GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 25 - June 2013

How to optimize for mobile devices and maximize mobile conversions By Louis Deering M obile may have been the talk of gambling conferences across the globe toward the end of the last decade but up until two years ago it had yet to make any significant impact. Now, with the influx of new, more accessible and cheaper handsets, smartphone penetra- tion in Europe’s five largest economies combined has crossed the 50 percent threshold. As a result, real-money mobile gaming and mobile sports betting rev- enues have skyrocketed. The benefits for operators that have in- vested large sums in mobile technol- ogy, expertise and marketing have been significant. Large U.K.-, European- and Australian-facing sportsbooks in par- ticular – including William Hill, Paddy Power and bet365 – now generate in ex- cess of 30 percent of their gross gaming revenues from smartphone and tablet customers via purpose-built apps and, increasingly, HTML5 mobile-optimized, browser-based sites. A knock-on effect has been that these mainly sports betting users are increasingly being converted and monetized into regular and there- fore higher-spending gaming players. Equally, gaming and mobile gaming- specific operators that have invested both time and budget in technology and games, and crucially also in smart pay- ment and marketing techniques (such as “pay by phone bill” and the improving and stripping back of the registration to deposit process), have reaped huge finan- cial rewards. The majority of affiliates may not yet have reached these heights, with several mobile gaming-specific sites lagging behind more established portals, but a rising number are witnessing the benefits of well-opti- mized and well-displayed pages. Nicky Senyard, CEO and founder of Income Access, says there are two areas that are vital to being able to optimize your site for mobile devices, and in turn to maximize conversions. “It is essential for affiliates and operators to know as much information about what the user is looking for and to create pages and display information based on that,” says Senyard. “For example, Android ca- sino games: If players are forced to hunt 10 How to optimize for mobile devices and maximize mobile conversions