Ask any experienced online gambler and they’ll tell you how not so long ago the standard was pages and pages of bonus terms. Whole novel lengths of text, to tell you what you can’t bet on this, and how much these slots are worth to this portion of the playthrough or your real money balance…
Can you see where that would put customers off? Well, the business has mostly noticed too. Yet still some operators insist on incredibly complex bonus terms that increase friction, decrease trust and then ultimately lose customers. At the end of the day, most gamblers know that the house edge is against them and the chances of winning any one session aren’t high – so throw them a bone and let them have a bonus eh?
In serious business terms, though, there are plenty of reasons to be transparent with casino bonus terms beyond just being fair. These are some of them.
Players are Savvy Enough to Compare Bonuses and Offers
One big reason operators (and players) want bonus terms to be simple and clear is that players can and do now easily compare all their options together.
If a customer can go look for a casino bonus on a comparison site like Casino.org, and see that one site has two dozen complex terms attached to its welcome offer and another has just two – who are they going to choose? Let alone all the other features and options these resources let players compare.
Today, it’s not uncommon for casinos to offer 10, 20 or even 50 free spins to players on their first deposit with barely any terms at all. Let alone pages of bonus terms. If your casino operator is still running a black and white wall of text under your welcome offer – you might be behind the times.
Having bonus T&Cs that can be mostly summed up in two or three lines, rather than a dozen or a page, makes bonuses stand out on these sites where there is plenty of competition.
Simple bonus terms also reduce onboarding friction once a customer is engaged with a casino. Even simplifying T&Cs by just 10% of text can have a 5% effect on conversion rates in some businesses. In gambling bonuses, where customers are usually quite interested in the terms of the offer, this could be even more.
For how much it would cost to statistically tighten the math behind the bonus model so you can simplify terms slightly, 5% conversion should be very much worth it. And in many cases you might not even need to change the math – just write it out more concisely.
Customers like to know that what they see is what they get. If they look through terms and find a “gotcha” moment, they’re not going to trust the rest of the operation as much.
Gambling is a High Risk Vertical, So Trust Matters More than Anywhere
Gambling is also a different form of entertainment to most, as it has a high risk association. Therefore, anything that gives it even more perceived risk can be fatal for customer perception during onboarding.
According to market research, companies perceived as transparent were rated far higher than competitors on trust ratings. Thankfully, it’s easy to be transparent when you don’t have many terms to show. By making them as short as possible.
This doesn’t mean giving away free money either. Slots games are already weighted against the player in house edge, and only novice gamblers go into a session expecting to win every time. There are ways to mathematically account for the percentage of players that might win and still come out with a profit, even without a 100x wagering requirement that barely any player completes.
On the other hand, this might mean you can’t offer $5000 + 1000 free spins packages any more. But most gamblers now know those headline offers are almost always too good to be true anyway.
If you want to be a trusted business – and you should be – clear bonus terms should be a priority in terms of displaying:
- Security badges
- Tech certifications
- Licenses
It really can be that important for customer trust, in what is a high perceived risk business.
Compliance and UX Must Be Managed Carefully
On the other hand, some elements of casino bonus terms are either needed for clarity or under regulation and law in certain markets.
Therefore cutting them is not always an option. If tightening the math isn’t possible either, then at least simplifying the way they’re presented can make a difference.
Casino operators and designers should be used to balancing compliance with usability, so the same principles can be applied to bonus terms and trust. One example could be having a condensed version of the terms with the most important info as a pop-up and then having the detailed version on another page for people who want to read it.
Transparency doesn’t always mean removing or getting rid of terms – although in some cases that can pay off too – but it is about being clear with how information is shown.
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