TRAFFIC
“It’s worth spending some time working through the
join-up process for each of your key operators on your
mobile phone. If you think an operator has a horrible user
experience and you’re marketing them hard on mobile,
maybe you should think about demoting them.”
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which makes it very easy to get your
CDN service up and running. Then host
your static files from it.
Get Memcached installed on your web
host
It simply increases the reliance on RAM
memory to speed up things like database
queries. Since most modern websites use
databases, it makes sense to speed those
processes up
Optimise your images
Optimising in this case means making
the file size as small as possible, but
keeping the image quality as good as
you can. It’s very easy to upload a 2MB
image, embed it on a homepage, adjust
its size with CSS and wonder why the
site slows down
Use a fast web host
Obviously
Minimize round-trip times (RTTs)
This is the time it takes for a query
to your website and a return of data
to user. If you are dealing with users
in Australia, by having your website
hosted (excluding CDN hosted assets)
in the UK, the RTT, or ping time will
be greater than if it’s hosted locally. Put
simply, host your website physically close
to where you want it to be seen
Use caching (plugins)
if you’re using WordPress, or any other
major content management system, there
will be caching plug-ins. This means
your website is saved as a static page
(until it’s changed), so when a user goes
on your website, they’re getting a page
which doesn’t need a database to render
it. A database-driven page involves a
huge number of steps, more hard drive
usage, more back and forth between the
browser and the server. Caching is good!
Also, remember to use gzip
• Switch off all the plugins you don’t need
or use
• If you use WordPress, you will know
how easy it is to accumulate loads and
loads of plug-ins. The catch is; you will
need them to run your website. Plugins vary hugely in their efficiency and
security. It’s worth being ruthless with
plug-ins and deleting anything you don’t
absolutely need. A good trick is to set up
a development version of your website
on the same hosting you use for the main
website and enable/disable plug-ins
whilst checking sites speed at the same
time. You will probably weed out at least
a few plug-ins that are holding the whole
site back
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#5 Prioritise operators with great
mobile conversion
As an affiliate, you are in the business of
getting traffic in, persuading users to go and
join an operator. That’s great if the operator
has an excellent user experience for mobile
acquisition, but that’s easier said than done.
It’s worth spending some time working
through the join-up process for each of
your key operators on your mobile phone.
If you think an operator has a horrible user
experience and you’re marketing them hard
on mobile, maybe you should think about
demoting them.
I spent some time trawling through
operator registration processes and I could
easily do a Hall of shame… But I won’t
because I’m nice like that.
One possibility would also be to render
different operators based on device, or add
a note saying mobile friendly or not.
Conclusion
Google really cares about mobile and
they will weed out sites which give bad
mobile user experience. Just because
Mobilegeddon hasn’t hit you yet,
doesn’t mean it isn’t coming. You have a
window of opportunity to sort out your
housekeeping and keep up to speed with
this tide of change. So…good luck with
it all!
NICK GARNER is founder
of 90 Digital, the iGaming
search marketing agency.
Prior to founding the agency,
he was head of search for
Unibet and prior to that search manager
for Betfair. Nick works with several
affiliates and has his own affiliate sites.
iGB Affiliate Issue 51 JUNE/JULY 2015
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