Nobody likes to be delayed, whether that's stuck in traffic during the morning commute or waiting for a webpage to load fully; small pauses can be frustrating. We all want things to go as seamlessly as possible, because there is a sense of order and control in that, as nothing is taking away from our precious time and planned routines.
But the truth of the matter is that delays do happen, and they are infuriating for business owners, where every second and millisecond counts. This is particularly true in the online gambling industry, where a slow-loading casino page could be a silent killer in terms of the user disengaging.
Delays can crop up in many areas, from scripting to third-party payment solutions. Deposit and withdrawal times at online casinos are some of the most sought-after information that users look for before signing up. The best Mastercard casinos, for example, are known for fast card-based transactions, with some platforms processing withdrawals in as little as 15 minutes. Players often check a platform’s terms and conditions to find this kind of information. But once they start using the site, they may notice other types of delays, like slow-loading pages. So what are some of the main website elements that can slow down the experience?
An online casino platform has to be visually impactful to appeal to players, so they are naturally packed with many images. Those images, however, can hurt the site’s performance if they are not optimised.
Uncompressed images are the most common problem in this area, which creates unnecessary bloating to the page. There’s simply no point in having a 3000px wide image that’s resized down into a 200x thumbnail just to depict a slot.
That’s excessive waste, and there’s another problem with images that happens through scripting. If a site is unnecessarily loading images below the fold as well, that’s consuming unnecessary bandwidth and processing power that will slow down the page. It’s better to instead have them load only when the user scrolls to take the weight off processing.
Animations
Slot games rely on animations to give them a dynamic and engaging feel. Spinning reels, flair from a winning payline, pop-up bonus features and more make slots animation heavy. They are very impactful but need to be optimised, and this is where selecting high-quality, rigorously tested games from providers can make a difference.
Players can’t be exposed to lag when playing live blackjack, or see a slot game stuttering after hitting the spin button simply because of the extra drain caused by poorly optimised animations. For on-site animations rather than in games, efficient formats like CSS and SVG animations can make a big difference in speed and efficiency compared to something like large GIFs.
Third Party Integrations
Third-party scripting on a site can bring great elements to the platform, like payment gateways, analytics, customer support, live chat and input from game providers. These integrations are necessary for the overall operation of the casino site, but too many, or poorly scripted ones, can form a bottleneck when making external requests.
If there are issues on the third-party server, that’s going to reflect as the casino site being slow and limiting the load time of a page. There’s little a casino site can do about third-party server speed, so this is more about vetting high-quality integrations, which is also crucial for site security anyway.
Cluttered Code
The coding of web pages has to be immaculate as well, particularly CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Designs and content at online casino sites are ever-evolving, which means that there is constant maintenance work needed to keep things running efficiently.
Large CSS files, for example, can run into render-blocking issues if poorly configured, which makes it slower to be downloaded by the end user’s browser. Those slow parsing times will have a knock-on effect on the First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) scores.
Not a Good Host
You may well have a wonderful, carefully crafted website with efficiently optimised images and streamlined third-party scripts. But things can still fall apart when it comes to page loading time because of inadequate hosting. A poorly configured server, or one with just a weak foundation, will lead to slow responses from Time To First Byte (TTFB) requests, which creates a slowing of all further loading times.
High Bounce Rate
Players know that there is plenty of choice when it comes to different online casino sites anyway, so if yours is acting slowly, it’s easy enough for customers to jump ship and pick up where they left off on another platform.
When it comes to customer retention, slow speeds are one of the biggest barriers, as any on-site problems are just going to lead to a higher bounce rate. A smooth-running, optimised site is the key to success, so that players can get instant gratification.