Online gambling firm Betfair has completed a six-month project to update its web site to be easier to use for everyday punters.

The company this week introduces several new features designed to attract customers more used to a conventional bookmakers than the betting exchange format of which it is a pioneer.

Alex Deacon, site product specialist at Betfair, says this is the first major customer-facing software release in a programme to attract more users.

‘We have a track record of attracting a certain type of user to our site - sophisticated online gamblers, not the majority of people who walk into your local betting shop,’ he said.

‘We are trying to attract a greater number of those people who are less sophisticated. We have made it very plain speaking. The barriers between what people are used to and what we offer have been quite significant. This is part of a phased approach to try to attract more of these type of users.’

Deacon says the project is not a major technology change for the site, which is developed using J2EE tools on an Oracle database, but is a sign of things to come.

‘What we are doing in this release is adding additional ways of using Betfair. It’s broadening the appeal not replacing anything. It’s not a fundamental technology shift yet, but it is putting foundations in place.’

Betfair’s IS director Rorie Devine says future updates to the site will follow the same principles.

‘This the first step down a very exciting route,’ he said. ‘This is a fundamentally different approach to what we are trying to do.’

The biggest IT challenge for the betting firm is dealing with its extremely rapid growth. The number of pages views on the web site is trebling each year, and it is now receiving over one billion page requests per week.

More than one billion bets were place on the exchange in the last year – more than all the bets placed in the years since its launch in 1999.

And Betfair claims to process twice as many credit and debit card transactions as any other European web site.