Ivan Liashenko, Chief Marketing Officer at Parimatch and Konstantin Obraztsov, Chief Technology Officer, discuss in this article the idea of why offering a seamless mobile, desktop and app experience is the key to keep the player.
Focus On Seamless Platforms
Ivan Liashenko is responsible with marketing strategy and he began his career at Parimatch where he worked his way up through various roles before becoming CMO. Ivan said that in the past playing on mobile was notoriously slow. However, according to the feedback from the players, the slow connection was their main problem when it was about playing on the go.
For example, an online casino has to be focused in delivering the same level of service and experience on mobile platforms, as well as desktop websites. Konstantin Obraztsov is responsible for all technical solutions and decisions at Parimatch. He also has a vast experience in research and development. Like Ivan, he also adds a few stuff about mobile gaming/mobile apps.
Konstantin added that from technology side, Parimatch can support all the available channels and try to use the latest innovation to bring the best experience for each platform separately. He and Ivan have done a lot of work behind the scenes in order to make their mobile content faster, more consistent, more engaging and easier to navigate. They created a single back-end system so they can deliver a truly omnichannel experience for their players. The migration to this kind of system is far from easy, but Ivan and Konstantin love the given challenges.
Focus On Proper Delivery Mechanism
The technical side of a casino game needs to have a proper delivery mechanism. A game developer has to always strive for the best. For example, Parimatch is looking to move to a MessagePack approach which will give a big boost to the user. Ivan noticed that some people prefer to play by using the mobile browsers, while others prefer the apps. Although, like 90% of users uses the app and don’t use any other channels. However, it’s still important to maintain a consistent level of service and brand experience for all of the users. No matter what is their preferred method of use.
Konstantin says that having a single point of product configuration gives flexibility for experiments and provides a full control over all channels, like desktop, mobile and apps. They can easily do A/B testing on different platforms and tailor them to the preferred method. Before the A/B testing, they created a content management system inhouse, but now, they are open to a wide array of ready solutions and choose a few of them to work with.
Ivan also believes that it is easier to get a user engaged with lock-screen push notifications, and when it comes to mobile use, the battery life of the device needs to be considered too. Nobody wants their phone to turn off during the mid-use gaming. An average desktop session on the internet is 19 seconds, while a session in a native app is only 8 seconds. During these sessions, users perform the same amount of useful actions. In addition, there is also potential to increase these actions and that is why a mobile gaming app is constantly optimised.
Konstantin said that in order to make this happen, he and his team did a lot of work in the background. They moved as much business logic as possible to the back-end system, making the player-side lightweight. They are saving on the player-side device the appropriate content for offloading server-side with repeatable requests.
The rise in mobile gaming doesn’t mean that users have abandoned the use of desktop internet. However, what is truly more important is that in the casino industry, brands must focus on delivering a seamless player journey across all platforms and devices.