What Web Businesses Can Learn From Online Gambling
Abstract: learn how to gain visitors' trust by studying how
online casino websites have overcome enormous obstacles to
building trust among site visitors.
Online gambling is one of the fastest growing segments of
ecommerce in the US, an especially impressive feat since it is
illegal in the US. Due to their illegal status, gambling sites
face high hurdles in the advertising and promotion arena as
well, since most US-based online media companies, most notably
Google and Yahoo, refuse to advertise them.
You might think that online gambling websites would face an
insurmountable obstacle in gaining users' trust, as well. Trust
has long been an issue in ecommerce, historically plagued by
credit card billings and websites that disappear just before the
orders were to be shipped-and a constant mainstream media
drumbeat of the dangers of online transactions. Building trust
has long been a chief concern of businesses selling over the web.
The trust issue is only compounded for the online gambling
industry when it comes to serving US customers. Would you trust
a website with your money if it were located overseas, and you
had little legal recourse whatsoever to get your money back if
you were dissatisfied-and if the "product" itself were
essentially intangible, anyway? To top it off, what if the
purchase itself was illegal?
This is precisely the challenge that online casinos meet every
day, with the estimated 60 percent of their industry's customers
who come from the USA. Casino websites owned and operated
entirely outside the borders of the US are free to accept US
customers. But gambling online with real money is illegal in the
US under federal law, specifically the Federal Wire Wager Act,
not to mention a host of state laws.
How Do Online Gambling Websites Gain Visitors' Trust?
* Trust symbols: gambling websites' businesses, being located
outside the US, are not eligible for most US-based business
certification programs such as the Better Business Bureau or
Square Trade. So, they created their own trust seal: ECOGRA,
E-Commerce and Online Gaming Regulation and Assurance. Online
gambling sites are also wont to make a prominent display of
their secure connection certificates, from organizations such as
Thawte.
* Assurances: users' concerns about reliability are not just
answered implicitly with fancy seals or confident language. One
of the most successful online gambling websites contains this
prominent declaration on its homepage: "We are licensed and
regulated by the Government of Gibraltar, and our games are
tested by iTech Labs, an independent tester of gaming and
wagering devices to ensure that the games are fair and operate
correctly."
* Transparency: while it is often hard to tell just who is
behind most ecommerce sites, successful online gambling sites
are models of transparency: the location of the company owning
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the casino is always prominently displayed, and assurances of
honesty are backed up with independent audits of the technology
used.
* High-quality design: successful gambling websites always look
great, no matter how small the business behind them. Plain old
HTML may be enough to convince people to post their room rentals
on Craigslist, but it doesn't seem enough to make web users fork
over their credit card digits to an online casino.
* Low barrier to entry: gambling websites generally either have
a free option or require only a small upfront payment.
* Highly optimized designs. It's usually only a single click, if
even that, from the homepage to the virtual betting tables. When
you can get straight to doing what you want to do, there is not
a lot of time to start nursing doubts.
In short, if you take your online business's trustworthiness for
granted, you may be missing out on potential customers who need
additional assurances. Take a lesson from websites that can't
trust their trustworthiness to be taken for granted: make sure
visitors to your site feel comfortable opening up their wallets.
About the author:
Joel Walsh writes on business and the internet for
CasinoTimes.co.uk, a http://CasinoTimes.co.uk?%20UK%20Casinos
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