INSIGHT
The redesign: Gamingslots
Gamingslots has been taken from a simple WordPress theme to a fully functional website
available across all PC, tablet and mobile devices. Site owner Brean Wilkinson discusses the
process and shares some insights.
At the end of the summer of 2013, I
had two things on my mind. One of those
was that I wanted to go watch the World
Cup in Brazil the following summer. The
other was that I wanted to dramatically
overhaul a site in our network that
was showing signs of promise Gamingslots.com. Both of these goals
would bring their own sets of challenges,
but ultimately were realistically achievable
with some hard work and planning.
At the time Gamingslots.com was
essentially a review website, focusing
exclusively on online video slots. It was a
very rigid site with a growing number of
free play games, bonus videos and slots
reviews. There was only one real source
of traffic and that was Google, with every
other source paling into insignificance.
I knew something needed to change as
relying on one source of traffic had caused
issues in the past with other sites.
We needed to come up with a strategy
for the future growth of Gamingslots.
com. We wanted to take it from a bogstandard affiliate portal to a strong brand
in the niche of slots. The timing was
good as I had recently been introduced
to a talented graphic designer with a
background in marketing and web design.
His skills, coupled with an existing team
of WordPress specialists and database
writers, meant we were well positioned to
take on this project.
A starting point for re-launching this
website was asking ourselves what was it
we were trying to achieve. It sounds a bit
cliché, but it is surprising how easy it is to
forget the simple things. Our main focus
“The hardest part was thinking on every level - mobile,
tablet and desktop. It was so much easier before when
you only really had one platform, but times had changed
and we needed to as well.”
points were identity, traffic, community
and USP. This is how I and the team went
about each of these key areas.
Brand and identity
It became apparent that everything we
wanted to achieve in terms of increasing
visitors to the site, and then engaging
with them, relied on creating a strong and
recognisable identity. Our focus with the
new logo was mainly to ensure it remained
on one single line, rather than being tall or
too bulky. It also needed to resize well, as
we were going to be using it in a variety of
different locations.
Once we were happy with our logo
design, attentions were turned to the
website. We kept the orange colour theme
that was well liked on the old version of
Gamingslots.com and built on that,
adding subtle greys and blues that
complemented the primary brand colour.
Everything else was designed with the
focus on clean, tidy design with modern
styles. We then had to put this altogether
and make it work on devices starting
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