Alessandro Fried, CEO, BtoBet: Personalising the Mobile UX

Enabling players to place bets whenever and wherever they want has become one of the main objectives of the industry. But whilst this notion generates a huge nod of approval it goes without saying that such an achievement is no easy feat.

A suitably tech-enabled yet personalized mobile sports-betting offering is what operators constantly thrive to deliver. The system must be able to collect and analyse large amounts of data about any given player. This process will eventually enable the system to identify the player’s behaviors, and thus cluster players through any behavioral similarities. This will in turn allow operators to predict what their players are likely to want to bet on next and subsequently offer one-to-one marketing messages.

Practicality is the key element when it comes to the mobile dimension. In simple words, the whole mobile experience must be easy and practical. Either that or they will not be able to retain a huge chunk of punters amongst their loyal fold of players.

Betting companies that do not offer an easy way, and thus do not place the player at the center of the mobile experience, will eventually miss out on a huge slice of the betting market. As a result, nearly all of the big players in the betting world are now seeking to offer easy and convenient ways to bet on the go.

Providing a layout that is designed around the individual player and the device used, whilst at the same time permitting the operators to anticipate their punters’ expectations is the key to attracting players and giving them a unique experience. Such a scenario will also provide operators with the perfect scenario to be successful on the retention side of the business by keeping their players loyal to the brand. This continuous evolution in terms of the mobile sports betting and gambling will see players revert time and again to the same sport book’s offers without feeling the necessity to jump from one bookmaker to another.

However, player loyalty does not depend solely on the personalization of the content. It also relies heavily on fundamental technological aspects. Studies have shown that the predominant part of punters rate the responsiveness and speed of delivery as a top priority in their betting experience, even deeming it more important than the brand through which they are placing their bets on.

Operators must ensure that the betting experience they are providing – especially on mobile – must have no latency issues, is not offset by sudden spikes in demand, and has no downtime whatsoever. With only a relatively small percentage of millennials considering themselves as loyal to a specific brand, the technological aspect carries a lot of weight when it comes to dealing with customer experience. One could even dare say that the mobile sports betting industry in particular will stand to benefit or fail on how well they execute around real-time.

Ultimately the mobile channel is transforming itself into the most important link in the whole omnichannel experience. It is the bonding element between the retail and the desktop environment, with the player having continuously at his disposal a channel through which not only place bets, but also a means to check his betting slips, whether originally purchased through retail or desktop.

It is with this in mind that technology providers should further their quest to deliver an optimal personalized experience on this channel, which is customizable according to the data being fed through the player profile, and serves as a seamless extension to the other channels resulting in a holistic UX.