【高端访谈】

李察•贝特森：互联网彩票游戏用户体验的精髓

Richard BATESON

李察•贝特森

Senior Vice President Sales & Marketing, Camelot Global

Camelot全球销售营销高级副总裁

LGR: You stated that it does not matter which game(s) one starts with as long as you get the consumer experience right. So, how do we ‘get the consumer experience right?’

Richard Bateson: The consumer, or user, experience (often referred to as UX) needs to be as intuitive and seamless as possible. It needs to allow for ease of registration, ease of purchase and optimized cross selling of games—and above all ease of comprehension. Importantly, this should be optimised across devices—for most sites this means responsive design so consumers are getting the best possible version of the website rendered regardless of the device they are using to access.

To hone-in, or refine, your user experience you must test and learn what works best for your players. Techniques such as A/B testing and multi-variant testing are often used by ecommerce companies to refine user experience. Testing direct marketing messaging, click-throughs, conversion of traffic, game/promotional placements and/ or activities to increase dwell time (amongst other things) should be tested and refined.

To provide the best possible user experience the operator must have an agile and dynamic platform from which they can make quick changes to their UX and be able to remain relevant with messaging and be able to change.

I am surprised at the notion that it does not much matter whether one starts with … Draw-Based-Games or Instants.

Richard BATESON: My view is simple. You should have both game categories on iLottery as quickly as possible. If you have to choose one, then it doesn’t matter – just get it launched and start refining the user experience and your offer to your players.

Camelot believes that lotteries should soft launch their iLottery offering to market. This has two benefits. Firstly, is allows for the test & learn process to start so the user experience can be refined (and often corrected) with little impact on the core player base. Secondly, it allows for better use of marketing spend once acquisition, retention, and upsell techniques are working effectively for the lottery. A soft launch can be between 3-6 months. During this time, an impact assessment of the channel on the wider lottery business can be understood and marketing can be targeted to ensure minimal impact/ canalisation to the business.

On the LGR panel there was a consensus that lotteries shouldn’t be too hung-up on which game to launch—just get the channel launched and then look at balancing the player offer/game offer. Different lotteries will have different restrictions placed upon them by their states. These restrictions will be due to pressures or influences within market. My view is that you wouldn’t hold-off launching your iLottery channel if you believed that Instants would be the best product to start with, even if Instants were prohibited. My view is that you would launch with DBG and then look to pilot Instants (as soon as possible) to try and allay the fears of the pressure groups or influencers in states.

I would think that it would be important to offer a broad portfolio of games. Once you get the customer in the “store,” you want to give them options and not let them leave without buying something, right?

Richard BATESON: Player comprehension and channel comprehension is critical. Less is often more, and allowing players to shop what they have come to your site for, needs to be balanced with upselling other games and making your offer relevant and compelling.

There are a few answers to your question, and it all comes from targeting your players with the right messages and segmenting your players to know what to target to them.

When there is a big jackpot, players will come to your site to play for that big jackpot. Often these players will be new or infrequent visitors to your site. As such, you need to make the experience easy to understand/ easy to buy.

Your higher value, higher frequency players will want more from your site. They may want to repeat-play Instant games, or they may want to know what the latest promotions, coupons or offers are. This experience needs to be different for these player than for the new/infrequent players.

The role for the operator is to be able to provide different messages, experience and navigation of the site by player segments (whether they be by value or usage). The operator must have the ability to be able to meet the needs of these differing player needs and have the dynamism to convert and upsell against a narrow and broad product offering.

Shouldn’t an Interactive website include free-play options to engage the consumer? Is the goal to maximize the “dwell time” as key to maximizing the likelihood of purchase, as land-based retail stores try to do?

Richard BATESON: Yes, iLottery channels should offer free-play options (where allowed to by their state or regulator). This allows players to try before you buy and is common across the i-gaming industry. In our UK business, 80% of IWG players that try a game also play a wagering game. So backing up our hypothesis, we offer games to new/undecided players to help drive conversion, and ultimately the majority of them do go on to wager as well.

Operators need to decide whether free-play options are only available to players with active accounts. The advantage of this is that it can become a data capture exercise to build out prospect pools and build player understanding—for example—which games/types of games/price points are driving trial.

Free-play can increase dwell time on site as it is likely to encourage increased visitation of the site, but this is by no means the only activity to do so.

Lotteries must focus on content, social integration and on site promotions. Content, whether it be rich media, user content, beneficiary stories is really important in giving players a reason to drive engagement and revisitation. We all know that there are times when jackpots aren’t big and there isn’t any new news, so a content/promotional calendar should address those gaps with fresh and engaging content – increasingly we are seeing this being achieved through rich media, be it video or infographics for example.

Exactly how is Mobile Gaming different from home-computer-based gaming? Isn’t it all delivered via the internet?

Richard BATESON: This is about a shift in usage by consumers. More people are accessing lottery websites through mobile rather than PC. It’s true that in its simplest form a mobile device should be seen as just another distribution channel and many of the same principles and disciplines do of course apply.

It’s also worth considering that there will be some differences. We know that our players accessing games on their mobile behave differently— they play different types of games, at different times of the day and respond to different marketing techniques. All of these need to be understood, considered and acted upon in order to give your players the experience they want. ■