Racing Smart View
Horse racing is an exciting sport, but it has a rather steep learning curve to truly understand all of the data available and feel confident in your picks. Many avid racing fans spend upwards of 20+ hours a week pouring through data to make their bets. These types of fans consider Racing Post the “horseracing bible” for the UK, Ireland and beyond, so expect it to “do all the things” and have all the data they’ll ever need. But not all racing fans are experts, or understand or know how to use all of the text data points thrown at them… Smart View an attempt to simplify the choosing of a solid bet based on Racing Post expertise for all fans, regardless of racing knowledge.
THE CONTEXT & OBJECTIVES
Much of Racing Post’s expertise, info and news is presented in a very text heavy format. Lots of spreadsheets, forms and codes. For those who have the time and like to geek out, similar to avid stock traders, this can be great to dive into. For many others, this can be overwhelming and limit their confidence in betting (and, even enjoying the sport!
Typical compact form per horse per race found in most racing papers.
THE SET UP
- My role: Director of Design / Occasional hands-on design assistance
- Company: Racing post
- Main Team: B2B UI & UX designers, user researchers, product management, B2B stakeholders, Entain clients, 3rd party development partners
B2B at Racing Post was really more B2B2C – cobranded content that leant Racing Post’s gravitas to media partners and bookmakers products for direct consumers.
On this project, I collaborated with internal stakeholders and the UXDR team to guide this solution to be something that was effective and inclusive by stressing the need for “in person” validation of the concept overall as well as the in-store product, and to ensure it met basic levels of accessibility for the audiences we were catering to.
The Bottom Drawer and The Ask
One of the B2B stakeholders had been kicking around the idea of a quick, visual “temperature check” rating system to go along with race forms for expert racer fans that were looking for a quick bet.
The UXDR team, off the back of a lot of research and feedback, were looking to create a simplified, more visual way to present Racing Post expertise and data to help novice-to-intermediate bettors make an informed choice.
Both of these approaches were running in parallel in the background and often “bottom-drawered” when new priorities for the teams arose.
Until Entain, one of our B2B2C clients, asked the team to come up with something new for horse and dog racing fans that none of their competitors had… something engaging to all of their racing customers. Once this project got going, the rest of the Racing Post, especially Editorial and B2C, started other see the possibilities for the Racing Post itself.
So Smart View began…
THE PROCESS
Deciding the data to present
This was the internal “bun fight” Racing Post is a brand that attracts die hard racing fans to work for it, and everyone has slightly different opinions on which data points are the most important for placing a bet. Add to this, one of the main stakeholders and project champions being a former Head Editor, and there was a lot of internal push and pull between expertise and user data to decide which six data points would be the most useful to visually showcase.
What does the Smart View Score actually mean?
We wanted to present specific data points / attributes and our rating for them, to help give a visual, holistic view of the horse’s chances, but also felt we needed to give a “summary” of what all those scores meant, hence a Smart View Score. But we also needed to find a way to explain the score – what did it mean? Where is the data coming from to create that score, etc…
Endless iterations of visual formats
How to present this data went through countless iterations and versions – from simple bar graphs that were all one colour, to a plethora of colours, icons, symbols, codes. “Top Trumps” layouts, vertical layouts, horizonal layouts. We were trying something so new for Racing Post that it took a while to hone in on a concrete direction. In the end, we started to simplify and rationalise the data to be more visually compelling without adding in it’s own version of complexity and overwhelm!
The graphs took on a traffic light colour system (red, amber, green) with thumbs up /down and progression bars to help those with colour blindness. We ensured the Overall Score was AA accessible and all of the text in the rest of the form was as well.
Five rounds of unmoderated usability testing with racing fans: These sessions with 5-6 participants per session, helped with refining the colour approach, seeing how well the understood the icons, the layouts, the progression bars. All of this adding to the iterative process.
Intercept testing with an underserved audience
After going through all our previous research and data, all the internal expertise and feedback from our clients, it was time to see if all of our “guts” were correct about this product – that users would find it useful and enticing to use.
But as this was a big departure for both the Racing Post and Entain, we decided to try it out on a low risk, yet horrendously underserved betting audience – dog racing fans. We took printed out versions of the Smart View cards for an evening’s racing at Suffolk Downs and the researchers did dozens of intercepts with punters.
Smart View was a hit!
Most punters liked the format and stated they would use it again if it was on offer. They found it easy to understand, digest and choose a confident bet. We gained a clear preference on layout for the info (horizontal perferred over Top Trumps) and some good feedback on how to clarify the Overall Score calculation. We were ready to launch it into horse racing.
ROLLING IT OUT
The roll out into the horse racing products happened in fits and starts. Smart View was nearly immediately adjusted and launched in Entains’ Ladbrokes kiosks in their bookmaker shops.
Rolling it out in the Racing Post product and editorial ecosystem happened at different rates and iterations. Despite good user research findings relating to format and “busy-ness” of designs, some products, like the newspaper, did their initial launch with older designs to test more competely at volume. The success of Smart View (sometimes called Easy View in the early days) then rolled into the digital products, starting with inlays within related editorial articles and then later the racecards within the website and app.
RESULTS
The project officially started as far back as 2019 in very nascent forms. Entain’s involvement provided the push we needed in 2022 to move it on leaps and bounds. The feature has proven so popular with fans and B2B2C clients, that iterations and improves are ongoing as it has spread across the Racing Post product portfolio. The release of Smart View within the Racing Post app in 2024 in particular has raised engagement with non-expert audiences significantly.
• Marked increase in betting activity and turnover in Ladbrokes shops – roughly 10% uptick – within the first few weeks
• Large volumes of positive feedback from Racing Post newspaper and editorial readers via social and customer service channels – bettors at all levels were finding it helpful and enjoyable to use to place their bets
• The release within the Racing Post app raised betting engagement more than any other feature release in the last 3 years.
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