When it comes to website speed, time is incredibly important. It doesn’t matter whether you sell electronics, essential items or you run an online casino. If your site doesn’t load within three seconds, 47% of your potential customers leave your site.

You would think people would be more patient for slow-loading casino sites, but they don’t care that these sites hold hundreds of games. They don’t care that a casino might have a good reputation. If it’s slow; people leave.

So, why is it so important for an online casino to have a fast website?

Players’ Expectations

The main reason casinos create quick websites is because that’s what their customers expect. Roughly 47% of web visitors say they expect the idea casino site to load within two seconds. About 33% of these web users say they get stressed when their favorite websites take more than five seconds to load.

In fact, 80% of Internet users think it’s more frustrating to open a slow website than to come across a site that’s offline. Even more surprising: more people are stressed by slow websites than by horror movies.

In other words, casinos can’t expect to succeed unless they create fast sites. By fast, we’re talking about fractions of a second. That’s because every second that passes by without a site opening up might lead to lost customers.

Increasing Session Length

Popularly known as bounce rates, session lengths indicate the duration customers spend on a website. Every casino wants its customers to spend a decent amount of time gambling games on its platform.

But that doesn’t happen all the time. For many casinos, players bounce out of their website because it takes too long to load. For others, it’s because their platform is unusable—poorly designed and difficult to navigate.

The best operators invest in professionally-designed, user-friendly websites and apps. Winny.com Casino is a great example. Its website isn’t just fast. It’s also beautiful, mobile-friendly and multi-lingual. What’s more, it’s neat, which encourages you to spend a great deal of time playing its 400+ slots and live casino games.

Search Engine Ranking

Every website yearns to rank on the first page of Google. The search engine features 8-10 websites on its first page (minus adverts). The top most-ranked website attracts over 80% of clicks. The remaining sites share the rest.

Although Google uses more than 100 factors to rank websites, speed ranks at the top. If Google senses a casino takes too long to load, it pushes it down in the ranking system. As such, it’s in a casino’s best interests to build a fast-loading site.

Buying real estate on Google’s first page comes with its share of benefits. First, you receive more web traffic than your competitors. This leads to more potential customers. Second, it’s good for branding—people trust websites that rank highly on search engines.

There’s also the issue of reducing marketing costs. Paying for adverts is costly, more so when you plan to do so for the long term. Ranking high on search engines naturally helps you lower your marketing costs, which improves profit margins.

Improving Customer Experience

This is something you’re experiencing first-hand. You’re reading this article because this site opened quickly. The content of this article is legible and properly structured. That’s a delightful customer experience: something far too many casinos lack.

According to Kissmetrics.com, 16% of customers feel dissatisfied by websites that load slowly. 79% of these same customers don’t get back to a website that frustrated them in the past. Another interesting stat is that 44% of shoppers don’t recommend websites if they load slowly.

Finally, 95% of mobile Internet users say they’re willing to spend money again at a website that loads quickly. In other words, casino players appreciate fast sites. And they’re more likely to be loyal to brands that help them save time.

To be clear, a lot of factors are involved in improving customer satisfaction. There’s web design—the looks, web pages, mobile-compatibility and animation. Then there’s transparency, security and customer service.

Stiff Competition

So, you think running a casino site is easy? Out of the 100+ casinos launched before 2005, only a handful remain functional. Try it. List 20 casinos you know created before 2005. There are few.

The main reason for these casino’s downfall is competition. New casinos crop up every week. Each of the new sites promise something new. Some of the operators actually deliver improved services, which forces poorly-run sites to shut down.

In 2021, no casino wants to shut down due to something relatively minor like web loading speed. It’s minor because it can be fixed with a few plugins or with the help of an expert. Of course, creating a fast-loading site helps beat your competition in search ranking, which lead to a better bottom line.

Encouraging Repeat Business

As we’ve already stated, online users pay loyalty to websites with good customer experience. And guess what? This loyalty helps fend off competitions. It helps a company grow rapidly now that it spends less time looking for new customers.

Needless to say, speed is just one of the many things a business must do to encourage loyalty. In the casino space, providing high-quality game is an important effort. Fair bonuses, fast payouts and tip top custom service are other factors that determine whether customers come back or not.

A casino site might be fast and professionally-designed. But if its games are unfair or bonuses are exploitive, people will leave and never come back. The same is true for payouts. No one wants to use a casino repeatedly if withdrawing their profits is a hassle.

Summary

A casino website’s loading speed is highly important in 2021. In fact, no online business can survive for long with a slow site. There are several explanations: Google, customers’ expectations, user experience and conversions.

Google considers speed when ranking websites. Fast-loading sites earn a place on Google’s first page. This increases their traffic, which could learn to higher conversions. Away from sales, speed also helps improve the overall user experience.