Press release
UK
betting sites caught out as online betting goes mainstream
Punters
unable to place a bet 10% of the time for big sporting events, as non-traditional
events soar in popularity
Punters unable to place a bet 10% of the time for major sporting events,
according to the SciVisum Online Betting Study.
Online betting is now mainstream, causing non-traditional sporting events
to soar in popularity. UK sites are struggling to cope with last minute
surges to place bets, forcing customers to turn to competitors.
This new trend has opened a chasm in online performance. International
competitors are taking advantage, with two of the top three online performers
for the UK betting market found to be international players. There was
also a gulf between online pure play companies and the sites of high street
betting operations, with the top four performers all pure plays,
These are the key conclusions of the SciVisum Online Betting Study, which
investigated the performance of 25 online betting sites over a period
of five months. SciVisum's testing adopted a ‘mystery punter’
approach, visiting the sites and attempting to make a user journey every
five minutes throughout the day.
“UK betting sites are failing to keep pace with mainstream consumer
demand,” said Deri Jones, CEO, SciVisum. “Betting around non-traditional
events like the Boat Race is now just as popular as the Champions League,
but 13.5 per cent of our ‘mystery punter’ attempts for the
event failed. With such shoddy service they might as well include a link
to their competitors’ sites.”
Untraditional sports soar in popularity
Betting on non-traditional events has soared with punters, with seven
of the top ten events impacted by poor web performance not in football
or horse racing. Betting around the Boat Race was the number one problem
event for sites. The most popular non-traditional events also included
the China Open snooker, the Grand Prix, the test cricket New Zealand v
England, the Masters tennis series, Snooker World Championship, World
Golf Championships and the London Marathon. Extra punters on St Patrick’s
Day also caused sites to struggle.
“Betting with a couple of clicks from the comfort of your own home
has changed the betting landscape. It is now no longer the preserve of
football and horseracing,” continued Jones. “The Internet
has made betting more accessible and widened the types of sports involved
– and the pool of punters. The market is more competitive than ever
– with increased operating costs, high customer acquisition costs,
fickle customers, reduced yields per player and reduced profitability.
UK sites need to up the ante if they are to remain in the game.”
Performance chasm
Increased pressure on sites has led to a performance chasm between the
best and worst sites. The worst performer rejected nearly 40 per cent
of SciVisum’s mystery punters. But the three best performers, www.expekt.com,
www.centrebet.com and www.bet365.com, fulfilled 99.9 per cent of punter
attempts.
Of the top three performers, two were international players: www.expekt.com
and www.centrebet.com.
There was also a gulf between online pure play companies and the sites
of high street betting operations. Of the top ten best performers, only
four high street operations made the grade, with the best high street
performer,www.totesport.com coming in at number five, www.coral.co.uk,
coming in at number six, followed by www.paddypower.com at number eight
and www.stanjames.com coming tenth..
“If a punter can’t place a bet with one site they’ll
head straight for the competition – and not come back again,”
continued Jones. “It can’t be a surprise for a betting company
that the Champions League quarter final is going to be a biggie –
but we found more than one in ten of our ‘mystery punter’
attempts failing.”
“The High Street bookies came out particularly badly. They are
guilty of complacency – the market has changed, and they need to
move quickly – before the international players eat them for breakfast.”
Recommendations
Based on the findings, SciVisum made a number of broad recommendations
for online betting sites to improve their performance:
1. Adopt a Mystery Shopper approach and test the paths that real users
take when making use of your company’s website. Simple uptime/downtime
monitoring of your home page and/or a few main pages simply won't reveal
invisible errors - 24/7 functional monitoring, running multi-page user
journeys that mimic real users' choosing and placing a bet on-line is
what is required.
2. Focus on relevant performance data. There is a wealth of website performance
data available to firms, and this has in part contributed to the continued
prevalence of invisible errors. To help detection, companies must focus
on using data gathered by simulating real user journeys and experiences,
not data from internal servers or monitors
3. Commercial teams must take part ownership of website performance. In
our experience the business and marketing personnel are most aware of
website issues. Yet once raised with the IT department, they are often
misled with data and metrics that indicate the site is performing well
from a metrics perspective. Commercial teams need the opportunity to understand
data that is relevant to a user’s experience.
Methodology
SciVisum tested the login user journeys for 25 different online betting
organisations over the five month period February to July 2008. SciVisum’s
multi-page journeys measured at five minute intervals and were defined
to follow the same core path that real users take when they make use of
an online site. Five minute sampling equates to approximately 300 measurements
over each 24 hour period.
Each page of a journey is checked to ensure that the correct and expected
content has been served. Speed timings are also measured for the total
journey, and for each page that makes up the journey.
A management report detailing SciVisum’s Online Betting Study is
available to download at: http://www.scivisum.co.uk/report/online-betting2008
About SciVisum
SciVisum is a UK based web site testing specialist, helping clients to
reduce lost sales online by identifying where and when user experience
suffers.
The services provide vital data not available by web-analytics or other
web monitoring:
* when invisible errors impact users but are invisible to the in-house
teams
* when wrong or missing page content forces users to abandon their purchase
journeys
* what % of marketing campaign traffic is lost due to under-capacity in
one or more vital steps such as 'add to basket' or 'checkout' pages.
The company's services measure the performance and functionality of client's
business-critical on-line systems. Using the multi-page User Journeys
approach to measurement, SciVisum’s metrics provide real time KPIs
and act as a common language between the business and marketing teams
who work daily with journey concepts of Add-to-Basket, Checkout, Register,
pay-online, login and etc; and the web technical teams who need precise
input as to which step of which journey is under-performing, when and
how, in order for them to most effectively apply technical resources to
close the problem gaps.
Through SciVisum's testing and recommendations, clients are able to substantially
increase visitor rates and customer satisfaction levels by achieving gains
in key journey delivery times, increasing ability to handle peak load
levels, and reducing sporadic but user-numbing error rates of 1 to 5%
that most sites un-wittingly force on their users.
Clients come from a wide range of sectors and include Ocado, nPower,Tesco,
Gold Medal, Bell Micro, William Hill, Reed.co.uk, T-Mobile, BDO, National
Savings and Investment Bank, BetFair, Virgin Retail, British Library,
Boden, uSwitch.com, Codemasters, Skipton Building Society, Scottish and
Southern Energy, Brittania Building Society, UpMyStreet.com, Zavvi, Premium
Bonds, Charities Aid Foundation Bank and local government
Test deliverables include:
SV-Monitor: 24/7 measurement of customer experience by User Journey
SV-Load: Load testing /Stress testing of User Journeys
SV-Access: Accessibility testing to the WAI guidelines:
SV-Function: Functionality & troubleshooting audits and consultancy
on web performance
Media contacts
Sam Grace/ Sarra Mander
Rainier PR
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7494 6570
Email: sgrace@rainierpr.co.uk/smander@rainierpr.co.uk
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