ABOUT

Executive Summary
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A company with a mission:
Founded in 1937, with the objective of working for public good, Loterie Romande is the lottery provider for the six French-speaking Swiss Cantons. An estimated 63% of the French-speaking Swiss population are Loterie Romande players, yet the existing online offer was outdated and in need of a wider rethink.

Loterie Romande has a unique mission: 100% of its profits are distributed to non-profit institutions, supporting thousands of community associations in the fields of social, culture, health, research, education, environment and sport.

A winning platform:
In April 2016, ELSE commenced work on the redesign Loterie Romande’s eGaming platform and since its launch in September 2017, we have continued working closely with Loterie Romande to incrementally improve the experience for players, including running rounds of user testing and adding to the portfolio with a relaunch of the sports betting product.

The redesign, in partnership with lottery technology provider Camelot Global Services – far exceeded all original objectives and has opened up significant new revenue opportunities, and therefore increased funds available for social good, by bringing a more entertaining and sophisticated experience to players living in Switzerland.

Key performance indicators show that the platform achieved a +250% increase in registrations and player volume doubled, which in turn delivered a +25% growth in sales.

“Your old site was heavy and not very user-friendly. The new site is just the opposite, in three
minutes, we can play SwissLoto! Congratulations for the change”

— Following the redesign, 75% of users interviewed said they find it easier to buy SwissLoto tickets on a mobile device which is a key developing platform for gameplay.

Following the redesign, further new opportunities are now possible through player tracking, cross-sell, repeat usage, CRM and cross-device play, as well as targeted in-platform marketing and personalisation. Further, AB testing can now be run allowing Loterie Romande to test and iterate different design solutions.

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Objectives, execution and results:

The business objectives for the original Loterie Romande eGaming platform were:

- +8% sales growth in 2017, + 10% in 2018
- +6% of active player in 2017, +7% in 2018
- +10% registrations in 2017

We worked with Loterie Romande and Camelot Global Services to deliver a new, modern and consistent design system for Loterie Romande’s eGaming platform. With mobile at its core, the new design creates a modern and usable aesthetic whilst complimenting their newly-launched corporate social website.

KPIs to support business objectives for launch in 2017 included 8% sales growth, 10% growth in registrations and 6% increase in active players – so in short, the new design needed to deliver more players, more registrations and more repeat usage.

The platform itself is extensive, encompassing more than draw-based lottery products and instant win games, to also include sports betting and horse racing. In Switzerland it is illegal to use unofficial or overseas sports betting platforms, so the challenge from the start has been to balance the design to deliver sophistication and depth to regular sports betting players, whilst at the same time as ensuring ease-of-use to infrequent lottery players.

A modern, relevant and personalised experience:
A key question from the brief was: ‘How can we create a modern, relevant and personalised experience for our players?’

With values of respect, trust and loyalty, Loterie Romande is a well known Swiss institution. However, the perception of what a lottery offers is always a tricky balance to strike. On the one hand, a noble social agenda to bring funding into community projects – on the other, a desire to serve players’ needs — from a casual and infrequent lottery player, to an avid sports fan — in a responsible yet engaging way.

Our start point was to reach into what a lottery stands for and try to evoke its social responsibility, whilst balancing this with an engaging yet elegant digital design aesthetic to suit the Swiss French market.

We took inspiration from a wealth of different online entertainment experiences, including TV and online gaming, to develop a dynamic, shuffling site that follows a weekly rhythm of draws and events. The new website dances to this rhythm, shifting and reshaping itself on certain key pages, to better showcase the offer.

So, for example, the focus for a Saturday afternoon might be around promoting play for SwissLoto, PMU and Sportsbet. Then, as we move through the week toward the jackpot for Euromillions on Tuesday evening, the emphasis becomes more about supporting the high traffic volumes of people wanting to play for that evening and building a sense of occasion.

Principles for success:
We developed a set of design principles to guide the design of the new experience. These were:

Entertain them
Whether a weekly visitor, a sports player, or an occasional draw entrant, we always seek to entertain the player and bring a sense of occasion to their experience, leading on the next big thing, or, if we have them suitably profiled, the next relevant thing to them.

Create excitement:
We shall create a sense of anticipation and heighten the drama and the potential of playing and winning these games. We celebrate the occasion, we celebrate the win, we celebrate the impact a lottery can have.

Be fuss-free:
Nothing gets in the way of your gameplay. No matter what channel you engage with us through, whether you want to check your numbers, place a bet, play some Instant Win games while waiting for the Metro, or simply withdraw some funds – our experience is designed to be as friction free as possible.

Demonstrate the good:
Having been entertained by Loterie Romande’s games, players that win or lose have some sense of satisfaction with Loterie Romande’s social agenda. This doesn’t get in the way of players’ entertainment, but it is a reason that lotteries, per sé, exist.

Using these principles encouraged us to bring in new ways to browse multi-events, by borrowing features like the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG), commonly used to browse TV schedules, and applying this to Horse Betting, to enable people to quickly see what races are up next / on today. Providing players with a way of easily scanning multiple events not only facilitates play but also makes for a more multi-dimensional player experience.


