In the fiercely competitive iGaming landscape, where operators often share similar games, events, and even promotions, customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) are no longer optional; they are the ultimate differentiators. But are you truly prioritising them, or is your bad UX silently driving customers away before they even convert?

In a recent episode of 15M Mastery, I shared my insights on why so many iGaming brands are struggling with retention due to poor design, unclear user journeys, and a reactive approach to problem-solving. This isn't just about aesthetics; it's about improving customer retention and revenue targets.

Are poor UX and unmet expectations costing you customers?

One of the most common and devastating UX pitfalls in digital products is unmet expectations. Users anticipate a certain experience, and when there's a disconnect, be it misleading language, inconsistent interface patterns, or small glitches, they disengage.

I highlight that these minor issues, like a weak registration button, unclear call-to-action (CTA) text, or a CTA being below the fold, can compound across a user's journey, creating enough friction to derail a conversion. A shocking 88% of users stop using an app after it glitches, proving that these seemingly minor issues directly drive customer churn. What's more, it costs 5 to 25 times more to attract new users than to retain existing ones, making a proactive focus on the entire customer journey absolutely critical.

Differentiating with customer experience in a crowded market

When every brand offers similar games and promotions, UX becomes the key to standing out. I emphasise that customers often have multiple accounts across different operators, and even a single negative experience with one can lead them to abandon it permanently. I advocate for several core UX principles in gaming that can transform user journeys:

• Setting clear expectations: Making journeys transparent and easily understood.
• Designing for fast failure recovery: While you can't stop issues, you can allow users to recover their intent quickly, minimising churn.
• Relevant and targeted journeys: If a user clicks on a sports banner, they shouldn't land on a casino homepage.
• Micro-interactions for delight: Incorporating small, encouraging messages, like a welcome after a first deposit.
• Unified ecosystem: Maintaining consistent UX principles across different platform sections (e.g., sports book and casino) to prevent user disengagement.

Ultimately, for most users who aren't bonus hunting, the simplest and fastest brands become their preferred go-to. Removing friction is a must-have.

Proactive UX: fixing issues before they drive customers away

Many operators rely on reactive analytics, such as session recordings or support tickets, which notify them after a problem has occurred and the customer may have already left. I stress that the focus needs to shift to proactive research. This means:

• Running user testing in advance of product releases.
• Implementing experimentation programs, scaling exposure to changes as confidence grows.

The goal is to identify and resolve issues before they arise. It’s also crucial to remember that 91% of customers who experience an issue will simply leave without contacting support. Therefore, focusing on quick resolution and improving the recovery experience for those who do encounter problems is key to reducing churn.

How AI is transforming UX design and strategy

While AI and Machine Learning have long been present in iGaming through personalisation and recommendation engines, the rise of Generative AI is creating new opportunities for automating repetitive tasks in UX.

For UX professionals, this means:

• Faster research: Gathering feedback, synthesising results, and building journey maps can now happen in minutes instead of days or weeks with the right AI tools.
• Accelerated ideation and prototyping: Going from wireframe to fully-fledged design much quicker with AI-powered solutions.
• Automated UX processes: Performing journey mapping, auditing, and competitive benchmarking simply by inputting a URL.

This newfound efficiency allows designers to focus on strategic, visionary, and innovative aspects of their roles, leading to faster iteration and more robust testing.

This is exactly why I built Jurnii AI. Our mission is to help UX, CX and product leaders build better digital experiences, starting with AI-powered benchmarking tools to improve customer experience.

Proving the ROI: tying UX to commercial success

Convincing senior leadership to invest in UX can be challenging, as everyone focuses on ROI and acquisition costs. I recommend UX teams to identify what's important to the business and break it down into actionable metrics. While executives care about commercial metrics like GGR, churn, and conversion, few truly understand the causal relationship between these and UX improvements.

The most impactful UX teams understand the relationship between commercial metrics and the behaviorual experience metrics they can influence.

By building a "KPI tree" that demonstrates how micro-interactions impact these experience metrics, which in turn correlate with commercial outcomes, UX teams can prove their value directly to the business's bottom line. At the end of the day, CX is fundamentally a commercially-driven function, enabling the business to hit its revenue targets.