The Challenge:
Create a whole new instance of Sports Interaction, our sports betting and casino product in four months, or we could lose our licence to operate in Ontario, home to 50% of our client base.
The new instance of our site had to meet the strict guidelines about site content and what information could be gathered and stored as dictated by AGCO, the gambling licence authority in Ontario. We had to meet those obligations within 4 months.
These were the tasks I was given:
Transfer our customers
Rehandle KYC checks
Geo-locate
Two-Factor Authentication
More responsible gaming features
Transfer our customers
Our current Ontario customers would need to create new accounts on the new Ontario site, and then associate their new accounts with their old ones in order to transfer any remaining funds, open bets, history, etc. There was no way around this, so the user journeys needed to be mapped out, and the user experience needed to be clear and as painless as possible. I worked with marketing to offer transition bonuses for customers so that they could get started betting on the new product with no risk. I made sure there were no big surprises, educating ahead of time and in-situ.
Transferring customer account to Ontario
Rehandle KYC checks > then geolocate
In order to create any account in Ontario a customer would had to perform Know-Your-Customer (KYC) checks, even if they had completed them before (AGCO rules) 🤨.
Another stipulation of the rules was that we needed to geolocate the customer using a 3rd party app (GeoComply), verifying that the customer was physically in Ontario in order to play 😕.
My approach was to focus on the journey, collaborating closely with other teams to ensure we performed KYC first (a process familiar to the customer already), and, only after the checks were verified, attempt to geolocate (a new, unfamiliar process). This tuned out to be a great decision as most of the friction came with the GeoComply app, and customers were more likely to stick with it because they had already invested time and effort into getting KYC verified.
Figjam is my go-to for mapping user journeys☝️
Two-Factor Authentication & Responsible Gaming features
I had to add more security and responsible gaming features, the biggest of which was two-factor authentication. Building these features had all been in our long-term planning. Having to build them in four months was not. I fast-tracked the inclusion of timeout, deposit limit and loss-limit settings
My approach: research competitors; a cut-throat definition of MVP; and working with the Head of Customer Service in Canada to ensure these features were aptly geared toward a Canadian audience.
2-Factor Authentication shared workspace
Research has shown that players are more likely to increase their deposit limit right after a loss:
This 24-hour cooling off period protects players from impulsively doing this 🛑✋
Result
We went live with our Ontario product on time in August 2022. It was a fully functioning sister site to the original Canada site with minimum issues (most of the issues we had were with 3rd party applications 😒). Within the first month 70% of our active customers had transitioned over which was a fantastic result, given the hurdles customers had to jump.
Key takeaways from this project:
Design systems are a great idea. Without ours, we would not have been able to develop the second site as quick as we did and would have lost our licence to operate in Ontario.
Communication is so important, and mapping out all user journeys allowed for clear, unambiguous discussions between designers, developers and product owners.