The focus on player retention is often on figuring out what your players want. This encourages repeat traffic and increased conversions. Rarely do we discuss what your players explicitly do not want to see on your site. These are some things to avoid exposing your poker enthusiast traffic to if you want to keep them coming around:
Pop-Up Offers
A great way to get traffic fleeing from your site is to obstruct them from the content they’re hoping to find with an obtrusive ad or sign-up offer. Value your readers enough to not spam them in overt fashion. Traffic is too valuable in this industry to give people a reason to go running for the hills as soon as they get to your site. Offers and newsletter sign-ups should be presented as attractive, supplementary content to your page, not the main show.
Mandatory Log-ins
If you want your readers to sign in before accessing your content, you’d better make damn sure it’s a premium product. Can they get the info you’re trying to give them somewhere else without having to log in? If so, wave bye-bye to the traffic. People don’t want to be hassled to log into anything but they’ll tolerate it if they’re expecting the reward to be worth it.
Dark Site Backgrounds
Think of a really successful website that uses a dark background. It’s not easy, is it? People don’t like reading light font on a dark background. It’s not how we did things in school. It’s cheaper if the ink on the page is the words and not everything except the words. Don’t try to change a system that isn’t broken. Use a light-colored background.
Being Led Astray
Poker players suffer through a lot of misery. Bad beats and disappointments are a part of the game. Despite these nuisances, players keep coming back. Part of any successful poker player’s arsenal is learning to keep their cool in the face of these disappointments. But this willingness to tolerate disappointment does not extend past the felt. One sure-fire way to lose a player for good is by sending them to shady operators where their money may not be safe.
As a poker affiliate, it’s your responsibility to make sure the sites you send your players to are places you would trust with your personal bankroll. If you wouldn’t play there, don’t tell your readers to play there. Most players don’t have time to research the reputability of every online poker room. They just want to play some cards. It’s your job to direct them to a place where they can have a positive experience doing so.
Excessive Static Content
Your visitors want a fresh experience each time they visit your site. No one likes watching reruns. Content is king. Make it a priority to maintain your portal with up-to-date news, information and strategy content. Readers aren’t the only ones you do this for. Google likes it too.
Lame Promotions
Running exclusive promotions for your readers can be feast or famine. There’s nothing that will lose you favor both with readers and affiliate managers alike than organizing a promotion that is a total dud. As a rule of thumb, the more complicated a promotion is, the less interest you should expect it to generate. Keep it simple. This is especially true for any promotion in which you’re asking people to sign up and convert at a new poker room. Depositing to a new poker room is a pretty big deal for most people. Don’t spook them away with a bunch of fine print. Use the girlfriend test for this: if your girlfriend (or sister or mother or anyone else not familiar with iGaming) can’t understand the promotion within 60 seconds of you explaining it to them, it’s too complicated.