The mobile market revolution
Blog by Ronan Tighe
It goes without saying that the iPhone and in particular the App Store has revolutionised the mobile market. It has opened up the possibilities of mobile computing that were promised before (WAP anyone?) but never materialised.
The gaming industry obviously wants to get a piece of the action, however Apple’s refusal to allow ‘play for real’ applications in its store has become a major barrier. It’s clear from the popularity of ‘play for fun’ apps such as Apple’s own Texas Holdem game that there is huge demand from iPhone users (myself included).To get around the problem, gaming sites have been making iPhone friendly pages and trying their hardest to direct users to them. Since getting my iPhone I’ve been trying lots of these sites out and have come to the conclusion that there are 3 key factors behind what makes a good site.
Firstly, the layout and design of iPhone sites can be designed very similarly to real apps, which is great, as in the short space of time apps have been around, some helpful design conventions have emerged. Ensuring your site conforms to these conventions ensures that users will learn how to use it very quickly. Betfair’s iPhone site does this really well with the exception of having the ‘home’ button where the ‘back’ button is normally on an app. This frustrates me greatly when I use the site as I still continually hit it by mistake.
Performance is the second major factor in the user experience. A number of casino sites I’ve visited have failed badly in this regard. Sometimes the spin will take less the 4 or 5 seconds to complete, other times it takes over 30 seconds and then crashes. Having tried these games several times over the course of a week on both 3G and several Wi Fi networks the problem remained. It should go without saying that this has a major impact on the user experience. Mobile gaming is all about quickly opening up a game and playing for a couple of minutes whenever the opportunity arises. If you don’t have confidence in being able to do that you simply won’t play. On top of that, would you be willing to place real money on a site that isn’t stable?
Finally the third issue is security, sites need to be secure without over doing it. Users will want to quickly access sites without having to enter their usernames and password every time. At the same time there needs to be some level of security as if you lose your phone you don’t want the person who finds it to be able to access your account. Some sites automatically disconnect when you leave the browser however this is annoying if you are just quickly answering a call. The best approach I’ve seen is the use of a short pin number. It can be quickly entered and provides enough security without hindering the user experience.