Smooth operator: How the industry is eliminating friction points in the user journey

The upcoming World Cup in Russia is already being trumpeted by gambling PR folk as the biggest betting bonanza of all time and an event that will leave previous major summer football tournaments trailing in its wake in terms of gambling turnover. Whether or not this proclamation turns out to be accurate, operators are nevertheless busily gearing up once again to slip into user acquisition overdrive as they attempt to capitalise on the feverish betting interest in the quadrennial footballing feast. And for many firms that entails trying to eradicate any awkward friction in the customer journey that obstructs users from placing a wager when they first try to sign-up or when they go to log back in. Firms are acutely aware that all those unprocessed betslips discarded by users who gave up with a perhaps convoluted or tortuous registration process soon pile up.

“Poor rates of conversion equate to literally millions in lost revenue a year,” suggests Richard Smith, co-founder of Mobile Gaming Innovation and former head of mobile at Betsson Group. Indeed, the part of the customer journey where drop-off rates are likely to be most pronounced is between that first visit and the registration phase. And with some operators reporting 80% of revenues now coming from mobile devices, having an intuitive and relatively pain-free sign-up process optimised for handheld devices is, of course, a key step to ushering players down the conversion funnel.

This is easier said than done, though, with KYC checks making gambling forms more personal than regular forms. “What’s so challenging is the amount of information required and, hence, the number of fields and keeping the customer’s interest and momentum in the journey,” Smith says. “You want to give people confidence that this is not a long process and keep the carrot there for them.”

A study conducted last December by analytics firm Formisimo explored this very issue, with the mobile registration processes at 43 prominent UK and European operators put through their paces. The Manchester-based company’s research revealed it takes an average of 77.2 seconds to sign up using a mobile device, while the runaway winner was The Stars Group’s sportsbook, BetStars, with the procedure taking just 21.6 seconds to complete. At the other end of the spectrum, it took Formisimo 97.8 seconds to fill in the necessary forms at 188Bet – more than 72 seconds longer than for BetStars. Meanwhile, the likes of Sky Bet, Paddy Power, Betfred and bwin all fell below the average time taken.

“This is the most painful hurdle,” says Formisimo CEO Al Mackin. “The person is eager to bet with you but the thing that stands in the way is the form. If they are with friends or in a pub, they just don’t have the time and patience to get through a long process.”

Fielding questions

The main reason BetStars topped the rankings is due to the fact this sportsbook has just four fields to complete, compared with an average of 16. The Isle of Man-based outfit gets away with four fields because KYC queries like name, date of birth and address are backloaded until after the user has deposited funds. Initially, they are just confronted with fields regarding country of residence, email address, a Stars ID and password. That way, would-be customers are more likely to open an account and road test the mobile site or app.

Mackin says: “BetStars are saying, ‘let’s leave the deep stuff that people really hate – around address and date of birth – until the end. Let’s get people in, choosing a bet and when they want to deposit the form is just a bit bigger’.”

Although BetStars has only existed two years, sister brand PokerStars – the world’s largest poker site – has been acquiring players since 2001. So, The Stars Group knows a thing or two about effective customer on-boarding. “What’s different to the rest of the industry is the order in which we ask for information from the customer,” says director of sportsbook product, Jon McCutcheon.

“We create an account quickly with the minimal of details, move into a deposit, and then the full licensing registration details to verify the account. We operate in highly regulated markets where we always gather the details regulators request. So, we gather the same required information as any other licensed operator, but we just do it in a different order.” He continues: “We are continually monitoring and changing our registration process, and trying to reduce drop-offs at every point.”

Another pertinent point to emerge from the research was how Sky Bet’s process on mobile includes nine steps, at least five more than any of the other firms in Formisimo’s research, but it does have a below-average number of fields with 12. The majority of firms have built three steps into the sign-up process. By breaking down the task into bite-sized chunks, accompanied by a progress bar in percentage terms, Sky Betting & Gaming (SB&G) clearly believes this method is superior to fewer steps containing more questions and fields.

It could go some way to explaining why the Leeds-headquartered company has amassed more than 2.6 million customers and now occupies an estimated 10% share of the UK’s sports-betting market. Indeed, there is a belief that whatever SB&G is doing must be right. Propus Partners’ Marc Thomas says: “There are few operators out there who spend as much care and resources on UX and a mobile-first approach than Sky Bet, and no doubt it is monitoring and fine-tuning its processes for optimum results.”

Another operator not investigated by Formisimo – Casumo – has a whopping 14 steps, as EGR Technology discovered when opening an account through its native app. Each step contains a single question, while even requests for a user’s first and last name are divided into separate steps. Progress is displayed at the top of the page and, on the whole, it is a quick and fairly painless procedure.

On the flipside, Formisimo reported that Marathonbet boasts a solitary step, yet the highest number of fields to complete (19), meaning users are confronted by one long form. As to which option is best, Smith insists it depends on the market. “In Russia, they are used to longer forms and it would look normal to them, but in the UK people may think it looks like they are filling out an insurance form. So, there’s a big difference between what Russian customers are used to versus UK or Swedish customers. Different styles will potentially convert better in different regions.”

