Must Drop Jackpots – Williamhill
Project Type:
Jackpot Widget for Vegas within the Williamhill website.
My Role:
Design Lead – owned UX strategy and directed a UI designer through concept, design and delivery.
The Opportunity
The commoditisation of casino products is apparent if you look at most casino products; rows and rows of game tiles broken up by the occasional promotional banner.
The Gaming industry often describes their products as fun and entertaining with a view that the product will often sell itself does not reflect that. William Hill had a fantastic history when it comes to jackpots; their Vegas Millions Jackpot was ground-breaking and market-leading for many years, giving Hills a brand association with jackpots that still endured. However, over the years the market has mimicked and then improved upon Vegas Millions, with new better jackpot engines being introduced to the market that Hills didn’t have.
Vegas were looking to engage more with their customers while capturing a whole new audience, with a proposition that:
- Creates brand awareness
- Increases player conversion
- Increases customer satisfaction NPS scores
- Increases x-sell from the traditional sporting pundits
Design Process
- Research – Surveys, Focus Groups
- Ideate – Wireframes
- Build – Designs
Tools
- Paper, Pencil
- Axure
- Sketch
Research
Working with the Research team, a survey targeting Williamhill’s own customer base of slots players was distributed. The questions covered general areas such as preference, decision making and frustrations during slot playing. Responses were collected in the form of multiple choice and short answers to get further insights early.
The research highlighted that customers both understood and placed value on jackpots and even considered them as crucial as promotions and bonuses.
- Most gamers are highly irrational, superstitious and emotional thrill-seekers – Creating thrilling new rides, working with conspiracy theories and creating good karma are key
- The technology platform needed significant improvement – Tech glitches frustrated players, fueled conspiracy theories and hand the advantage to competitors
- 89% of slots players do so on their mobile
The Opportunity
We wanted to innovate to create a difference but one which would drive commercial success. William Hill had a great history when it came to jackpots; the Vegas Millions Jackpot was ground-breaking and market-leading for many years, giving Hills a brand association with jackpots that still endured. However, over the years the market has mimicked and then improved upon Vegas Millions, with new jackpot engines introduced that offered a far better customer experience.
We looked for an opportunity to present jackpots away from the traditional method of displaying them as a jackpot ticker on the game tile. Jackpots are exciting but they were being undersold.
Ideate
The idea was simple… create viewable “states” of a jackpot. If a jackpot was getting “hot” or ready to drop, then present that info to the player. This created a sense of urgency for the player and added to the collective excitement and opportunity the proposition presented.
The States were:
- Build Up to the jackpot
- “Hot” with countdown
- Win – Last Drop, with new seed
Wireframes
The Impact
The impact was immediate – and a runaway success. A total of over £8.4M paid out in winnings from 1850+ jackpot wins and half a million unique users. It didn’t then subside as often happens but still continues to grow, with daily stakes on the jackpots now 55% higher than launch. This stellar performance has generated peak weekday spins/min levels of usual Saturday night levels and Saturday’s hitting Spring Racing levels.
The impact of the various ‘hot’ states is evident in the game launch data. Mini spikes are generated throughout the day as “£2K MustDrop” gets hot and then a huge evening spike from 9 pm once the main takeover state is activated. MustDrop jackpot slots now account for 12% of all game launches on Vegas and 45% of all slot stakes.
From October to February we used our jackpots to lead our TV proposition, trying to cut through the loud noise of countless offer-led ads. New Funded Accounts are +370% YoY as a result and new customer value has remained flat despite going so much deeper into the acquisition pool.
The combination of the jackpots and TV support has grown our organic brand searches by 421% since we launched the jackpots.
In terms of key indicators, since the jackpots have been launched daily Vegas actives have increased 96% and x-sell penetration rate has gone up 50%. Daily GW on slots has increased 14% since launch, of which 11% is incremental.
A more holistic way of tracking the customer feedback of the jackpots it to look at the William Hill Vegas NPS score over the period since live. During this period our 6 key NPS scores have universally risen and the two most relevant measures (‘they know me and tailor their service to what I like’ & ‘win or lose, Vegas helps me enjoy my gaming’) have risen by 4% and 5% respectively.
The impact of the takeover has been to extend our evening peak by both bringing forward the start to 9pm and then extending the peak to close to midnight, when the Daily Drop traditionally drops, as once customers are playing then generally stick as they chase the jackpot. With enhanced numbers of customers active at midnight, we then see increased numbers of Vegas actives right through until circa 4 am when the hourly trends normalize to pre-jackpot levels. This activity isn’t at the detriment to the other Hills casino brands, as post-midnight their active numbers have also been enhanced by customers moving from Vegas to those products post the jackpot popping.
Final Designs
