Published: 7 August, 2024

Why CRO is the next big thing for operators and affiliates

Christoffer Gronlund, Co-Founder of Winlandia and Head of Affiliates at Winlandia Partners, on why conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the next big thing for operators and affiliates

In recent years, customer acquisition costs (CAC) have risen exponentially with no signs of stabilising any time soon. For both operators and affiliates, this means converting customers at scale has never been more important.

Operators and affiliates both invest heavily in acquisition, whether through content marketing strategies, affiliates (for operators), paid media activity and even TV advertising.

But this can all be for nothing if players don’t ultimately go on to sign up, deposit and play. This is why I believe conversion rate optimisation (CRO) needs to be prioritised and invested in, to support and maximise your investments in SEO and PPC, for example. But before looking more closely at how online casino brands and affiliates can use conversion rate optimisation to turbo-charge KPIs, let me first define what it is.

CRO simply refers to the practice of increasing the percentage of users or website visitors that take a desired action. So players that sign up, deposit, play and re-deposit.

The higher the conversion rate, and the higher the number of sign-ups and FTDs, the better – key metrics for both parties. CRO is important because it ensures the maximum ROI and returns on ad spend (ROAS), allowing casinos and affiliates to get more bang for their buck. It is all a volume game.

Of course, the touchpoints for applying CRO will differ for operator and affiliate. For the former, it’s more about the sign-up process and the journey from when they arrive at the casino landing page to creating an account, providing their personal information and making a deposit. There are many steps to take, so finding ways to streamline the process is important.

For affiliates, it’s all about driving traffic from their site and pages to their casino partners. This means focusing on calls to action, bonus offers and even the way casinos are displayed and listed. Wherever possible, it’s important to make things as easy as possible for the consumer.

When approaching CRO, it’s important to start by identifying objectives and goals for the areas of friction and coming up with a hypothesis for how it can be improved. The next step is to test your hypothesis and start experimenting – A/B testing or even A/B/C/D testing – to see if an improvement can be made. Time frames are also of the essence as we need enough populated data to enable good data-driven decisions.

For example, affiliates often find they get clicks to their online casino partners, but these don’t convert into sign-ups and FTDs according to the set goals. The conversion rate then tanks.At Winlandia, we have a theory that this issue could have something to do with the generic page that players arrive at from the affiliate site. In many cases, ad copy, the bonus offers and CTAs have not been optimised and are lacking in efficiency.

We had a belief that if the landing page was tailored somewhat, with design, ad copy and CTAs and with an exclusive offer, conversions would improve. We undertook a great deal of A/B testing in terms of the design and content of the landing page, and the bonus offers we ran until we found the optimal set-up. We now offer a lot of our affiliate partners a personalised landing page and exclusive bonus offers on markets where those can be applied.

Conversion rate optimisation needs to be prioritised and invested in, to support and maximise your investments in SEO and PPC

For casino brands, this is where their CRO activity really comes into play. The drop-off rate between sign-up, deposit and play can be significant; and there are also challenges around retention, especially given the sheer number of online casinos consumers have to choose from.

Operators need to analyse their flows and identify where the drop-offs are happening, then come up with ideas and theories for how to stop this from happening. This could mean focusing on tweaking the sign-up and deposit aspect and educating players as to what information they need to provide and why.It then comes down to testing, testing and more testing. Try different things, gather data, analyse the results, take data-driven decisions and keep fine-tuning and repeating until the optimal set-up is arrived at.

CRO is something affiliates and operators can tackle independently, but it’s also an area where collaboration will yield the best results. While both have slightly different parts to play in the process, there is a point at which the affiliate hands the player over to the casino.

By working together, discussing unique and shared points of friction, and talking about ways friction can be reduced and the process made smooth and seamless, both parties will ultimately benefit. At the end of the day, we have a shared goal of converting players into payers – the increased results also reflect on the affiliate’s commission slip.

For me, CRO will become a key focus for both operators and affiliates over the coming years. The cost of acquiring players is only going to rise, so it’s vital for both affiliates and casinos to be able to convert the traffic that lands on their sites at scale.CRO allows both parties to identify where conversions can be improved, and to try new ideas that can lead to a significant uptick in FTDs and then active play moving forwards. This is a really exciting space and one in which Winlandia is happy to play.