and arguably unique role to play compared with other online services when it comes to their use of visual elements, especially color.
While the general advice to web designers is to keep the number of different hues on show to a minimum in order to make sure a site feels cohesive, the opposite approach is necessitated in the casino space. This is because the games themselves have so many varied themes and styles, and so the homepage of a casino site can start to look like a land-based venue, which is no bad thing, so long as games are clearly defined through the layout.
Broadly compatible coding languages
Lastly, online casinos ensure that as many people as possible can have a great experience visiting and playing games by using the most streamlined and compatible coding languages.
This ensures mobile-friendliness, and also ties in with the widespread use of HTML5 for the actual games themselves.
So there you have it; while online casinos may have some UX optimization strategies which are industry-specific, most of the tactics on show will apply to other types of sites as well.
