5 Things Your Online Gamer is Struggling with Right Now

After the deregulation of professional and amateur sports betting, media and entertainment (M&E) companies wasted no time creating consumer-oriented services through feature-rich applications and supporting platforms. As a result, digital technologies in sports betting provided avid online gamers enjoyable and secure entertainment—with mixed results.

The market Opportunity

As of October 2021, statistics show that over 30,800 businesses worldwide have entered the sports betting market, which sits at 58.9bn USD and growing. However, growth for sports betting companies may be compromised if they don’t address the expectations of their customers. When their experience with sports betting applications and platforms is abysmal, customers move on to the next one. And they have plenty of other options to choose from. 

Online Gamer Expectations

Sports betting companies must assess how their consumer-oriented service may be failing the user. You may currently host an online sports betting application or platform or plan to build one shortly. Either way, you should have insights into current or potential online gamer struggles and identify opportunities to elevate user experience.

Here are five things online gamers and betters are struggling with right now:

1. Seamless navigation: Poor navigation may be because of a poor UI/UX design interface, introducing friction between the user and the application. Designing an intuitive, user-friendly product using buttons, images, colors, and data directs users where to go and what to do. Customer journey mapping, ethnographic research, design strategy, and superior UI/UX design will significantly eliminate friction and ensure a seamless user experience.
2. Flexible Options: For instance, laws and regulations may vary from state to state, and sports betting companies must have the technology and platforms to meet the differing requirements. In addition, users must have the option to pay via non-traditional methods like cryptocurrency.
3. Engaging Content: A betting platform or app should provide timely, relevant, and valuable information about upcoming games, highlights, and statistics. It should outline the features like live streaming, early cash-out, taking control of bets, or betting from the comfort of home. The real value for customers lies in easy access to all kinds of relevant content and connections with the greater sports betting community. They often discuss or share tips on betting, statistics and analysis, and ways to earn freebies.
4. Anytime. Anywhere Access: Users expect a secure access and seamless experience across games, devices and locations, and throughout the gaming season. Robust platform architecture and rigorous testing mythology will help avoid or minimize the friction due to technical issues like log-in problems, poor latency, crashing apps, or incompatibility across devices.
5. Broadly focused features: Betting apps designed to engage a wide range of customers may miss the mark due to a lack of personalization. According to independent design publication and blog UX Collective, companies must know their customer: Some numerous personas and journeys exist within the betting world, so make sure to define the journey and the optimal experience for every persona. Too often, we are told that the products and features are for everyone—that’s too broad to create a meaningful and measurable experience.

Overcoming the Challenges with Technology and Innovation

Overcoming industry-specific challenges requires a deep understanding of the application of digital technologies in sports betting and a trusted partner with deep expertise in strategic design, complex engineering, and the sports betting industry. Media & Entertainment companies can bring their vision to life by leveraging the power of ML and AI, Big Data and Analytics, Cloud, DevOps, Mobile/Web technologies to innovate and build next-gen products and platforms, to deliver engaging, data-driven user experiences.

GlobalLogic, a pioneer in digital product engineering, has proven expertise in online gaming/betting and industry-specific platforms. Its Betting Platform Reference Architecture helps clients quickly deploy a platform that can grow with the organization while providing users with an immersive and personalized experience by adding social interaction and gamification to the betting front end. To learn more, click here.