About the project
Casinos Critic is a website aggregator for online casinos. Users are able to search, compare and discuss the quality and safety of online casinos, discover different casino games, and learn about which casinos offer the best bonuses.
It’s a responsive website, mostly viewed on mobile devices of the people so one of the biggest challenges in the creation of a such website is the information architecture and how to structure big amount of data in an understandable and readable way for the end-user.
Apart from that, information architecture was needed to play an important role in SEO, as one of the main goals of this type of review website is to rank well in search engines.
Client: Online Casino Reports Date: April 2021 Tools: Figma, Adobe CC Skills: User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), Information Architecture Website: onlinecasinoreports.com
Personas & Data
Since this is the third website I have created from the same series – online casino reviews and was created for the same target audience, I have already identified who I am designing for.
The design approach
Based on identified personas and analytics data the design approach I took was to condense and categorize the casino information as much as possible and expose the users to it in a step-by-step approach using dividers, separators, collapsing elements, and card components.
Mobile first approach
Based on analytics data from Online Casino Reports I made a decision that the design direction of the responsive website should be mobile first since more than 70% of the traffic comes from a mobile device.
Apart from that over 60% of the users are Millenials/Gen-Z which as a generation are heavy users of mobile apps and phones.
Design Solution
Home page
After landing on the home screen of the website, which is where almost 60% of the users land (direct traffic) you are exposed to a small section describing what is the website for which serves as well the users as the SEO needs of the website and then it goes straight into a ranking chart of the top 10 online casinos you can play and are available for the users country.
The challenge in the reading experience was in the way how those ranking charts would show on a mobile device.
Casino pages
The casino page is the template where all information about online casinos is contained.
It covers everything from stats about the casino, to available games, bonuses, safety practices, and more.
One of the biggest challenges to solve was how to condense so much information on a mobile device and make it easy to navigate and read.
The reading experience is unidirectional – it goes up and down while the navigation experience is sideways – using carousels and sliding components.
Index pages
The index pages are where search results appear or are used to show rankings of casinos within a geo-location with the ability to filter by the casino parameters.
The UX challenge here was the way how many filter parameters would appear so that it’s easy to navigate and use and how to make the results card personalized to display the most valuable information for the specific filter query.
Collection pages
The collection pages are SEO first type of pages that rank Top Casinos by certain criteria.
The page is designed so that the search engines can rank at the top of the content and even if you search for a casino name if it’s ranked in this type of page, that same page should be displayed first in your search results.
User Profiles
Anyone is able to sign up for Casinos Critic therefore each member has their own profile where they can find casinos that they have reviewed, see their latest activity and track their favorite casinos, games & bonuses, as well as manage their profile settings.
Support Pages
The website also has community & contact features. Users are able to see who has reviewed what in real-time, and what new casinos are added if their username has been mentioned in any comments across the site.
There is also the ability to contact the website administrators for any queries or issues.
Componentisation
The platform is built with a componentized approach meaning that different templates can show/hide components when they are being set up depending on the needs and information necessary for a product, casino, or a game.
Desktop Version