Shout Bingo

Part of my day job is to review online bingo sites and tell the world how great they are. Most of the time they are very good, sometimes they are average, but occasionally you come to a website that is just awful in almost every way.

Normally I would just move on and review something else, but this particular website has been doing my head in now for months, as it seems to be slowly ticking all of the boxes in a ‘what not to do when running a bingo site’ guide.

I am therefore going to have my rant about WixBingo, which I hope the people who run this particular site can read and take as constructive criticism. If any changes could be made, then even better for all concerned.

Mainly I just want to stop being emailed EVERY, SINGLE, DAY, by WixBingo. So if they take one peice of advice on board, I hope it’s that one.

Beta test your product and launch on time.

I know you can’t go back in time, but I think it is worth mentioning the fact there were at least two missed opening dates for WixBingo. One that was announced in March, and another in May, before the site actually opened (according to your facebook page) in April.

It was very clear that you had not tested your product with live players, as the avatar bit (which is your unique selling point) did not work whatsoever.

Choose a new a brand name.

You could argue that all the best bingo brand names are already taken, but the reality is you can slap almost any word at the front of bingo and build a brand around it. Sites like Hippo Bingo or Nutty Bingo are proof of this.

These brand names have potential as they can be themed to that name, such as having a hippo character on the site or being known for being ‘crazy fun’ as the nutty bingo name would imply.

WixBingo as a brand name implies nothing. It means nothing. It is probably one of the poorest brand names I have ever come across. However, that’s not to say it can’t be a success if you get everything else right.

Change the colour scheme

The first thing that stands out when you visit WixBingo is the whole black & green colour scheme. One thing I will say, is it stands out from the crowd!

However, there is probably good reason why no other online bingo site has gone for a colour scheme like this. Seriously, it is dark and drab and doesn’t come across as being fun and friendly or anything like what online bingo players would expect from a site.

Ensure your homepage is complete

With a new brand, players will be wary of joining and more likely to have a look around the homepage before deciding whether to sign up.

There are several errors on the WixBingo homepage, such as displaying the Pound symbol correctly. Tip: Your jackpot should be £200, not 200£.

If you have a section named ‘Top 10 Jackpot Winners’, make sure there are 10 winners names listed there, not just “this could be you”.

Similarly, if you have a section called ‘Game Rooms’ it would be nice if the visitor could see these rooms and not just have a big empty space.

Don’t spam your database

When players register an interest in your site and then do not play, of course you are entitled to email them and try and tempt them to come back to your site.

However, you’ve got to be more clever about it than just writing one email and bombarding people’s inboxes every day with the same message.

This is my inbox. You have emailed me the same message 11 times in the space of 10 days, and I’ve just received the email again after taking this picture.

Also, it is required by law that you have a unsubscribe option in your emails. None of the emails I have received contained any unsubscribe information. It is these annoying emails that have prompted me to write this post (rant).

Know your audience

Online bingo is primarily a female past-time. Sure there are men who play, but the figures are somewhere in the 90% female to 10% male.

Therefore if you are going to promote your site you would do well to advertise to a female audience, and not to a bunch of Ultimate Fighting fans who are unlikely to be your target audience.

Avatar chat – did you do your market research?

It appears to me that your USP is the fact you have an in-game avatar chat where people can dress up a little cartoon of themselves and walk around chatting.

All very well but have you stopped to consider if players actually want this kind of thing, and more importantly, whether it will lead to an increase in deposits?

When you have the avatar chat open, it takes up a huge amount of the game, covering half of the bingo screen. Not only that, players could spend a long time in the avatar space without actually playing (and spending money) in the game.

The facebook game, AvaTingo, has online bingo game where you start with the avatar and walk it around a little town, choosing places to play bingo. This works much better than how you have your game, with the avatars just a distraction from the important bit which is the bingo game.

Get new bingo software

I am a big fan of sites who go the extra distance to create their own bingo software. It can be refreshing and allows for special features you don’t get anywhere else.

However, your software is the most basic, stripped down to almost nothing, bingo software I have ever seen. It is bland, boring, the chat window rarely works and it just is not good enough when you consider the hundreds of other sites out there you are competing with.

Open 24/7

Why on Earth is this site only open for a few hours in the evening? My guess is not enough players, which if true is telling you far more than I am here.

Online bingo players want their fix of bingo throughout the day, particularly stay at home mums, housewives, the elderly and unemployed with time on their hands. If you are not open when they want to play, they will just take their custom elsewhere.

If you insist on only being open for a few hours, for gods sake put this information on the website rather than leaving players trying endlessly to log in to no avail.

Add a password retrieval system

I am absolutely shocked that you do not have some basic system for players who have forgotten their password details to be sent a reminder.

“Passwords cannot be retrieved for security reasons” is a load of rubbish. Every other site in the world lets you retrieve lost passwords.

This is just lazy, and by asking people to email you for a password retrieval is putting an obstacle in their way so they are more likely not to bother and thus lose you another customer.

Give up

Seriously, if I was you I would give it up as a bad job right now and maybe look back on all the points above before launching a new site.

For those who have yet to see WixBingo in action, check out their tutorial video below and you will be able to see all my points (bar the annoying spam emails) in action for yourself.