The design system:
A key challenge to the project was how to harmonise the visual language of different lottery products under one roof. As far as branding goes, lottery websites rank high on the list of complexity, with each lottery product having its own unique branding and all of those brands fighting for the user’s attention. From the very beginning of the project, we worked to identify what unites them, while at the same time, working out the differences that set them apart. The result is a system that houses over 10 brands, each with its own style, while making them still feel like part of the same family.

Prior to the redesign, Loterie Romande didn’t have an optimised mobile experience, so the focus was on creating a very accessible service. Simple navigational structures, enabling any game to be played within two clicks across any device. Given the timely nature of the games, we ensured we created a mobile first design system.

For much of the platform, a mobile first approach was industry leading — for example, when we helped Loterie Romande relaunch their Sports betting offer in January 2018. As well as integrating a multi-faceted and broad experience into the existing site structure, there was also the opportunity to unify and simplify the sports bet journey. Due to an unappealing offering, with uncompetitive odds, Loterie Romande lost a portion of their customer base to international providers. The new site had to re-attract this audience and mobile was a key way to do this. We developed a design system that was perfect for mobile use and then scaled up to larger screens.

A partnership of minds:
For the duration of the project we worked in partnership with Camelot Global Services, who developed out the platform. CGS’s ambition is to develop a best-in-class lottery platform that can be versioned for different international lotteries and customised to the culture of that region.

The successful delivery of Loterie Romande’s eGaming platform has already led to CGS winning the contract for the Illinois Lottery, which we helped provide the experience design vision for.

New customers vs channel shift:
A concern early on in the project was that if the digital platform became very effective, it might cannibalise the retail outlets for physical sales, many of which are franchised. With much of the organisation focused on their own product streams, the website was the one place where a full offer can be experienced. During the early strategic stages of the project we worked through reframing this perceived challenge.

Avoiding the honey traps and clichés:
Many lotteries around the world use imagery that represents a big win or unattainable scenario, such as sitting on a private jet sipping champagne. But the truth is that winnings are large and small and this concept simply doesn’t scale down to become an image that fees like a realistic scenario. Our approach to imagery for the new platform was to focus on feeling and expectation over material assets. We rolled out across all the draw-based games, as well as the sports and horse racing verticals.

For horses and sports we tried to find a viewpoint that felt distinct in that space. So much of horse racing is documented in wide format and it feels very difficult to get up close to the action of the race, or to feel that you are taking part in something that is real and alive. We sought to find shots that focused on the detail — the scuff of the course, the image across the starting blocks, the slow motion head turn — and so demonstrated a different way of looking at the sport through Loterie Romande.

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Results:
The results for the redesign have been astounding. The original business objectives seemed ambitious at the start of the project and have been exceeded early on.

The original business objectives looked to achieve the following:

+8% sales growth in 2017, + 10% in 2018
+6% of active player in 2017, +7% in 2018
+10% registrations in 2017

These objectives were exceeded by the following results:

24.3% sales growth in 2017 (post launch), + 18.8% in 2018
23.2% of active player in 2017, +12.3% in 2018
XX% registrations in 2017

Other noteworthy results are listed below, including the best day for online revenue on record.

- Between Sept 11th - 31st October 2017 (the first month of launch) the site generated an all time revenue high - 33.35% higher than previous records.
- During the first week, “sales hit 1m CHF mark in less than six days, where the weekly average pre-launch over the last three months was about 745k”

- Sales across the gaming verticals:
- Instant win +70% sales growth in 2017 (post launch), + 24.3% in 2018
- PMU +44.6% sales growth in 2017 (post launch), + 16.5 in 2018
- Sport +3.76 Sales growth (post launch), + 232% in 2018 (post re-launch of sports)
- EuroMillions +37.8% Sales growth ( post launch),+8.5% in 2018
- Active players across the gaming verticals
- Instant win +50.8% increase of active players in 2017, +12.9% in 2018
- PMU +54.2% of active players in 2017, +7.5% in 2018
- Sport +52.9 % of active players in 2017, +29.2% in 2018
- Swiss Loto +8.5% of active players in 2017, +18.7% in 2018
- Euromillions +39.3% of active players in 2017, +8.5% in 2018

What the users said:
On launch the redesign was tested via a Hotjar survey with 756 people. The survey was run for three days, from Tuesday 6th — Thursday 8th of March 2017. It encompassed multiple choice for some questions on usage, as well as free form responses for how users might improve the buying process and suggestions for improving the site in general.

Some of the comments that came back from this were:

“TOP! Highly a related application!”
"Do not change anything, it's perfect (at least for me!)”
"It's so much better than before!”
"I find it very powerful and see nothing to add to it."
"I find it easier to play the system of favourites to play the same grid several times"
“Your old site was heavy and not very user-friendly. The new is just the opposite, in 3
minutes, we can play Swissloto! Congratulations for the change”

Through 2018:
Once the site went live in September 2017, we worked continually with Loterie Romande to incrementally improve the experience for players. The below results showcase a selection of year-on-year wins.


- Sales doubled year-on-year sales 2017 / 2018, including record business sales in month September 2018
- Market share increased by 25%
- Player volume doubled
- Transactions up circa 45%


And the client said…

And finally, our key ongoing client for the eGaming project had the following to say:

“The quality of the designs and UX they delivered were beyond my expectations. We entrusted them with a very complex project and the whole team managed, with a user centric approach, to immerse themselves in the very specific world of our customers.”
— Céline Briod, Head of eCommerce at Loterie Romande