5 Sportsbook Solutions to Improve User Engagement in Mobile Betting Apps

5 Sportsbook Solutions to Improve User Engagement in Mobile Betting Apps

The development teams want users to consider their products top-notch, and sports betting app providers are no exception.

Only somehow, users don’t always feel the same way. Their low engagement is the best proof. How can you change it?

Discover sportsbook solutions that can improve UX in mobile apps. Get inspired and increase user engagement.


Key takeaways

  • To increase engagement, you must ensure the best possible user experience (UX). This way, your app can attract more users and encourage them to take action.
  • Engaging app makes users more likely to recommend it to others, increases user retention, and builds brand loyalty.
  • There are no universal solutions, and you should adjust ideas for features to your app and its target users’ needs.
  • To improve user engagement, you can build a community. For this reason, consider implementing a live chat in your sports betting app. It allows users to exchange their thoughts and ask for help, thus increasing their engagement and sense of belonging to the group.
  • You can also think about introducing a referral programdesigning a strategy for sending notifications, adding gamification functionalities, or implementing an onboarding feature to generate more interest in the app and keep users up to date.
  • How can you measure user engagement? Think about the data you need that mobile analytics tools can give you. It will help you choose useful metrics.

Why user engagement is so crucial for your sports betting business?

Everyone can define user engagement in their own way. It depends on how users should interact with the app so that it helps you grow your business.

No matter what definition you choose for your project, the app must ensure the best possible user experience (UX). This way, it can attract target users with its content and encourage them to take action.

You need more details? Here are some reasons why you should enhance people’s engagement:

  • Engaged users are more interested in your content and the opportunities the app offers. They spend more time discovering the app.
  • When people enjoy using your app, they are likely to recommend it to others. It increases your reach and attracts more new users.
  • If your methods for increasing engagement are well-personalized, you can make users more curious about your app’s offerings, increasing their retention.
  • Engaging features that enable users to create communities, improve their experiences, and build brand loyalty. Especially when special offers for loyal users are involved.

Ideas for improving user engagement in sportsbook apps

Below, we’ve listed some examples of features that boost engagement in sports betting apps. Each impacts user loyalty differently and improves user experience (UX).

Building a community

There are many reasons why we often want to belong to a group, even though it doesn’t always mean active socializing with others. Sometimes, just reading conversations run by other people can be interesting enough and become a source of valuable information.

How can you make it possible in a sportsbook software?

Consider implementing a live chat. It allows users to exchange their thoughts or ask for help, thus increasing their engagement. Combining live chat and real-time statistics in the app can make the discussion even more captivating.

By showing users how many people are as interested in sports betting as they are, you also increase their sense of belonging to the group.

A live chat will also be their source of information. For example, when users don’t know how to bet or what to hope for in the next football event, they can ask for advice in a chat and check what other community members think.

Benefits of this solution:

  • You provide users with betting information, which facilitates using the app. The answers can appear soon after posing a question, which is also a big plus.
  • People get a sense of belonging to a group and a possibility to socialize online.

Referral programs

If your friend tells you to try something out, you’re more likely to do so. For instance, if they recommend their sportsbook app, you will probably at least consider creating an account. Additional encouragement in the form of bonuses would make it even more likely.

That’s when the app referral program comes in handy. What is it about? If a user recommends their sports betting app via a referral link, they get something extra in return. You can make this offer even more appealing by offering something also to those who receive such a recommendation, such as a free bet, a discount, bonus points, or cashback.

Implementing the app referral program requires cooperation with the marketing team. Together, you need to determine how it should work. It’s best to analyze the competition’s terms first and then, try to adjust them to your audience.

Get more control over your referral program

You can set up some restrictions and limit access to the referral program. When you allow only a selected user segment to share their referral links, you increase the chances that those who receive them will become loyal customers in the future—just like their peers.

All sports betting companies have their own terms. Usually, a person who wants to recommend the app to others for profit must meet some requirements, such as being an active user for a specified time or not having a negative account balance.

Benefits of this solution:

  • You encourage people to become loyal customers who support your marketing efforts.
  • There are more chances of getting new people interested in your app; some will probably set up accounts and bet.
  • The referral program encourages users to spread the word about the app.

Gamification

Just to be precise – gamification isn’t about implementing games. It’s focused on using some elements characteristic of games to grow user engagement and encourage them to interact with an app.

Many of us are competitive and feel satisfied when winning and getting rewards. Gamification uses it to provide users with entertaining solutions that are also a source of recognition.