If the registration form is causing drop-offs then operators obviously need to drill down into the data and identify the pain points. Often simple things like radio buttons rather than drop-down menus can make a big difference on mobile. Furthermore, entering an address can be especially fiddly with the switching between letters and numbers, so having an automatic postcode lookup slashes the number of fields from around five to two as it just requires the postcode and house number. Yet 37% of firms in the study had no address lookup function at all.

Other tips include requesting an email address as the initial question so you can contact those who failed to register, allowing people to see their chosen password as they type (56% don’t have this), and having a live chat link or customer support number displayed. “Although 99% of them won’t make the call, people think, ‘oh I can talk to these people if there is a problem or I get stuck’,” Mackin says. Ultimately, any upgrades operators decide to make come back to “insights and numbers” he stresses.
“If we think we can get the conversion rate up by two percent and the development team takes three weeks [to make changes], what does that cost us?”

Repeat business

Inveterate gamblers are regularly logging into their online betting accounts for a flutter. Conversely, an occasional bettor may disappear for months before resurfacing for major sporting events like the Grand National, the knockout stages of the Champions League, or golf’s majors. It’s when these recreational users return that another friction point rears its ugly head: recalling and entering the password. In fact, a joint-study last summer by Mastercard and the University of Oxford found that the average person is registered to 90 online accounts requiring passwords, while around a third of online purchases are abandoned at the checkout because users can’t remember their login details.

With sites stipulating that passwords contain alphanumeric combinations, as well as capital letters and symbols, it’s a pretty common occurrence for people to forget them. The study also found 22% of users forget passwords after a fortnight, and 25% forget one password at least once a day. Some customers may request a password reset, others won’t bother. The password manager tools provided by almost all browsers do help, yet not everyone trusts this kind of solution. By the same token, some users aren’t comfortable with ticking the ‘remember me’ box when logging into a gambling product.

Smith says forgotten passwords are “a very big problem” for large operators. He adds: “I’d suggest operators look at their data to see how many customers have this issue, and then look to optimise the product, as this issue has a definite financial impact and, more importantly, leads to customer frustrations and a poor user experience.”

Operators are integrating Face ID into their iOS apps

This is why biometric authentication has been a godsend for many operators. Indeed, the lifting of the ban on RMG apps in Google’s Play Store in the UK, France and Ireland last year is one reason why operators started integrating fingerprint login into their Android apps, bringing them on a par with their iOS cousins. With users previously struggling to locate and download Android apps outside the Play Store, rolling out biometric login hadn’t been a priority before that.

“Fingerprint ID is just something people expect to do and they have become more and more comfortable with that technology,” says Andy Evans, a project manager within the native app squads at SB&G. The Leeds-based firm, which had over a million weekly active users in 2017, rolled out the feature on Android last April, although in November fingerprint ID became the default login option when a user fires up the native app.

Customers can still choose to use their PIN (up to six digits), yet Evans suggests this isn’t much of an improvement over a password. “PIN doesn’t make much of a difference as it’s effectively another password. Once we moved from PIN to fingerprint login, the number of calls we received to reset PINs fell through the floor. It’s a lot easier and seamless for the user to get in; not having to remember a password makes a big difference.”

As well as being more secure and quicker, it stands to reason that fingerprint login gives retention a boost, especially when sites and apps tend to log users out after a set period of inactivity. SB&G always gets users to scan their digit as soon as the app opens. “You’re prompting that user to log in before they get to the core betting experience and removing a lot of the pain, including abandoned betslips,” Evans says.

And with more and more manufacturers adding facial recognition technology to their latest smartphones, operators are now introducing this form of biometric login to their apps. Consumers are increasingly using biometrics to log into banking and shopping accounts to pay for goods and services, so fingerprint ID is a must-have feature at the very least these days to reduce friction and improve the UX. “Apps that don’t offer advanced login and still rely upon usernames and passwords or PIN instead are behind the curve,” Thomas says.

Smith adds: “Brands offering the easier ways to log in are top of the list in customers’ minds when they are betting during a live game.”

“”[With the no-registration model] we’ve removed a tedious process from the customer’s journey and made it safer and better from a player protection perspective ” – Morten Madsen, Global Gaming

Moreover, it’s about having one smooth and seamless customer journey with as few obstacles as possible in the customer’s path. It will be interesting to see if any operators take a leaf out of BetStars’ book by backloading registration questions, or perhaps try to replicate Sky Bet or Casumo’s approach with multiple steps consisting of just one or two questions on each page. Smith, on the other hand, believes brands will try to implement a deeper integration with payment providers in a similar fashion to Ninja Casino with its no-registration platform.

Meanwhile, McCutcheon points out that despite operators habitually monitoring the performance of the funnel from registration to the initial bet, there is always room for improvement. “I believe the industry could do more to on-board new users,” he explains. “Products are often designed by expert users and we expect a new customer to learn how to use our products and industry terminology. It’s something we feel strongly about and we’ll be working harder to make BetStars more intuitive so placing a bet is a seamless experience. You shouldn’t have to expect a new generation of users to have to learn how to use your product.”

This is sage advice indeed with the aforementioned World Cup set to pique the interest of hordes of casual punters and betting neophytes alike.