Whether you have a small-scale business, a multi-millionaire organisation, or just a fresh startup idea, you need to have performance indicators to monitor your every step. After all, every successful business is built on correct decision-making that relies on accurate data.
And when it comes to the iGaming market, the stakes of making mistakes can turn out truly damaging. That’s why identifying and setting online casino KPIs right from the beginning should be a crucial part of your business strategy. Remember, only with precise calculations can you understand whether your iGaming business is going in the right direction.
But first, what exactly are KPIs, and how can you improve them? Let’s break it down together.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Definition
Key performance indicators are metrics that show past and current conditions. Businesses use those metrics to understand the state of their previous campaigns and strategies and make new decisions.
Choosing the right KPIs will help you to estimate your goals and performance early on, while ignoring them can cause destructive results.
And although there’s no single technique to help you run your business, there are still several types of online casino KPIs you can choose from - depending on your goals and vision.
Types of Online Casino KPIs
Successful online casino operators have one thing in common - highly analysed and precise player data. Whether you want to create an online casino from scratch or want to choose an easier way of integrating online casino software, you need to know your core players, their preferences, likes, dislikes, and, more importantly - their habits and behaviour.
There are three main online casino KPI types you should take into consideration:
- Budget-measuring iGaming KPIs: they help to find out how much profit you get from your players. You must identify your players’ journey on the website, understand what events or games bring you the most profit, and draw your financial reports using those indicators.
- Engagement measuring iGaming KPIs allows you to identify which of your marketing strategies are bringing the most consumers and how you can retain them as loyal players for the longest time possible. They are related to promoting your iGaming platform to acquire as many players as possible.
- Mixed or hybrid KPIs: the ones that are closely related both to finances and engagement.
Now that we’ve cleared things out let’s see what iGaming KPIs you should take into account and how you can improve them.
Budget Measuring Online Casino KPIs
As mentioned above, budget-measuring KPIs help you analyse your financial performance, including your income, bonuses and loyalty programs. These KPIs give you clear and unbending reports about the state of your balance.
Gross-Gaming Revenue(GGR)
Gross-Gaming Revenue, or GGR in short, is one of the pillars of online casino KPIs. With GGR, you can see how much profit your iGaming platform has earned during a specific period.
GGR has one simple formula:
GGR = A - B
A = total bets;
B = total wins.
Let’s see an example to grasp the concept better: Throughout a certain period, your players have bet $5 million and won $3.5 million - this makes your GGR value $1.5 million for that specific period. You might think this is your clear profit, right? Well, not really.
Though the GGR shows the amount of money players have lost in your casino, it won’t show the accurate number of your profits because it doesn’t include the amount of deposit and sign-up bonuses that you may have sent during this time. If you want to have more accurate reports, Net-Gaming-Revenue may be the method for you.
Net-Gaming Revenue (NGR)
Net-Gaming Revenue, or NGR, is one of the most valuable online casino KPIs. It shows the exact amount of profit your online casino has earned in a certain amount of time.
The formula for NGR is a little more complex:
NGR = A - B - C - D
A - total bets;
B - total wins;
C - bonuses are given to players;
D - the sum of all taxes.
Unlike the GGR, Net-Gaming Revenue equals GGR minus all your expenses, sign-up and deposit bonuses, any licence fees and royalties, charges for iGaming platform providers and taxes. NGR is the single most helpful solution to identify your actual revenue in a more detailed and broader way.
NGR-to-Deposits
NGR-to-deposits shows the proportion of revenue you get from the players deposited into your platform. This percentage isn’t going to be too big. That’s why you must make your players bet as much as possible.
Bets-to-Deposits
Bets-to-deposits shows the circulation of players' deposits in your games. If this percentage is too high, it may mean you’ve been providing too many bonuses and promotions to your players.
Now that you know what important budget-measuring iGaming KPIs are, you may wonder how to improve them. Let’s discuss some quick solutions for the matter.
Solution for Budget Measuring iGaming KPIs
We’ve mentioned what money-related KPIs you should consider measuring your financial reports. But what if your results are not satisfying enough, and you want to improve them?
Entertain your players to make them spend more wagers. This can be done in several ways:
- Constantly add new games, tournaments, and jackpots,
- Give bonuses and promos,
- Offer free spins and more.
However, you should be careful, or there may be too many gifts on your platform that may damage your profits. Make sure to avoid abusing your bonuses by carefully forming your defensive programs and terms of service.
Engagement Measuring Online Casino KPIs
The second group of online casino KPIs relates to players’ entertainment levels. It includes marketing tactics to raise engagement and loyalty programs to increase players’ lifetime value.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is a term largely used in marketing. It shows the percentage of users who could have taken the desired action to the number of those who have completed that action.