What elements known from games can you use in the sports betting app? For example:

  • Rewards for achievements: badges, access to exclusive content, points, or personalization features
  • Leaderboards or rankings
  • Bonus points for sharing info about user’s results among peers (e.g., on social media)
  • Challenges
  • Levels

Benefits of this solution:

  • Users are more likely to return to your app when they use game-inspired features that require consistency and reward them for their efforts. As a result, the retention rate goes up.
  • Gamification combined with social media sharing can support your marketing strategy and improve the acquisition rate.
  • It’s easier to increase brand loyalty among users when they have rewards and other benefits of gamification.
  • Players must regularly interact with the app to get the best results, which improves user engagement.

Notifications

Although it’s a rather obvious example, notifications are important and shouldn’t be neglected. Still, not all mobile sports betting solutions approach them in the right way.

Notifications are a solution that may or may not work in your favor. They can either engage people and encourage them to open the app or repel them. Especially when they get too many notifications from one app.

5 rules to follow when designing a notification strategy:

1. Adjust content to users – consider their habits, preferences, and time of day. For example, if you address people who only interact with the app in the morning, send them a notification early in the day. Are they only interested in fantasy games or online casinos? Mention them in a message.

2. Personalize messages – for example, if the user’s account balance is low, offer something that can change this, encourage them to prolong their streak, or check the wages for their favorite sports events. You can also congratulate them on winning or tell them it’ll be better next time.

3. Don’t send too many notifications – users may get tired of them and uninstall the app instead of opening it.

4. Use the right tone of voice – your notifications should be encouraging and motivational, never offensive or aggressive. Your goal is to make users feel good about interacting with the app.

5. Keep it concise – go straight to the point and make sure your message is clear.

Benefits of this solution:

  • Thanks to notifications, you can remind users about the app and invite them to interact with it.
  • You build a better relationship with users by staying in touch and referring to their needs.
  • Users get informed about the updates and can regularly profit from occasions and special offers, which improves the UX.

Onboarding

It’s the first impression that matters. When users open your sportsbook app for the first time, they should see what opportunities it offers and why it’s worth their time.

Properly designed onboarding boosts engagement. It tells users what they can do in the app and how to make the most of it. It encourages people to discover the product and take specific actions.

App onboarding can take many forms. It can be functional and focused on the essential features or beneficial and concentrated on opportunities for users.

You may use static views to present the information before getting to the app’s main content or display bubbles within it to walk users through the essential features. You can always combine different types of onboarding and adjust them to your needs.

Check our short guide about designing onboarding in sportsbook apps for more details.

Tips for designing the onboarding process

1. Start with writing down the information you want to share. Consider app elements that may be confusing for first-time players. Also, think of innovations or loyalty programs you want to tell users about.

2. For many sportsbook app users, knowing their data is safe with you is essential. Let them know about this during the onboarding process.

3. To create the onboarding that users don’t skip, write short sentences and keep the instructions concise.

4. Balance the amount of text and graphics to make the message more straightforward and visually appealing.

5. Add a progress bar so users know the onboarding won’t take too much time.

How can you measure user engagement?

Let’s fast forward to a moment after you’ve implemented changes to increase user engagement. Now, you want to know if your strategy works.

For this reason, first, formulate questions for which you need answers. Based on them, you can select metrics that should tell you if new solutions improved UX.

Examples of questions:

  • How many new active users do we have compared to the previous period?
  • How many people have used our new feature in the last month? Do they do it regularly?
  • How many users joined because of the app referring program? How many of them remain active users after one month?

With proper questions, you can choose fitting metrics like daily/monthly active users (MAU/DAU), goal completion rate, number of daily or monthly bets, event count that indicates opening the referral link, user retention, etc. If you want to know how sticky the app is, you can divide DAU by MAU.

You can check how your app performs in reporting tools and analytics platforms.

For more examples, read our introduction to mobile app analytics.

How do you choose the best solutions for your sports betting app?

Remember that there are no universal solutions that work for every sportsbook platform. It’s best to adjust your strategy to user segments and their needs. It is especially important to provide them with a unique value proposition that will make users more interested in your offer.

Our suggestion? Start with the sports betting market research, not with software development. Look at the industry reports and statistics, send a survey, or interview representatives of your target group to understand better what they like and dislike in sports betting apps.

If you already have the web app, check out the analytics and try to divide users into groups, aka segments, based on their favorite types of bets, sports disciplines, etc. It should help you get to know them better and prioritize features that should be implemented in the first place.

Competitor analysis is also a must if you want to know what factors can make your app stand out. Keep up with sports betting industry trends to attract users and avoid churn. The competitor analysis shows some sports betting solutions from apps in your niche. You can treat them as inspirations.

Consider a code audit if you think low user engagement is related to technical issues on your sportsbook platform. This audit should highlight problems you must address before implementing new features.

 

Remember that user acquisition is just a first step. You must keep the target group interested in your app. After all, sports betting is all about having fun. With the UX techniques described above, creating a mobile app that provides engaging entertainment should be easier. If you want to know more, contact experts from our sports betting development company.

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