Friday view: Riding the mobile wave
Colossus Bets CEO Bernard Marantelli discusses the development of the firm’s first mobile app and enlisting Element Wave to help with push notifications
We made our app using [app development software] PhoneGap. This approach allowed us to use our mobile site, with which our players are familiar and which has been well received, whilst also saving us time on design and development. The result is an app which is essentially a skin of our mobile site, which in turn is a simplified interface of our website.
The most challenging aspect of releasing the app was getting it approved by Apple. Having a gambling app approved by the App Store is not always straightforward â it is very easy to end up at the back of the âapprovalâ queue if there is anything unclear in your submission. From what I have heard anecdotally though, it is a far better process than was the case a couple of years ago when it took operators up to six months to get approval for gambling-related apps.
For the Android app we use a third-party Android app store called GetJar. Initially we were offering the Android app through direct download from our blog and website, but to properly track download traffic, to offer people direct updates and make them aware of when updates are available, publishing to an app store makes sense. If you just plonk the app on a website then itâs a bit difficult to track.
The next stage of development for our app was to integrate push notification technology. To enable this we signed a deal with Element Wave. When integrating push notifications, typically you have to code the process for both iOS and Android, with different languages and programming environments for each. However, because Element Wave supports PhoneGap, we only had to work on a single set of code and our work was effectively cut in half. Overall, integrating âpushâ was pretty smooth for us and Element Wave were very responsive throughout on any questions we had.
The fact that the Element Wave platform is offered via a simple website user interface is also a major plus for us. On Android in particular, you generally have to code the conditions in which notifications will be pushed. In contrast, we now have complete control of when we push our messages via a user-friendly interface that allows us to choose from any number of criteria, including time of push, customer segment and exact content of push.
I think a lot more gambling operators will quickly start to adopt specialist push-messaging technology, with the benefits being particularly relevant for Android apps.