Improving the user experience of a gambling support and education website using a chatbot

Gambling help websites are an important source of information for gamblers and affected others, but they contain large amounts of information, making it difficult to navigate and access required resources. Usability of such websites can be improved through the implementation of chatbots, which are programmed to respond to user requests in natural language. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a text-based chatbot on the usability, user satisfaction, and experience of the Australian New South Wales GambleAware website; and explore the usability, user satisfaction, and experience of the chatbot itself. A convenience sample of Australian residents were allocated into website with chatbot access (n = 32) or website only (n = 28). Compared with the website-only group, the website with chatbot access group reported significantly greater ratings of the website’s usability and aspects of user satisfaction, but not user experience, and resulted in higher ease of task completion. Compared with available norms, the chatbot was highly rated on usability, usefulness, information quality, and credibility, with the layout, readability of responses, and look and feel identified as areas for improvement. The usability of the NSW GambleAware website could be enhanced by the integration of a text-based chatbot, with potential applications for similar websites.