General Betting
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gave it an honest try, but it's poor. the GUI is less intuitive, the font less legible, the buttons move, sometimes bets cannot be edited, it's buggy...
i thought betfair had these new accountability guidelines; something about doing what's best for the customer, being accountable...? well, it seems that many customers do not want to use the beta. How about a permanent opt-out, betfair, so we don't have to log in, click on a market, opt out, wait for the site to reset, click on the market again... every time %$#%$ing we use the site?
i thought betfair had these new accountability guidelines; something about doing what's best for the customer, being accountable...? well, it seems that many customers do not want to use the beta. How about a permanent opt-out, betfair, so we don't have to log in, click on a market, opt out, wait for the site to reset, click on the market again... every time %$#%$ing we use the site?
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I agree. Beta is about as popular as a betting exchange site that falls apart on the biggest betting day in the racing calendar.
Also, as plc Betfair first obligation is to do what's bets for its shareholders(not that that's working out to well). |
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Every interaction I have had with beta has been desperately poor. Totally agree to get rid of it.
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SIGNED
it's rubbish. I haven't seen a single user say they like it. don't you think that might be a clue? |
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Wish i could permanently opt out like it tells me i'm doing every time
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New marketing campaign = good
Beta = shockingly bad Whoever designed it has had an absolute shocker. It beggars belief that someone along the decision making process didn't put a stop to it. |
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I still think they'll plough on regardless which is good news for their competition
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I agree clydebank - credit where it's due: the new marketing campaign is pretty much the best one I've seen. focussing on value rather than making people want to switch over before they punch their television is a massive step forward.
but wtf were they doing with this beta? the problem - as BF acknowledged in various Q&As - was the lag in pages loading, which iirc they acknowledged was unacceptable. so why was fixing that linked to imposing an untested, unwanted new user interface which I haven't seen a single user say they prefer? whoever was responsible should be asked that question, and unless they come up with a bloody good answer that should be it for them at BF. |
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New marketing campaign = good
Beta = shockingly bad Agree, although I think beta is merely 'bad' rather than shockingly so. An overhaul of the website was long overdue, Betfair just have to make sure they don't throw out the baby with the bath water. |
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Some time ago Betfair invited some forum users to Hammersmith for a discussion on the forum and beta when it was introduced. Good move from Betfair, getting users of the forum involved in the discussion.
The weird thing is that where it really matters, the main betting site, they don't seem to have done the same thing. Plenty of people who are experts in some way, using the site dozens of hours a week, would probably be willing to give their time for free to suggest improvements if they were taken seriously. There are certain things that professional designers / programmers just won't get right no matter how good they are without listening to people who actually use the site (almost) as intensively as they do their design/programming work. |
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May be they like and want blingbling?
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setting aside technical problems with beta...
The colours are far too bright, it strains my eyes. Making out the text in light colours is even harder because of the size and colour of the adverts. My head is bamboozled away from the main substance/content of whats on offer. The good new marketing campaign focuses on what Betfair offers in its simplest terms...no frills just better prices, but the BETA site contradicts this as it looks like a comic book. The first thing you should see are the better prices on the big events, complementing the advertising campaign and making the user feel at home. Once they feel at home then they can have their heads turned by other stuff. Just been on BETA and the first thing I am directed to is Jeozbuk Motors vs Burinam Rea!!! WTF that is just crazy unless you happen to reside in whatever country they are from. Then I opt out into classic view and I see Chelsea vs Barcelona and Bayern vs Real Madrid with the prices clearly visible in a horizontal table form rather than the big games being less visible in a vertical coupon list. Bad doesn't even scratch the surface. They have completely lost the plot |
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The of course you've got all the better functionality and extra options that the old site offers that you are familiar with and use the ones you like which at a stroke you don't have any more. Where on earth is the sense of that?
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It is crap. It's a pity that IT people so often fail to realise that clean and simple is the best way for any website to work.
I get invited every now and then to these testing events but the pay is pittance and it's unpaid time off work (i.e. not betting on here) for me. Not that they'd listen, Beta is pretty much how Betfair will be in future. My main issue is that way too mych of the page is taken up with graphics/space/superfluos information. I want to see the odds on the screen and next to nothing else. An example: Bayern v Real Madrid Half Time Score Market: on Classic with half a window open, I can see the whole market, i.e. every single outcome. On Beta, with the same size window (i.e. cutting a window in half vertically) I can see 0-0; 1-1; and 2-2. That's it. It's been designed for the £2 punter. |
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I've offered them a little feedback on their feedback option, but I don't expect them to change it.
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Every time I find that Beta has been turned on (always without me asking for it), I can't switch it off fast enough. Please don't make this a permanent change. It stinks.
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Signed. . .
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I tried using it with an open mind but it really is terrible.
