Insider's View: How Casinos are Designed
Online casinos have been providing entertaining games to players since the mid-1990s. They've only gotten better too, offering larger bonuses, bigger game selections, and better designs. Speaking of the latter, have you ever wondered how casinos are designed? If so, you can learn more about the matter as we take an inside look at the design process and construction of online casinos.
The Components of an Online Casino
Before we get into the design of casinos, we should go over what exactly goes into a gaming site. The main components of online casinos include the following:
- Website - The face of the business that players see when visiting and browsing a casino.
- Back office software - Allows casino owners to track analytics, run marketing campaigns, offer/change promotions, and more.
- Game software - Programs that enable slots, table games, video poker, and other online casino games to run.
- Payment solutions - Software that showcases available banking options and allows for payments to be facilitated.
- Customer support - The team that answers questions and helps players resolve any potential issues.
- Security - Casinos need to encrypt their websites to protect players' information.
- App (optional) - Not all online casinos offer apps, but some do provide casino apps.
Designing the Casino Website
As covered above, launching a gaming site isn't as easy as designing a website, throwing a few games on it, and going live. The website design is actually one of the easiest parts and can be done through any number of programs. For example, one could use an open source platform that's similar to Wordpress, which doesn't allow real-money gambling sites, to create the look of a casino. Or they could use a more-advanced program that may come with additional plugins. Whatever the case, one shouldn't have much trouble with the website if they're adept at creating one in the first place.
Mobile Compatibility
Gaming sites don't necessarily need apps to provide mobile play. They can optimize their websites for mobile play and browsing through the HTML5 programming language. HTML5 is compatible with Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and other browsers. It allows casino developers to ensure that desktop website graphics and games will fit a smartphone screen.
Developing the Software for Casino Games
One needs in-depth programming skills to create the software needed to run casino games. Many games require the help of C++ programming. Casino owners also have to develop or borrow random number generator (RNG) programs to make the games random. A RNG ensures randomness by cycling through number sequences, which represent the results of slots spins, card hands, craps rolls, roulette spins, etc. Sound difficult? We'll discuss why one doesn't really need to go through all of this software development later.
Offering Payment Methods
Deposit methods are essential to ensuring that players can fund their accounts at casinos. Likewise, withdrawal methods enable gamblers to cash out winnings. Luckily, nobody needs to launch their own payment services because many companies already do this. A casino designer can even rely on cryptocurreny banking, which doesn't involve companies or third parties of any kind. The key is that a casino site links players to available deposit and withdrawal options. Payment processors and crypto networks handle the rest.
Securing the Website
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is the standard way to encrypt a casino site and safeguard players' account and banking details. Aside from SSL, a gaming site may implement ID verification and two-step verification. The ID verification is especially important and is required by many licensing jurisdictions.
Providing Customer Support
Gaming sites need customer service to handle inquiries from players and solve their issues. This step requires hiring staff members to cover different shifts. For example, an online casino may have two 8-hour shifts or three 8-hour shifts (24/7 support).
The Easiest Way to Design Online Casinos: Use a Turnkey Solution
Most budding casino entrepreneurs don't have 6 or even 7 figures available to start and effectively run a casino site. After all, the software development, customer support, licensing, and marketing team cost a small fortune. Fortunately, companies already exist that provide turnkey solutions for starting an online casino. These turnkey providers offer games/software, payment solutions, 24/7 customer service teams, back office software, licensing, and website design templates. In exchange, they require an online casino to share heavy royalties with them. Turnkey solutions are the most realistic route for anybody who wants to run a mobile casino without extreme technical expertise and big starting expenses.