All aboard: Why the online customer journey can often prove to be a bumpy ride

Innovation in consumer-facing mobile apps and e-commerce sites is commonplace in the US. Considering the meteoric rise of the likes of Amazon, Uber, and mobile gaming in recent years, the consumer expectation for superior customer experiences has grown, much to the dismay of the online gambling industry. The sector’s longstanding experience in Europe hasn’t quite prepared it for the expectations of extremely tech-savvy Americans, but with the US online gaming industry still in its infancy, and the adoption of sports betting in new states continuing at pace, geographical expansion has become much more of a priority for operators than improving and iterating their products. Thus, customer experience is suffering, particularly in the initial stages of the player’s journey, where ‘know your customer’ (KYC) plays a pivotal role. Yaniv Sherman, head of US at 888, acknowledged in a recent webinar, hosted by Continent 8, that many of the US betting products available today are adapted from classic European sportsbooks, which historically have not offered the most seamless user experience, particularly in onboarding new players. “The US is a special market in the sense that while it is one of the youngest for betting, it is the most highly developed e-commerce market,” Sherman said. “Consumers are very used to seamless and frictionless customer experiences. Online sports betting is generally new and puts an emphasis on the necessity for innovation, but it also is a tremendous opportunity to introduce something new,” he added. Sherman went on to highlight the similarities between betting products and consumer-friendly financial trading apps like Robinhood, noting the convergence between the two industries, particularly in the US where financial trading is commonplace among Millennials. “If you look at how custom-built products are tailor-made to the US consumer, we should take a page from them and adopt the good things about the customer experience and the language they speak,” Sherman said. But betting apps are somewhat hindered by stringent regulations in the US due to the state-by-state nature of legalized sports betting. Strikingly different legislation between states makes developing a unified product extremely difficult, particularly as operators are legally required to incorporate geolocation technology into their products to ensure users are located within state lines. Unsurprisingly, this requirement caused significant friction in the early days of legal online gambling in the States, as the tech was underdeveloped in 2013 when New Jersey launched igaming. To this day, it is not uncommon for anyone ordering an Uber to New York City’s West Side to find their driver parked in the middle of the Hudson River, according to their Uber app. “No one had ever used a computer’s location for geolocation before,” David Briggs, CEO for geolocation technology developer GeoComply, tells EGR North America. “They’d use an IP address, which is completely unreliable for anything that’s mission critical. We were the first native application on Windows and Mac that would locate a device within about 30 meters, and in the beginning we had quite big buffer zones between where the state actually ended and where we drew the technology’s boundaries,” Briggs explains. “We began this complex process of having adjustable buffer zones that actually curved inwards where we could see fast-moving traffic. We’ve had to deal with other weird stuff like passenger ferries along the Hudson River which duck in and out across the New Jersey/New York border all the time,” he says. Briggs admits it took time for operators to come around to trusting GeoComply’s technology, as the repercussions for a potential failing in an operator’s geolocation could lead to serious repercussions. Briggs further notes that European operators entering the market back in 2018 after PASPA’s repeal had a jaded perspective of both B2B and B2C online offerings at the time. “They saw the US market as not really as knowledgeable as they were and they didn’t see the regulators as people they should respect because they saw them as only land-based regulators that were not as knowledgeable about digital gaming,” Briggs comments. “In some cases, time was lost and wasted with operators that assumed the regulators would just suddenly change their minds and start agreeing with the European point of view, but that just didn’t happen.” Over time, the technology has improved (to the point where it can track a player’s location up to 30 centimeters) and the market has matured. And trust in the supplier has been established, resulting in “the [wider] conversation [around technology] becoming much more educated” among industry stakeholders, Briggs claims. But at this stage, the focus for operators is largely on geographical expansion over product development. “Customers will do anything to get a bet on, so in this sort of environment they will put up with some flaky UX,” Briggs says. “But at some point, the ridiculous expansion every year by new states opening will calm down and then product differentiation, brand differentiation, and user experience starts to really matter. That’s when you’ll see UX starting to play a bigger role.”