Please Betfair just admit it is a mistake and get rid of it. |
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new coke
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ps - clydebank 7.15 x2
perfect summary. |
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viva el presidente!
Date Joined: 10 Jun 06 Add contact | Send message When: 17 Apr 12 12:58 Joined: Date Joined: 10 Jun 06 | Topic/replies: 11,442 | Blogger: viva el presidente!'s blog new coke New coke was seen as a ridiculous mistake, but then it got a lot of publicity and got everyone talking about how passionate they were about 'old coke' and how great it was. So maybe it was an accidental stroke of genius. Not that it's the same in this case...  |
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It's dire. Please, at the very least, have an option to permanently opt out of it. I absolutely loathe it.
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New Coke
Country of origin USA Introduced April 23, 1985 New Coke was the reformulation of Coca-Cola introduced in 1985 by The Coca-Cola Company to replace the original formula of its flagship soft drink, Coca-Cola (also called Coke). New Coke originally had no separate name of its own, but was simply known as "the new taste of Coca-Cola" until 1992 when it was renamed Coca-Cola II. The American public's reaction to the change was negative and the new cola was a major marketing failure. The subsequent reintroduction of Coke's original formula, re-branded as "Coca-Cola Classic", resulted in a significant gain in sales, leading to speculation that the introduction of the New Coke formula was just a marketing ploy.[1] |
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What is the brief and objectives:
1) first and foremost, page loading and a smooth flow between platform and data-base 2a) What is the priority of information: Well, I don't need a monsterous banner telling me I am betting on a tennis match with an inch of a quarter of color and 16 point print floating in it. I need a half inch banner on a light color with dark print. That's what we have now. 2b) What is the priority given to space? Allow the user to see everything on offer at a glance and have little or no scrolling to do so. Example: half time / full time should be seen without scrolling. We have that now. 3) Postings have mentioned eyes getting tired. A more relaxing experience is to create either horizontal or vertical eye movement. The new beta site, you find yourself moving in a triangular motion from odds to betting to markets, etc. The site we have now, you can look at your markets, click on them then move horizontally into the odds. The beta, you are constantly searching. 4) Beta seems to have been designed on a 22 inch screen. Laptops are 15 inches. The medium would be a good design window to work from. My personal intention is to go back to API when the new site comes up. |
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Well said, Shapeshifter.
As someone who's never used API, may I ask why did you come back to normality? |
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I work with someone that has a massive, API set-up. Makes anything betangel, etc look dinky.
When betting on my own, I found that I wanted to "slow down" my trading when in-running. I was closing positions too quickly when I had researched a race and wasn't following my own 'plan of attack'. I also was not on betfair for hours, being more selective on my races. A 'less is more' approach. Past month, I've been testing some approaches that were just 'doable' on the platform. I realize that with API, they will work better (I'm trading a third of the field pre-off and in-running). Need more 'indicators' (green and red). I've been involved with enough consulting on web-sites (seven years ago, I did research for 6 of the high street shops tearing their sites apart betting for them. It was interesting making them "user friendly"). I think that betfair should tell each of the design team to put 500 in an account and use the site, keeping track of their bets, their markets, etc and see how many come back with money at the end of a week. |
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Betfair really ought to work on a full (non-web) application for betting and trading. It would be completely unique to UK bookmakers and would capture a new set of gamblers I think.
Other things I think they should do: Introduce a "paper" account, where you can shadow the market (paper trade) with an account of "play money". This introduces people to the idea of exchange betting without risk, and gets people hooked. Some might never convert over to the "Real money" side, but this is true of poker sites too but it still helps keep people on the books and quite a lot will convert, especially if they get lucky with their paper trades and show a profit there. Introduce more of a social aspect. They should let people post, in a betfair validated manner, matched and unmatched bets on the forum, including let people match unmatched bets directly from the forum, so someone could post "I've just stuck up £3 @ 8.4" and you'd see a button where you could match their money. They should also let you post P&L in a validated/signed manner. This would clean the forum out of the deluded very quickly. The forum right now is fairly unusable because of two reasons: 1) Not enough casual posters or "new blood" to the forum, caused by the lack of a direct forum link from the front page. (And also the fact it is generally linked as "community" not "forum". People don't recognise the word community as meaning for them. 2) Too many fantasist "tipsters" who just talk endlessly about their own made up profits or slagging off others doing the same. A full live application for betting could be made to work very smoothly, and with the right coding would be a significant reduction of stress on betfair's servers. It would also be easier to make 'live' forum threads and community aspects. (Including a general live chatroom.) It would also be easier to advertise services such as live video as applications generally have more spare space for adverts. (Although less so on mobile applications.) Another advantage of an application over a website is that users are less likely to switch to other websites or services while using it. With a website someone might just open another tab to compare to slybet or similar, but with an application it's not as easy to do this so people might not bother. Applications allow for the saving of local logs, so users could download live market data locally, or the caching locally of market information such as those market graphs. Applications would allow for 3D graphs. (3D for betting? Why yes! Price on one axis, result on another, time on third!) Actually on that note, a 2D stacked graph of % chance for each result by time would be great please betfair! In fact you could use that as the banner behind those football result banners you have which take up half the screen! |
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"Beta seems to have been designed on a 22 inch screen."
