SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The tightening regulatory landscape, changing consumer behaviour and mobile-first user habits force operators to rethink the way they differentiate themselves and reach users, bringing focus to user experience in tandem with more traditional marketing and bonusing channels.
Heidi Lind Golestani, Head of Casino at Shape Games – part of Kambi – discusses how operators can navigate the competitive entertainment landscape and utilise personalisation and mobile-first development to engage users.
SBC: What is the current regulatory environment for European and American igaming markets?
Heidi Lind Golestani: An increasingly tough regulatory environment is evident in Europe. For casinos, bonuses are core drivers for the acquisition and retention of new users. Several markets, with Sweden being a clear example, have restricted bonuses, imposing a new barrier to operators looking to gain and retain market share. As such, competing with an out-of-the-box white-label front end becomes increasingly difficult. In Europe, inbound strategies, such as branding, content relevance, and UX, have become paramount.
In the US, the regulatory environment has yet to embrace online casino fully. It is only regulated in a handful of states, compared to thirty states for sports betting. As such, it will be interesting to see how these markets will evolve.
SBC: Can you point to any trends in online casino?
HLG: Operators are always looking to stand out from the competition. The more stringent regulatory landscape has led to a shift in the competitive environment, with more operators seeking an enhanced user experience with a focus on branding, speed, and product customisation.
There’s also rapid development in casino games fuelled by the constant evolution of game categories. Once developers seem to have exhausted all possible verticals, a new game type comes along, revolutionising the scene. This is exemplified by Crash Games, which became incredibly popular a few years back, seemingly coming from nowhere.
The sheer amount of game titles and categories attracts a wide array of users, each with their own favourite game types. This puts a lot of pressure on navigation and facilitating seamless user journeys. Casino users fit a broad demographic with varied preferences in the games they like to play. Some enjoy simply clicking and spinning the reels, while others might play to beat the house. The hurdle lies in creating a strong recommendation system and a personalised experience that fits the style of each user.
It’s not only about delivering an enticing game that provides entertainment but also how it is presented to the user: how easy the game is to find, how many interactions there are on the website, and how fast it will load.
SBC: With the added focus on user experience, how are today’s users consuming content, and how should an igaming operator adapt to that?
HLG: People don’t have one single touchpoint from which they reach their favourite services. Their entertainment consumption is multimodal. According to Emarketer, over a third of media is consumed through mobile devices, with other devices including TVs, consoles, and computers.
With some estimates placing nearly 60% of internet consumption on mobile and Google basing one of their strongest ranking factors on mobile performance, companies have adapted by increasingly adopting functionalities that serve mobile users. This includes simpler navigation, faster loading speeds and content prioritisation.
Consequently, users have developed higher expectations for their mobile experiences. Today’s entertainment landscape is more competitive than ever, with a host of apps promising exciting content and fast delivery. Users are met with personalised experiences every day in their favourite music, socials and media applications.
To truly engage with users and compete in this ever-changing mobile-first entertainment landscape, operators must ensure their online experiences are tailored to their users’ behaviours. Users don’t want to enter a casino and only be faced with a wall of games. Instead, they should get a curated experience with personalised recommendations, making it easy for them to browse their favourite titles.
SBC: How can icasinos make their experiences more mobile and user-friendly?
HLG: Mobile gaming should feel as smooth and entertaining as it does on desktop. This comes with its own set of design hurdles, as it is more complex to deliver an extensive content library on a smaller screen. In this sense, casinos face challenges similar to those faced by music or video streaming services. It needs to have a vast array of content available but serve it in a way to make it easy to choose for users. The goal is to mitigate the decision-fatigue that harms engagement.
On a smaller screen, the key is to present the most relevant content for each user. This is an area where Shape Games has been proven to excel – with our widget-based CMS, operators can set up their mobile and web experiences to be responsive and adapted for each platform.
SBC: How does this work in practice?
HLG: Shape Games’ Casino Front End uses several content management features, one of which is named “game collections”. This is a way of collating a number of games rendering navigation seamless for end-users and operators alike.
Game collections can consist of handpicked and manually selected games, but the real value comes from dynamic collections that automatically update as new games are launched on the operator’s site. This can be anything from a specific game attribute such as game type or theme to personalised and customised collections that operators can optimise for their specific audiences, content strategy or user groups.
This leaves space for operators to customise their offerings for specific markets and brands, allowing for a personalised experience that not only aligns with a brand’s strategy but also resonates with individual players, ensuring relevance and enhancing differentiation to stand out in a competitive landscape.
The personalisation features include functions that allows users to add games to their personal game collection, see which games are the most popular with other players or even which games most players have as their favourite, as well as quickly navigate back to their “last played” games. This builds a personalised experience users recognise from their favourite content streaming services while pulling the most relevant content for each user to the forefront. Not only does it make the entire experience more engaging, but it also makes most effective use of the limited space available on a mobile device.
By providing the tooling that allow for customised and personalised casino experiences in its Front End Solutions, Shape Games creates a seamless user experience for today’s users that can closely mirror the user experiences of their favourite entertainment services.