Learning the hard way

Onboarding issues have plagued European markets for years before North America started opening up to the industry. A blog post dating back to August 2020, published by UX and product development specialists Degree 53, claimed the average time it took for a user to register and deposit with a UK betting app took between one and four minutes, with William Hill, BetVictor, and Betway offering the fastest overall journey. In the review, Degree 53 recommended that apps offered numbered steps and clear labels for first-time depositors that may not be familiar with the registration process. “What’s key [in onboarding customers] is that there needs to be much more hand-holding of the customer from the initial point when they arrive on a product,” Degree 53 managing director Richard Wagstaff explains today. “What’s interesting with the US is a lot of these people are registering with a product, app, or website like this for the first time and the operators are asking for a lot of personal information, and you might wonder why they’re asking you for it. If an operator doesn’t make it very clear why they need that information and break it up into manageable chunks so that it doesn’t become daunting, people will just give up.” It’s clear the sector’s North American counterparts have thus far not really learned from the mistakes made across the Atlantic as many rush to go live with basic products. However, one industry veteran, who has experienced first-hand the growing pains of Sweden opening its doors to commercial operators, is now seeking to enhance the user experience of online casino players in New Jersey. Ex-NordicBet and Catena Media CEO Per Hellberg recently told EGR NA his new igaming venture PlayStar Casino would be making the consumer “the main focal point of the business.”