Your desired action may differ based on your goals:
- The number of people who have clicked on your social media ad set from a gambling ad network,
- The number of opened emails,
- Visitors who’ve clicked on the CTA button on your website.
Either way, knowing your conversion rate helps you find your strategy's errors and improve them.
There are two types of online casino conversion rates:
-
Conversions of Visitors to Signups
What percentage of your new website visitors have registered on your platform? How many new potential players have you engaged right from the bat? If this number is too low, then you should work on your web design or bonus offers.
-
Conversions of Signups to Deposits
What percentage of your signed-up players have made a deposit? If there’s a big gap between those numbers, you may need to add enticing sign-up bonuses and other promotional offers.
Solution For iGaming Conversion Rates
There are several reasons for low conversion rates - either you bring the wrong traffic to your website, or you don’t know how to keep your potential players.
Either way, there are several solutions to improve conversion rates:
- Redesign your website: see what parts of it don’t perform as well as you’ve expected, and pay closer attention to the CTA buttons and overall user experience.
- Reconsider your bonus offerings: set a sign-up bonus for players to follow with a deposit.
Retention and Churn Rates
How long do your players stay after converting into profit-making customers? To know the answer to this question, you must keep an eye on your retention rates.
You should find out how long your players will stay with you before leaving. This is what we call the retention rate. Usually, it is measured within a specific term of 3, 6 or 12 months and helps you track the loyalty of your customers.
The churn rate, on the other hand, shows the proportion of those players who leave your platform. High churn rates should be considered as one of the first signs that your customers lack loyalty.
Player’s Lifetime Value
Players' lifetime value is a metric that shows the sum of the revenue a single player has brought during their stay in your online casino platform. Players’ lifetime value is the backbone of successful businesses, and you, as a casino operator, should do everything to increase this number.
You must improve your customer retention rate and average order value to increase their lifetime value. This means that for an online casino platform, you should make sure to keep your players coming back to your website as well as make them raise their wagers per gaming session.
After all, keeping valuable players is cheaper than finding new ones.
Solution for Engagement Measuring iGaming KPIs
There are several ways of converting your new players into long-lasting, loyal players of your platform.
Here are the best ways to improve your conversion rates and players’ lifetime value:
- Track and analyse their data, behaviour, likes and dislikes. This can be done pretty quickly with a good iGaming CRM solution. You can also track players’ deposit numbers and periodicity and decrease the churn rate with the help of this information.
- Offer specially crafted VIP and loyalty programs to your customers.
- Pay attention to your customer support service. Make sure to provide the best service so your online casino players can feel secure and appreciated.
- Always update your catalogue with new games and offers: Inform your players about those changes so that they will stay constantly entertained and engaged.
Mixed Online Casino KPIs
The last group of online casino KPIs is mixed or hybrid KPIs. Those are the ones who are related both to players’ engagement and budget metrics. To analyse those indicators, you must pay close attention to customers’ behaviour and financial reports.
Average Revenue of Active Users
The Average Revenue of Active Users or ARPU shows how much profit one user brings to your iGaming platform. In other words, it indicates how much an average user loses in a specific period.
To find your ARPU, divide your online casino’s total profit for a specific period by the number of active users.
Cost Per Acquisition
Cost Per Acquisition, or CPA, indicates how much you spend to acquire a new user to sign up or deposit to your platform. With this KPI, you can understand whether your marketing and promotional tactics are working correctly or not.
You should change your marketing strategy if your spending is larger than your profit.
Solution for Mixed KPIs
There are several strategies to gain organic traffic without having a high cost per acquisition:
- Search engine optimisation. It’s a common tactic that improves your rankings in search results and helps bring quality traffic into your platform.
- Paid advertising and backlink buying: bring more visitors to your website. However, you have to pay attention to the cost per click of your ads.
- Use influencer and blogger marketing: Use streamers, bloggers or other influential personas to promote your website and increase brand recognition. Make sure to use influencers directly connected to the iGaming industry so that they will bring potential visitors to your platform.
Conclusion
Creating your online casino platform is a great starting point for many entrepreneurs. It’s profitable, ever-evolving and has enormous potential. And though it is a remotely fresh market, the iGaming industry continues to grow rapidly with each passing year.
Successful businesses know how valuable good customer data is and do everything to use this data as much as possible. But when we pay close attention to the titans of the industry, we reveal that most of their success is due to precisely calculated customer data and the knowledge of using this information correctly. Fortunately, many key performance indicators warn you beforehand about upcoming issues or wrong tactics you may be using.
So, now that you know the list of those KPIs, you need to track and analyse them constantly. And when you are still looking for results, use our solutions to improve your KPIs!
You may also be interested in the article about starting an online casino.