Smarkets Mobile App

Smarkets is one of the biggest events exchanges in the UK allowing people to trade on various kind of events from politics to sports and current affairs.

Problem

UI of the app was outdated comparing web experience. App design was not following iOS / Android guidelines. The current design had big issues with navigation which was not intuitive and hard to use. Also, we wanted to provide extended trading tools to attract traders to our platform.

Old navigation os Smarkets app with left and right off-canvas menus and not structured sub-navigation in right off-canvas screen

Navigation

To decide which navigation we should use for Smarkets app I prototyped 3 versions, base one with off-canvas nav, bottom tab bar and top tap bar options and ask Smarkets users to find out specific events.

The outcome of the test showed that users are able to find events more easily and faster with bottom tab navigation. It also helped me to identify how easy is to use this nav for Android users as this pattern is relatively new for them. Another finding of user testing sessions showed that people were looking for specific subcategories or set of events. So we decided to add the Popular Categories section to the home page.

Home and listing pages

The other issue with current nav was boring and not engaging home and listing pages without any structure.

Solution

The solution was to create a certain amount of block styles and adding them "weight" by using different size and imagery to guide user attention and point to more interesting events

Trading View

To attract more traders we decided to add tools that will provide people with info about possible price movement. The problem is that we didn’t want causal and matched bettors to be scared by the complexity of trading tools.

After showing different options to Smarkets users we agreed to create a separate trading view.

Game Center

The other important feature for Smarkets users was to be on a track of whats happening in-game, and have access to in-game stats. The solution was to add Game Center with live game visualization add stats.

Results

~32% increase active monthly users

Rating increased from 2.3 on Android to 3.7 and for 4.5 on iOS

~ %60 increase in app install in 3 months with no marketing

User feedback was also mostly positive, highlighing improvements in navigation and interface