We have visitors but no conversion!

[BestListCasinos]

Hi guys,

I was busy developing and building up my site recently for the past 6 months and as far as I can understand, I think I have some pretty decent content and information related to casinos and casino games on my website (or at least I am hoping to have! ).

I am getting some organic visitors from google for certain keywords and I also have visitors clicking on casino CTA's (implemented a tracking script for this) but however none of them seem to convert! No registrations or FTD's!

Also, sometimes I record a click on a CTA from my script but when I access the affiliate admin for that casino I found nothing on the date! no click! ... I inform the aff manager and he tells me that there is an issue with some stuff from their end... should I believe this?! or is he BShiting me?!... I am 10000% sure that my very simple script works!

Apart from this, do you think that, content wise or design wise I have something wrong? or maybe I am getting the wrong traffic?

I filtered out a lot of scam from my list already like 888, WilliamHill, EuroGrand, Europa Casino ecc.... I still have to do the same for US casinos though.... but honestly, would this prevent a user from exploring further your website?

Any suggestion please? ... very much appreciated. Ohh and by the way, do not hesitate to criticise ! ..but please don't hurt me as I invested loads of money and time for this!

my website is http://www.bestlistcasinos.com/en

P.S. Do not mind the other languages, I am concentrating only on English version for now.

 

[AussieDave]

I'm not trying to be an ass here, just don't see the point in sugar coating stuff when it's a commercial site. EG - a money making project.

Years ago I was very anal about keeping track of ALL my player traffic. I wanted to record every-single-click, visiting ever-single-link, on my sites. Hence, I implimented my own php tracking on ALL outbound affiliate links. In all honestly though, least to me, it was uncalled for. There's no need to complicate things. Most aff programs allow you to setup individual campaigns - your traffic is tracked at the program.

Now some might say, yeah that's cool but how can I trust these stats are correct.
My answer is, if you have any trust issues with an aff program, you shouldn't be promoting them.

These days I mask my aff links, using a simple php script... Others use htaccess. There are heaps of ways to accomplish this.

With regard to your No registrations or FTD's issue. I took a quick look at your site. TBH I'm not a big fan of things flying into view. Plus, those verified/certified badges you have. Personally, I'd lose them. These on casino portals, are akin to testimonials (fake kudos) on MLM sites and such.

There could be any number of reasons why your not getting registrations or FTD's.
But I will say, this is where the boys/girls are divided. Those being casino portal webmaster, and those being successful money making affiliates.

Some affiliates throw a site up and within a month or so, get their first depositing player. Others, it can taken them a good 6 months before they get one player. In some instances, it comes down to nothing more than luck. Though, luck is only good for short term success. All I can say, is keep adding content, make your site different from other portals, use distinctive CALL TO ACTIONS. Most importantly - keep going no matter what.

It can take a good 2 - 3 years of bloody hard work, before you start seeing a regular, and decent 5 figure monthly income.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it

BTW - this traffic your seeing, a % of that will be misbaving bots, fake-bots, scrapers, script kiddies and other undesirables. You'd be surprised what automated cr#p, follow links.

 

[RyanWeb]

I would agree with AussieDave with the 'on page animation'. The fly-in stuff distracts from what you are trying to accomplish here. I think you may also have a "smooth scroll" feature on? Not loving that either.. Aside from that, your content seems well written and easy to follow. Maybe finish the reviews on the main page to make the site seem more "complete".

 

[BestListCasinos]

I'm not trying to be an ass here, just don't see the point in sugar coating stuff when it's a commercial site. EG - a money making project.

Years ago I was very anal about keeping track of ALL my player traffic. I wanted to record every-single-click, visiting ever-single-link, on my sites. Hence, I implimented my own php tracking on ALL outbound affiliate links. In all honestly though, least to me, it was uncalled for. There's no need to complicate things. Most aff programs allow you to setup individual campaigns - your traffic is tracked at the program.

Now some might say, yeah that's cool but how can I trust these stats are correct.
My answer is, if you have any trust issues with an aff program, you shouldn't be promoting them.

These days I mask my aff links, using a simple php script... Others use htaccess. There are heaps of ways to accomplish this.

With regard to your No registrations or FTD's issue. I took a quick look at your site. TBH I'm not a big fan of things flying into view. Plus, those verified/certified badges you have. Personally, I'd lose them. These on casino portals, are akin to testimonials (fake kudos) on MLM sites and such.

There could be any number of reasons why your not getting registrations or FTD's.
But I will say, this is where the boys/girls are divided. Those being casino portal webmaster, and those being successful money making affiliates.