Brick-and-mortar benefits

“What we are building is basically a combination of product and a completely different user experience from how they sign up, how they’re being treated, and what they see on the site which will be very localized,” Hellberg outlined, noting that affiliate marketing and personalized CRM will play pivotal roles in the development of the business. Hellberg insists US online gaming products should cater to the market’s unique physical casino and sportsbook experiences, which are vastly different from the UK and Europe. US casino resorts are common holiday destinations for locals, and although many flock to Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and Reno every year, regional casinos are also hugely popular for weekend breaks. Operators that also own retail properties are at an advantage in being able to leverage their brick-and-mortar databases to improve the customer onboarding process. Penn National Gaming (PNG) and BetMGM have both utilized data provided by players via their respective loyalty programs to help personalize the user experience. PNG’s general manager for icasino and VP of its new Penn Game Studios, Rich Criado, says: “On the Hollywood Casino side, when you register [for an online account], you’re either given a new mychoice account or you’re linked to an existing mychoice account. It does help a little bit to have more information about that player once they type in their loyalty program number.” He adds: “But on the social casino side [which isn’t regulated] mychoice is very closely integrated and when you register again you’re either linked to your account or given a new one so that you’re already in the ecosystem.” Degree 53’s Wagstaff also highlights the trust a user will have in a brand they are used to playing with in-person. “A land-based casino player that wants to come and play slot games online is much more likely to complete that registration journey,” Wagstaff remarks. “I think there’s a big piece around the retail industry in the US and how that converts over to online, which is pretty different to European retail businesses because it’s very much a location-based casino industry rather than small, local casinos or sportsbooks.” But when considering the omni-channel opportunity, it is important to understand that creating a seamless user experience is challenging enough via one channel and including a second channel in the journey is bound to create even more friction points. PNG’s Criado reflects on his work at Disney, where he spent over five of his 17 years at the company creating products that could tie physical and online experiences together. During his time with the entertainment behemoth, Criado established the MagicBand wearable device which could be used to store data, gain access, and spend money or credits at Disney theme parks and venues, as well as online. “What we developed there was a unification of the entire guest experience,” Criado says. “We designed the ecosystem such that you had one singular method of interacting with the company, whether it be in-person or online.” Criado believes there are many similarities with his current work at PNG, particularly as the operator shifts its approach to the in-person casino experience by inserting the Barstool Sports-style and ethos into some of its venues. PNG CEO Jay Snowden told analysts during the operator’s Q1 earnings in May that Barstool Sports fans had started to visit PNG casinos where the retail sportsbook had been rebranded and were spending money playing table games and on hospitality. Criado admits the overall omni-channel experience is improving in the casino world, although it had been lacking for some time. As 888’s Sherman previously alluded, the sector has a great deal to learn from novel financial trading apps like Robinhood, as well as challenger banks like Monzo and Revolut, whose apps make onboarding a breeze compared to their gambling counterparts. “[Financial trading firms and challenger banks] are generally technology-focused businesses rather than retail-focused businesses,” Wagstaff says of the comparison. “They’re coming at it purely from a customer and digital experience rather than tailoring something from somewhere else to work.” Wagstaff explains that native iOS apps, as challenger banks tend to use, present a much cleaner user interface that is easier to navigate than a web product forced into an app. Sherman has also previously hinted at DFS offerings being “much closer to what an American product should look like.” It’s an interesting point when considering a recent comment made by DraftKings co-founder and CEO Jason Robins about drop-offs during onboarding being much higher for sports betting than DFS, especially with players having to upload documents and divulge social security numbers. This friction is one reason why Flutter Entertainment CEO Peter Jackson told investors recently that US bettors are likely to have fewer betting accounts than your average UK bettor. Based on general comments on the DFS sector, Rush Street Interactive (RSI) president Richard Schwartz credits this to less restrictive regulations for DFS than traditional sports betting. “When you ask the player for more information, you’re going to have a drop-off, and as I recall in DFS there were lower standards on what was required by regulators,” Schwartz explains. “I think it’s possible that because there are very few competitive DFS companies, there are fewer choices for players to go to, whereas in our segment there’s less of a lock-in effect and player liquidity is less impactful.” RSI recently overhauled its iOS betting app in all its sportsbook-only markets (Illinois, Iowa, Colorado, and Virginia), with another update to come in H2 across its combined casino and sportsbook markets. Schwartz has hailed the update for improving site navigation and transition times. “I think the key is having your own technology so you can make your own changes and improvements to the onboarding process,” Schwartz confirms. “If you’re vertically integrated like we are, you’re able to take the consumer feedback from the operations team and flow that through to the development organization so we can improve the onboarding process,” he adds. Schwartz says Google lifting its ban on gambling apps in certain jurisdictions, including some US states, has vastly improved the onboarding experience for Android device users. “Players had to come through the side door and that meant they had to download the app directly from a mobile website that we had. As part of that process, they had to disable a security feature on their phone in a way that some users may not be comfortable doing,” Schwartz says. Another major benefit is now users can discover all the gambling brands on offer and read legitimate customer reviews via the Play Store.

Payment pains

The final pain point in the online gambling customer’s journey is payments, an area long lamented by industry stalwarts. Innovation in payments is a rare treasure in the gambling world, although some providers are determined to improve the withdrawal process through the development of fresh solutions. “Payments are the lifeblood [of the sector] but that’s probably the biggest thing holding it back,” GeoComply’s Briggs notes. The gambling industry has long been seen as somewhat of a tarnished industry by traditional banks, with many online betting transactions requiring stringent checks and others being declined. “What we’ve seen today is a huge push on ACH (automated clearing house payments which provide a way to transfer from one bank account to another) to help mitigate some of those credit and debit card declination rates,” explains Gregory Kirstein, VP of business development for igaming at Paysafe. “We’ve also seen a push on branded, prepaid cards by operators that are issued by Discover. Also, PayPal is probably the dominant digital wallet brand in the US today but we are trying to focus on building a purpose-built digital wallet that has all of the needs and wants of consumers and operators to really hone in on this market,” Kirstein says. The development of novel payment processes in the US is slow, but as more states legalize online betting and igaming and trust is established between the federal government, the banks, and the industry, it is one pain point that is likely to be solved. Elsewhere in the product space, as more operators bring parts of their technology stack in-house and start to own the product development process, UX and UI is bound to improve, particularly if firms take heed of the advice of some of their own stakeholders and start to look at other more tech-savvy industries for inspiration. œ