Greg

A call to action is simply showing your customers “the next step” if they are interested in doing business with you. They will make a deposit, set up an account or place an order on your website. A call to action is what makes you money. This is a conversion.

I used to spend a lot of time reading through the forums at WickedFire.com and speaking the owner on AOL. The guy was pretty smart and seemed to attract the true black hat, banned from every email server type of dudes that you’d really like to get advice from. He introduced me to Eli from BlueHatSeo.com as well and kept me from wasting my time reading through the pure garbage put out there by our resident ‘seo gurus in the gambling industry. One thing that I learned while spending time there was a real call to action is what separates the men from the boys in the conversion metric.

We all love to use Google Analytics and sift through the wonderful stats it gives us. Time spent on site, average click through rate, how many people visited from India etc. all makes us wonder what we’re really doing to drive traffic. We get excited when the graph resembles that of a site on the rise and then scratch our heads when we check the mailbox and there aren’t any checks in there. What are the successful webmasters doing that we aren’t? We’re writing pages and pages of content, ranking well for keywords and trading links with some really popular sites? The answer may be this; you’re not leading your visitor to making a decision – a decision that makes you money!

Without sounding like a John Chow blog or posting a $100k Google adsense check I’ll try and draw some insight and get straight to the point. Before jumping into the examples I am going to say most of this info was learned via the back hatters out there who for years abused the system and created thousands of MFA (made for adsense) blogs and ran network of spammy, program driven content generated sites. Did they want to sell anything? No. Did they attract tons of traffic and lead people to click on the cleverly disguised adsense copy? Yes. These are the people who checked their mailbox and found the big checks and a complementary Shoemoney t-shirt to boot.



Another great example of leading people to click, deposit or pay for your product are the infamous long landing pages often attached to an Adwords campaign. Search for ‘debt consolidation tips’ and click on the sites on the right column. You’ll cost them some money but it’s for the sake of learning. What you’ll see here are 1 page sites that want you to do one thing; enter your information in and become a customer. Whether these guys are selling leads, getting commission for real customers or simply email marketers who are going to bomb you with every relevant offer possible they are all mastering one thing. They are getting you to make a decision and make them money.

In the gambling space we have some additional barriers. One is we can not use Google Adwords campaigns (in the States) and we also have a ton of competition around us. Don’t be fooled into think that the debt, finance and pharmaceutical affiliates have it any easier. However, our customers often need more information and are usually savvy to the fact they know their business is valuable. Online gambler want to know that they can successfully make a deposit and withdraw in a timely manner, that there is a nice bonus for their business, that there is plenty of action on the site and that it’s a safe room to play at. Often times webmasters will provide so much information and news/stories that they loose site of converting that visitor into a customer. Players get lost in the forums and reading through the news and then leave to actually find a deal. They see your banners; they just aren’t going to click on them. All of a sudden that 2:32 average time spent on your site isn’t making you any additional income.

So what can you do to increase conversions, boost your profits and start re-investing into new sites that follow the same strategy? You start by designing your site to convert the players who came there for your content. They came through a search, an ad, a linkback or a post. You know they are the right demographic, now it’s up to you make them play (and pay). Some of this is done by presenting them the right information. They are looking for the basics, and then they are looking to be ‘sold’ on your picks. Just like how a bookie makes money by convincing you here and now is the time to play; so will you do on your own sites.

Keep your design simple, clean and easy to navigate. Players are looking for your picks and where you think they should play. Display this information in an ordered way. I like to have a graph or chart that shows 4-5 different rooms and what differentiates them. Maybe one is best for a biog bonus, one is easiest to clear. One poker room might have the highest guaranteed games and one site may be the loosest action online. Whatever your niche is you’ll be able to create 4-5 selling points and then become an expert on those particular rooms. Unless your BonusWhores.com or PokerListings then I wouldn’t worry about listing 200 programs. Your visitor wants to make a deposit today, at one new room. Don’t bombard them with information and too many choices. Cal them to make a decision, take action and start making you money.



Having a professional design is another major advantage you have over the competition. You’re not in the position to be a GamesandCasinos.com and throw up a 1999 template and still earn cash. You’re going after a new breed of players. These are players who know what rakeback is, what a reload bonus is and where they can get into a rake race or guaranteed event. Bloggers who used templates where ads were professionally placed and were not intrusive to the visitor did substantially better than those who went with a picture based, massive header, and 500+ site blogroll did. Likewise webmaster who created a clean, organized way to list their programs with the advantages each one had are doing better than those affiliates who list tons of programs with generic reviews do. I’ll post some design examples below that I find very well and leave you with your creative juices flowing for the comments below.