Why Your Online Gaming Site Needs a Smart Search Engine
Imagine this: your customer jumps onto your gaming website anticipating a deep dive into a sea of gaming experiences, tantalizing betting options, and content that’s going to help them get the most out of their time with you. But amidst the vast array of choices, how can they effortlessly find their favorites, and discover new adventures that align perfectly with their tastes?
When it comes to player loyalty, user experience is everything. The battle for attention and engagement is fierce, and the last thing you want is for players to get lost in a maze of irrelevant content or experience the friction of searching for their preferred games or betting markets only to be passed from pillar to post. The solution? A smart search engine, an intelligent beacon that illuminates their journey, guiding them swiftly to their desired destination with just a few keystrokes … and maybe, just maybe, the missing piece in your quest to deliver an optimum web experience.
Smart search engines and business growth
Search engines have come a loooooooong way since Google hit our screens back in 1997. Now, almost 30 years later, it’s far from unusual to find yourself regularly searching for content on your favorite websites, streaming platforms, and anywhere else you can find that little search box. And they don’t just benefit the consumer. Thanks to their capabilities, smart search engines are now widely used by brands across their digital real estate – with many reaping significant benefits from their implementation:
E-commerce: By providing relevant search results, hyper-personalized recommendations, and advanced filtering options, these e-commerce brands enjoy higher customer satisfaction, increased sales, and improved customer retention.
Content Streaming: As you’ll have guessed, streaming platforms use smart search engines to help customers find content. But that’s not all – these engines analyze user viewing habits, ratings, and genres to provide tailored recommendations and improve content discovery. The results? Increased engagement, longer viewing sessions, and reduced churn rates.
Financial Services: Smart search engines have long been deployed by banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions to help them simplify complex information retrieval, improve customer support, and enhance self-service options. These engines understand natural language queries, process financial data, and provide accurate answers, meaning better engagement, reduced support costs, and increased customer trust.
So with smart search engine implementation driving significant benefits across multiple verticals, here’s the question – why are gaming brands still lagging when it comes to smart search engine adoption? Well, to be fair, there are quite a few factors that may have contributed to this conundrum:
Firstly, we must acknowledge the unique nature of online gambling. The industry operates within a complex web of regulations, compliance requirements, and strict scrutiny. Ensuring that smart search engines align with these regulations and meet the necessary standards can be a process that takes time.
Moreover, the online betting landscape has historically focused on core functionalities such as game offerings, payment systems, and security measures. These aspects have rightly taken precedence, leaving innovations like smart search engines lingering on the back burner.
Betting brands operate in a highly competitive environment where a single misstep can have severe consequences. It’s natural to want to ensure that any new tech in their stack is thoroughly tested and proven before implementation.
Additionally, online gambling platforms deal with vast amounts of sensitive user data. Introducing new technologies like smart search engines requires thoroughly evaluating data handling protocols and ensuring the highest security standards.
However – and it’s a big however – it’s important to note that the tide is slowly turning. With player expectations constantly evolving, betting brands are starting to realize that a seamless and hyper-personalized player experience is critical to powering business growth.
Why gaming operators need a smart search engine for their website
You’ll greatly enhance the user experience: A smart search engine can significantly improve the user experience on your website – it understands user intent, auto-corrects spelling errors, and provides relevant search suggestions, all helping to ensure that players can quickly find the games, betting options, or specific gambling features they’re looking for.
Increased conversions: It’s not rocket science (although to be fair, it kind of is), but by delivering accurate and personalized search results, a smart search engine on your gaming platform increases the likelihood of conversions on your website. Players can quickly discover the games, betting markets, or promotions that match their interests, increasing their chances of placing bets.
Improved content discovery: In the ultra-competitive online gambling world, content discovery is critical. By offering advanced filtering options, personalized recommendations, and intuitive categorization, you ultimately empower players to discover games based on themes, providers, payout percentages, etc., significantly improving their overall content discovery journey.
Personalization and retention: Smart search engines can leverage user data and behavior to provide a hyper-personalized experience, suggesting relevant games, betting markets, or promotional offers that align with each player’s unique interests, cultivating customer loyalty, encouraging repeat visits, and amplifying long-term retention.
Brilliant customer support: What’s great about a smart search engine when it comes to support is that it can significantly reduce the burden on your team by providing accurate search results and relevant FAQs. Players can find answers to their queries and access helpful resources, helping to minimize the need for direct support. By default, you’ll see improvements in customer satisfaction, support costs, and the freeing up of resources for more complex customer inquiries.
And last, but by no means least, you’ll have advanced analytics and insights at your fingertips to tailor the player experience. Implementing a smart search engine allows teams to gather valuable data and insights about user search behavior, popular queries, trending games, and emerging gambling preferences. This gives you the tools to make data-driven decisions, optimize your marketing strategies, and enhance your offerings.
We think it’s a compelling story; implementing a smart search engine on your website is like rolling out the red carpet for your users, providing them with a personalized, efficient, and immersive gaming experience. What does that mean for you as an Operator? Unlocking user satisfaction, driving conversions, and fueling the growth of your online gambling and betting brand. And it’s not just theory – smart search engines have shown exceptional results for gaming operators:
A 17% revenue uplift when using smart search
A 20% increase in users finding newly released products to play and/or purchase
What’s more, users of smart search vs. those that didn’t use search:
were found to be 40% more valuable in revenue terms
made 34% more site visits
and drove a 38.4% increase in the play of newly released products.
Pauline is a content writer, copywriter, and marketing professional who specializes in writing for start-ups, scale-ups and growing tech brands. She graduated from Central Saint Martin’s in London with an MA in Design at a time when the Internet was just coming into being. Deciding that’s where her real interests lay, she’s pursued a career focused on digital marketing ever since - and never looked back!
