Alea.com is Live!

Welcome to the new home of Alea where we are proud to offer you a spectrum of the latest software, honest game reviews, and up to date iGaming content!

This site is the result of a merge between various versions drafted on the basis of user stories and what we believed would be ‘non-negotiable’ to these site guests and their experience. But, what exactly is a website, and what does it take to create one? We’re honored to give a chronological tour on the development of this product and what it took to be able to say Alea.com is live.

Before considering any type of merge, the site passed through different checkpoints - functionality, user definition, must-haves for each user, deadline assessment, and development timeframe.

Functionality

We began by asking ourselves: what is the current Alea.com used for and what do we want it to be used for? We had a corporate website with a solid structure and contact form included. This site worked for many years serving its corporate purpose and providing us a lighthouse for who we were through all these years.

Though, Alea was making a name for itself in iGaming through panel discussions, conference attendance, and event sponsorship. And it was time to bring a sense of responsiveness to the site that would reflect the dynamic nature of our work culture.

An About Us page would no longer suffice to explain who we were and what we provided. So, we redefined the intention of our site with the following purposes : Bring the latest iGaming content with unbiased and truthful words, and present an updated portfolio of our two products - Alea Play and Virtual Reality- with full display of their capabilities.

Consequently, we created a page for each product to keep users informed on the latest features and upcoming changes. The Virtual Reality page allows users to follow our VR endeavors as we re-adapt our virtual world with the latest tech advances. The Alea Play page invites users to explore the features of our next-generation aggregator with up-to-date statistics and latest technologies being used.

Slot games have been, of course, a central character in Alea, and we wanted to give users an inexhaustible list of the three thousand games provided by Alea Play. The Games page allows users to interact with this list and search for a particular game, software, or choose to filter through software.

All games have their own page where the user can read software-provided details such as Return to Player ratio, popularity, volatility, and Max win. Users can also try the demo version of the game and read the latest review or related news.

User-Story

The term ‘user’ has been used often in this article without much thought, but it required the most time and criticism in order to fill any “gaps” in content flow.

We defined several types of users that ranged from those who knew why they were coming to Alea.com to those that landed on our page based on a general query. Once their intention (or lack of) was defined, we considered their frequency of visits.

Would this user come once to find an answer to their question? Or could this user return weekly to find updates in the Games page list or iGaming news? With these answers, we would structure a specific website model for each user.

The intention, however, of the user was not enough for us to go by when drafting the structure of the site. We wanted a sense of flow in content and when the user found what they had searched for initially, we wanted them to flow into a new topic without giving it much thought. So, the following question was posed to each user story: “What else?“.

A simple, albeit nearly rhetorical question, that asked us to look beyond the original intention and give the user more than an answer.

Timeframe

Having planned a marketing campaign for the final quarter of the year, it was agreed that Alea.com’s debut would be the kick off to this campaign. Mid-September was then taken as a deadline with the minimum viable product prepared under the defined requirements.

Admittedly, the site is just getting started in capabilities. We have a strong roadmap ahead with multiple features and content in the pipeline. So, we invite you to have a look around and ask yourself the question - What else? We’re sure you’ll leave with more than just the words in this article.