Some affiliates throw a site up and within a month or so, get their first depositing player. Others, it can taken them a good 6 months before they get one player. In some instances, it comes down to nothing more than luck. Though, luck is only good for short term success. All I can say, is keep adding content, make your site different from other portals, use distinctive CALL TO ACTIONS. Most importantly - keep going no matter what.

It can take a good 2 - 3 years of bloody hard work, before you start seeing a regular, and decent 5 figure monthly income.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it

BTW - this traffic your seeing, a % of that will be misbaving bots, fake-bots, scrapers, script kiddies and other undesirables. You'd be surprised what automated cr#p, follow links.

Hey AussieDave,

Thank you for your much appreciated comment.

But if you do not sugar coat stuff how do you think that retention works ? and how do you keep players interested on your site?
For the flying into view thing, I will do some A B testing and see how visitors react... thanks for the advise.
For the badges, I think I agree but I will not remove them rather I will switch them to the footer as one of them is important

I am now working on some news module to help me build up some content and keep my website fresh and updated.
But is it normal that after 6/7 months you have no FTD's or registration? This is what really worries me as I sometimes feel that I am wasting my time.
Or maybe I am lacking proper promotion of my site? I mainly use social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google + to promote.... don't have email database as yet!

;

 

[BestListCasinos]

I would agree with AussieDave with the 'on page animation'. The fly-in stuff distracts from what you are trying to accomplish here. I think you may also have a "smooth scroll" feature on? Not loving that either.. Aside from that, your content seems well written and easy to follow. Maybe finish the reviews on the main page to make the site seem more "complete".

Hi RyanWeb,

Thanks for your comment.
Yes in fact I am trying to keep up with the reviews all day and in the mean time developing new News module... I must say that it's tough to keep up but I love what I do so that keeps me going.
However, I will try to take your advise as well and create a new version with your suggestions too.

If you found it easy to follow... was it engaging to you? If you where a casino player (in case you are not) would you be interested to discover more?
Also, I spent a lot of time developing a casino finder app to help players find their casino according to their preferences which is located here: http://www.bestlistcasinos.com/en/best-online-casinos ,however, even though I promote it on the homepage and also using an exit popup with a banner, no player seems to care about it! very disappointing

 

[KasinoKing]

Very nice looking site!

KK

 

[BestListCasinos]

Very nice looking site!

KK

Thanks KK,

Having sad that... any suggestion on what I might be doing wrong please? ...it's frustrating!

 

[Guard Dog]

It took me 6-9 months to get my first player. I actually gave up, let my site sit. Then just decided to check one day and found I had a player. From that point on I made more effort and made money. Keep going, but lose some of the animated fly-in content. that is very distracting and not helpful, IMO.

 

[slotplayer]

The first thing is to determine if it's real [human] traffic or bogus traffic and how much, look at the stats in the program back end.

Conversions are about a sequence of events, where in the chain of events did it not succeed?
How far did the "real" visitors get? Do you see signups? Did they even get that far? If not then something is turning them away. You rule out technical issues first like tracking. If you see joins you can assume the tracking is working.

I like the casino finder but I assumed it was a mobile app, maybe not call it an app? It does pop up way too many times though. The home page pop up might be enough but maybe it should be a just a link with a little descriptive copy on the inner pages.

 

[BestListCasinos]

It took me 6-9 months to get my first player. I actually gave up, let my site sit. Then just decided to check one day and found I had a player. From that point on I made more effort and made money. Keep going, but lose some of the animated fly-in content. that is very distracting and not helpful, IMO.

Mmmmm i see what you mean. Maybe I am being too focused on it and need loosen up a bit!

 

[BestListCasinos]

The first thing is to determine if it's real [human] traffic or bogus traffic and how much, look at the stats in the program back end.

Conversions are about a sequence of events, where in the chain of events did it not succeed?
How far did the "real" visitors get? Do you see signups? Did they even get that far? If not then something is turning them away. You rule out technical issues first like tracking. If you see joins you can assume the tracking is working.

I like the casino finder but I assumed it was a mobile app, maybe not call it an app? It does pop up way too many times though. The home page pop up might be enough but maybe it should be a just a link with a little descriptive copy on the inner pages.

Hi slotplayer,

It is indeed human traffic as I already filter out bots and stuff like that. I know this because I record each visitors landing page including time spent and consecutive pages. I also can see the actual visits on google analytics so have no doubts that its human traffic.
However I have noticed that most of the time my users visit just the landing page and that's it irrelevant what it is.
Then, if some of the users click on the CTA they do not go far as registering with the casino.... could this be a case where my listed casinos are not good enough and do not convert?

