‍Innovating Bet Placement for Underdog Sportsbook

In the world of sports betting, bet placement is where the action starts — customers choose what to bet on, set their wager amounts, and submit.

We focused on these key objectives:

1. High Conversion Rates

2. Ease of Use

3. Competitive Differentiation/Innovation

4. Low Cognitive Load

Over four months, we put our heads together as a team to turn a complex idea into a feature that's easy and enjoyable for our customers to use.

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Discovery

I kicked off discovery by partnering with my PM to lead an ideation workshop, collecting insights from designers, product managers, and developers. I focused on inspiration from across industries to explore unique patterns that we could leverage.

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Post-workshop, I collaborated with Staff PM Lua Codognotto to refine these ideas through competitive analysis and data review. This phase led to the creation of initial low-fidelity wireframes, setting a solid foundation for further development and iteration.

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Iteration: Challenges & Solutions

Information Density

⛔️ Challenge: A lot of information, very little space.

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I used Gestalt principles to present the bet selection information in an intuitive and easily digestible way.

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Cognitive Load

⛔️ Challenge: Decision & information overload.

Our competitors are notorious for combining multiple bet types in the same view. This experience is convoluted and difficult to navigate (especially for casual customers).

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I introduced a segmented control that allows our customers to easily change between parlays and singles.

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In alignment with our data showing that more than 70% of bets are parlays, I prioritized customer preferences in the design of our bet slip.

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I initially designed preset wager pebbles that would be pre-selected upon opening the bet slip, allowing for the customer to immediately place their bets without having to specify their wager.

However, based on executive feedback, we pivoted to incorporate incremental betting buttons (e.g., +$10) instead.

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Robust Error Handling

⛔️ Challenge: Lots of errors that a customer can encounter.

Nobody does error handling well in our industry. How might we create a way for our customers to easily navigate a large range of errors?

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To ensure clear error handling and communication, I implemented toast messages for timely updates like odds changes, and alert banners for critical actions, such as error resolutions.

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I integrated tags within the bet selection cards to clearly show the status of each bet selection, such as voided, cancelled, or suspended bets.

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Iterative Development Process

⛔️ Challenge: No UX research; many assumptions. Difficult to get stakeholder buy-in.

Given the scope of this feature, and lack of UX research, we had a difficult time getting stakeholder buy-in. Because of this, Lua Codognotto (Staff PM) and AJ Bartocci (Eng Lead), and myself created a development process proposal that would help mitigate these issues.

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This process allowed us to test, gather feedback, and iterate rapidly, ensuring each aspect of bet placement met our high standards for customer experience and technical performance.

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Results

Let's dive into the results and see how bet placement is performing:

• Conversion Rate: 70.3%

• Bet Placement Speed (app open to bet placed): 3.3 minutes

• Bet Type Preference: 76% Parlays, 24% Singles

• Most Common Error Type: Insufficient funds; 51.7%

• Drop-off: 41.9% abandon cart when an error is shown

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Learnings

Some of my key takeaways from this experience:

Iterative Development: Breaking down a large project into smaller, manageable phases allows for more focused development, thorough testing, and the ability to adapt to feedback and findings.

User-Centric Innovation: Solutions like the segmented control and preset wager pebbles are examples of how customer needs can drive innovation.

Effective Communication: Clear, concise, and timely communication is crucial for project success.

Collaboration Across Disciplines: The result of close collaboration between design, product management, engineering, and compliance, highlighted the value of cross-functional teamwork.