.. for use on 25" screens .. |
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This site has totally gone down the pan since the last maintenance upgrade. Completely piised off with it. Listen to your users, get rid of Beta, its shiite. Stop trying to foist it on us.Loading markets takes ages, keep getting logged out, have to log in even when account balance shows, australian wallet being created, new user please log in to forum. This sites never had so many problems. Its desperate at the moment.
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no one's spoken in favour of beta yet.
the best we've had is: "I think it's bad, but not as bad as some people say." |
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viva, history is repeating itself.
What's funny is companies like EBAY, AMAZON, the airlines, and countless others are constantly doing upgrades/changes/improvements to meet demand and functionality YET they keep the integrity and structure of their sites. WHY? Because it's worked for years. They manage to adapt and add bells and whistles yet when you visit the site, you 'notice' the change then try it out and are usually able to understand it right away and your browsing/shopping/etc is not affected. A few years ago, I was brought in by a friends company to evaluate the first capital connect train site (it might have still been called Thameslink then). They showed me the new site and started to tell me about the aspects. I stopped them. "Just give me the password to the beta site" They were puzzled. I explained if you they are going to launch it to the public, you have to see how they react (my friend chuckled afterwards saying that I freak out all his clients when I do that). I went home for three weeks and returned. "It takes X amount of clicks to find out the next train AND when the next couple of trains are" The designers all started huffing while the management team tried to listen. The head of design said: "So you know, we won several awards for the present design. Customers reported over 90% satisfaction for functionality with the 10% unsatisfied only using the site once a week" and looked smug, turning his back to me and staring out the window. "So why did you tear it apart and change it completely? Before, three clicks and all the info was there?" He stood silent, his clients waiting for a response. The rhetoric started, insults about my inability to fundamentally understand the site. "Hey, I'm just Joe Public, mate. One of thousands that use the site hourly." He then leaned forward and said, "okay, Farringdon to Brighton, next and next five trains" and started to click on his laptop. Despite his 'head start', I made three clicks and then slid my laptop to one of the First Capital people. The tech made a few more clicks then announced, "there, seven clicks and presto!" I had used the old site and did it in a relaxed ten seconds out of habit and had more info than he did. First Capital then asked me for additional feedback on the site and I left. The following weeks, my friend brought in 50 people from the public who were blind-tested on the site. The tech who had been at my meeting sat behind the mirror saying "these people are idiots". In the end, the "bells and whistles" were taken away. They added my main point which was so that when you select your stations, it shows you several trains rather than just the next one plus simplify the calender for works. As viva el presidente said, there is no positive reviews being posted on the site. That's typical but it takes feedback (negative and positive) to get to the end result. There are certain consistent points being mentioned by people. I also think that having people "opt out" was wrong since it doesn't allow people to even look at it and offer feedback (I was able to go back and forth between the two before but haven't been able to see it since before my easter break). Oh, and can someone explain why when I hit "Racing" in the top header, I end up in Australia? |
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had plenty of experience of amazon from the selling side, and it's nowhere near as smooth as it looks from a buyer's point of view. they're always doing stuff, some of it seemingly pointless, and there are continual glitches.
other than that, SHAPESHIFTER for prime minister imo. |
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Thanks for the nod, viva. I'll skip the job and go straight to being overpaid to do dinner talks
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For some reason, my computer just gave me a peak at a page getting converted to a 'result' page / I clicked on the 15:55 Ripon and was given the results and odds. That was a plus.
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It sounds like Shapeshifter should pop into Betfair HQ...
When I opt out, I can always go back into Beta. Not that I do, but I have left a little feedback with them. |
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Brilliant post shapeshifter! I especially liked this:
The following weeks, my friend brought in 50 people from the public who were blind-tested on the site. The tech who had been at my meeting sat behind the mirror saying "these people are idiots". |
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I have to opt out every day too.
I only use the website for reference to kick off times, and Beta lists the matches in order but the KO time is listed after the match name and is more difficult to read at a glance than classic view which has times listed vertically (instead of jumbled vertically). For me Classic view is bold and concise, Beta is kind of opaque and murky. |
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The following weeks, my friend brought in 50 people from the public who were blind-tested on the site. The tech who had been at my meeting sat behind the mirror saying "these people are idiots".
Are you sure he was looking behind the mirror and not in front of it? |
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ITS SH1TE GET RID
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ITS SH1TE GET RID
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