It was only a few years ago that you could launch a successful online gambling affiliate business with a basic WordPress template website and, with a small amount of development work, offer a reasonably good user experience to those engaging with your brand. During this time, the focus was mostly on content as the vehicle for driving traffic from the search engine results pages to affiliate sites. While content remains a key component, today it is only one part of the mix with the technical prowess of the site just as – if not more so – important.
Essentially, affiliates need to see themselves as technology companies rather than just basic listing websites. This means developing bespoke content management systems as well as using automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Not only does Google now consider the user experience when ranking sites and pages in the SERPs, consumers have come to expect a smooth and seamless experience when researching brands, and looking for new casinos and sportsbooks to play at based on their preferences. Of course, getting this right is easier said than done.
The technology challenges being faced
Aside from developing a website that is fast and stable, affiliates must ensure they deliver the best possible experience to site visitors and users. For most, this means quickly finding the casinos or sportsbook that offer what they are looking for.
But with most affiliates now listing 200+ brands on their sites – each with their own bonuses, payment options, providers stocked, etc – there is a huge volume of data and information to be collected, stored and then used to ensure visitors can find casinos based on their preferences. Another challenge is mapping data to the user intent to understand what information a user wants to see from the page they have landed on.
How technology challenges can be overcome
A state-of-the-art platform should be the foundation of any affiliate website – without this, it is not possible to build out the frameworks, infrastructure and features required to deliver the best possible user experience. But this is just the starting point. From here, affiliates need to develop intelligent data storage solutions. Evolving from generic data handling attributes, such as those found in WordPress, enables affiliates to use their data more practically.
It is just as important for the technical infrastructure of the website to be built in a way that ensures it provides the comprehensive insights and real-time analytics required to see how users are interacting with your website; to be able to make improvements to user journeys and UX. We also believe machine learning and artificial intelligence should play a major role in the technical structure of affiliate sites. For example, using it to quickly and accurately match users with their preferred online casinos.
Affiliates should be at the cutting edge
The global online gambling industry is renowned for pushing technological boundaries and affiliates have a role to play in this too. This means developing state-of-the-art technology and using the latest open-source projects. Affiliates should look to contribute to open source, too. This is a code that is made freely available to other developers for possible modification and redistribution.
If more affiliates contributed to open source, developers could work more efficiently and move the industry forward much faster. To succeed as an online gambling affiliate, you must be able to provide the information players are seeking to compare brands and what they have to offer. This may seem simple on the surface, but it requires tremendous technical capabilities to pull it off.
