It seems that we’ve finally reached a turning point where businesses now universally recognize the importance of good web design. Once considered to be nothing more than an aesthetic add-on, good, responsive, user-friendly web design is now de riguer among even the smallest businesses, whether they’re mostly based online or not.
Not only does intelligent web design make people more likely to come back to your website, but it also increases your search engine optimization (SEO), encourages good reviews of your business, and allows a greater level of connectivity between business and customers.
One sector that cottoned onto this a lot earlier than most is the online gaming sector, which has generally been a paragon of user-focused web design since the earliest prototypes first launched online. This makes sense, given that an online gaming would be completely unable to offer its service if the web design wasn’t functional, but there’s more to it than that.
We’ll explore how online gaming utilize clever web design to keep the customers coming, and what you can learn from them.
They Get All the Annoying Stuff Out of the Way Quickly
One thing that is absolutely guaranteed to turn people away from your website is making them jump through hoops to purchase a product. All those pop-ups, consent tick-boxes, GDPR disclaimers, and the rest make the experience of using a website feel like a chore rather than something fun. The very best kind of online gaming gets all of that stuff out of the way as quickly as possible. They don’t bombard users with pop-ups – they simply place all of the agreements and T&Cs together in one page as the end of the registration process.
They Prioritize Load Times Above All Else
Any business with a website should know that load times are directly linked to “bounce” rate. A load time for a page of more the three seconds can see Google bumping you to the 50th page of search results, which nobody wants.
Online gaming invest much of their design resources into ensuring the web pages, and of course the slot games and roulette wheels, load within a fraction of the second. If you take a look at a leading online casino website, you’ll see that it features live blackjack, hundreds of high-quality branded slots, and even a live winner’s scoreboard. All of this needs to load instantly and in instant real-time in order to attract customers. This way they stay in Google’s good books while the player doesn’t miss out, either.
They Get the Importance of Mobile Design
With the majority of all internet activity taking place on mobile, a strong grasp of good mobile design is crucial. The best online gaming sites offer the exact same services on their mobile sites, including live games and hundreds of slot reels, as they do on their desktop site. Considerable effort is put into ensuring mobile games run just as smoothly as they do on a computer – a process that is just as much about clever design as it is about programming expertise.
The online gaming industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the digital realm and with good reason. Any kind of website can learn these principles that online gaming apply religiously, to ensure that the customers keep on coming back.