 

[DaftDog]

I don't mind the "fly-in" stuff, makes your site a bit different to the many other casino portal sites out there. I'm not a fan of pop-ups though. Personally I think your text is too small and makes it difficult to read. That casino finder thingy seems like it could be a good idea but it must have taken me about five clicks before you actually provided me with a casino I could choose from. This will negatively affect your conversions.

The small casino logos on the home page listing are jpegs and this makes them look blurry. I would make new logos from larger png or gif logos and then save them as a gif or png. This will make them sharper and look more professional to your visitors.

Good luck, I'm sure you'll be getting a depositing player soon.

 

[slotplayer]

Hi slotplayer,

It is indeed human traffic as I already filter out bots and stuff like that. I know this because I record each visitors landing page including time spent and consecutive pages. I also can see the actual visits on google analytics so have no doubts that its human traffic.
However I have noticed that most of the time my users visit just the landing page and that's it irrelevant what it is.
Then, if some of the users click on the CTA they do not go far as registering with the casino.... could this be a case where my listed casinos are not good enough and do not convert?

I promote the AE brands, pushing Club USA/World mostly. They convert. I did have trouble getting LR to convert but in 2013 I kept moving banners/links/changing copy, trying different things and finally got it to produce. The key to anything on the web is to stick with it.

 

[RyanWeb]

It took me 6-9 months to get my first player. I actually gave up, let my site sit. Then just decided to check one day and found I had a player. From that point on I made more effort and made money. Keep going, but lose some of the animated fly-in content. that is very distracting and not helpful, IMO.

- With that said ^ (I have seen this happen a few times..) If for whatever reason you do give up, or need to focus on something else.. Do not let your hosting account expire or take your website offline. It can often take Google a while (up to a year in some cases) before you start ranking for the right traffic.

I had almost the same story, in that I quite only to check on my accounts nearly a year later to find I had been earning some small profits. I built my sister a small site, and nearly two years later she is now ranking for some pretty damn good keywords without almost any seo work done.

It may be that your site is not ranking for the right keywords.. It can take time, but if you keep working on it in that time, your reward can be even greater. Both Opensiteexplorer and Rushsem show no data for your site (usually the case when a site is new). My advice would be to get a few strong backlinks pointed at your site, maybe from social media or other and give it some time.

 

[LandofOz]

Very nice site. It might also be an idea to translate the Swedish, German and Italian online casino pages to those languages.

 

[BestListCasinos]

- With that said ^ (I have seen this happen a few times..) If for whatever reason you do give up, or need to focus on something else.. Do not let your hosting account expire or take your website offline. It can often take Google a while (up to a year in some cases) before you start ranking for the right traffic.

I had almost the same story, in that I quite only to check on my accounts nearly a year later to find I had been earning some small profits. I built my sister a small site, and nearly two years later she is now ranking for some pretty damn good keywords without almost any seo work done.

It may be that your site is not ranking for the right keywords.. It can take time, but if you keep working on it in that time, your reward can be even greater. Both Opensiteexplorer and Rushsem show no data for your site (usually the case when a site is new). My advice would be to get a few strong backlinks pointed at your site, maybe from social media or other and give it some time.

wow thanks for the advise RyanWeb... very much appreciated.
Yes I will follow your advice and keep doing what I did for the past 6 months and improving.

Thank you!... as I was feeling worried about wasting my time and money!

 

[BestListCasinos]

Very nice site. It might also be an idea to translate the Swedish, German and Italian online casino pages to those languages.

Hi LandofOz,

Yes that is the plan but I am currently concentrating on the English version for now. I want to see some profits from the English version before I do that however and then invest that same profit onto the other ones. I have spend thousands on translations, content, games ecc... but thankfully I am a developer my self so I did all the development for the site myself and that spared me some bucks.

But yes I will have the site translated to the other languages one day to help my players from the respective countries who do not understand English.

Thanks for the advise, appreciated!

 

[Guard Dog]

... but thankfully I am a developer my self so I did all the development for the site myself and that spared me some bucks.

What did you write it in? Just curious, I haven't looked at the source.

 

[BestListCasinos]

Hey GuardDog,

That's in PHP for CMS and usual CSS/HTML5 for front end.
You can look at the code... that's no secret!

 

[ARZ]

Hi

Just checked the website, and it seems good, you should not have problems with conversions from my point of view. I´ve been waiting for my first depositor for 4 months, just don´t give up and after some time you will create a strong player database

Wish you luck