The importance of fast registration

Analytics specialist Formisimo’s latest gambling study, conducted in December last year, independently examines registration time performance on a range of 43 European and UK mobile gambling sites.

The company is respected for its attention to detail and has in the past published regular surveys on various aspects of gambling (see reports regarding its September 2017 survey of registration times at 45 online sports betting sites).

Registration times are an important metric, given the impatience of most punters to get through the formalities and start betting.

The current study showed that the average time for a mobile player to complete the registration process is 77.2 seconds, with the fastest time recorded at BetStars at 21.6 seconds (this operator also topped the earlier September study on sports betting sites), and the slowest 188Bet at 97.8 seconds.

BetStars gets it right by slimming and speeding its process up through “back-loading” some questions until the player makes a first deposit, and from this the obvious conclusion is that speed is affected by the number of fields and the depth of questioning.

The number of steps in the registration process also impacts overall speed and tests the patience of punters, especially if each step has an excessive number of fields.

The nature of the responses required in fields is also a factor, with text responses the most time-consuming vs. alternatives like tick boxes, buttons and drop downs.

The Fortisimo study goes into considerable detail on all of these factors, and suggests ways in which operators can either guard against prospective punters giving up in disgust or making the process more appealing in order to keep the gambler engaged through to completion.

The attention to detail is remarkable, delving even into whether passwords should be visible letter by letter as they are entered to avoid mistakes and delays – especially on mobile devices…btw 56 percent of operators do not have this facility.

The Fortisimo study makes for interesting reading and provides useful practical information in graphical form, and can be accessed here