Q&A: Turlough Lally, director of mobile at BetVictor
Turlough Lally, director of mobile at BetVictor, on the bookmakerâs evolving mobile strategy
We believe in building our apps in-house. You are in total control of your own products by building them in-house; you are also able to build a close and key relationship with the developers which is fundamental as we work to a common goal of delivering best-of-breed products faster. Our ideas remain our own as opposed to a communal platform where competitors benefit from your innovation.
The most important aspect for a successful mobile sportsbook isnât price, user experience, speed, or innovative features like cash out. You need all these factors to be really successful but some are almost futile unless you get the basics right. When a user first opens your app you have a few seconds to engage them in the product; if they find what they want quickly and easily then you are pretty much there. Prices and features are important for customer retention but, arguably, irrelevant if you donât get the initial engagement and first impression spot on.
Our CRM is industry leading. We use push and in-app functionality to leverage the real-time element of sports betting. By using cross-channel transactional, behavioural and predictive models we send highly relevant messages to our customer base. We then use deep link functionality to provide our customers with an engaging and seamless customer journey where nothing gets in the way of placing a bet.
Our recent brand refresh is just the beginning of an exciting new journey aimed at providing a better customer experience. Â We are delighted with the way our customers have reacted to the brand refresh; our aim to make things easier and simpler for the user is starting to pay off. We have already seen a significant increase in usage in casino which had the biggest changes in phase one of the brand refresh; as we roll out the rest of the project in 2016 we expect usage to increase considerably across the whole business.
Expect some major mobile innovations in 2016. Already this year we have unveiled partial cash out across all our platforms, which was a heavily requested feature from our regular cash out customers. The ability to cash out only a part of your original stake is very attractive, particularly for customers on the right side of a bet, who may just want to secure their original stake – our âBank My Stakeâ feature has made it ultra-simple to do just that.
We also introduced our Lengthen the Odds feature which gives customers the ability to choose which price theyâd like to back their selected horse at with each price increment requiring that horse to win by a greater distance. For instance, a horse priced at 11/10 can be backed at the increased price of 6/4 but must be first past the post by at least two lengths in order for the customer to collect, with bigger prices on offer for larger margins of victory.
It was designed firmly with mobile in mind; in fact all our sportsbook development and innovations are now designed mobile-first. Over the course of the year you will see a healthy mix of product enhancements and feature innovations across in-play, cash out and horseracing to name a few. That said we are wary of overcomplicating things and our Price Promise message is simple; the customer looking for value and insurance from his football acca need not look any further. Simple As.