Online gamblers can’t last longer than four minutes

experian-online-gambling-studyOnline gamblers are a bunch of impatient brats, according to the results of a study by information services group Experian. Faced with submitting themselves to an online identify verification procedure, online gambling customers spent an average of four minutes answering various questions before tossing their toys out the pram in frustration and redirecting their browser back to PornTube.

Predictably, that four-minute average was the lowest recorded of the ten business sectors Experian put through the hoops for their study. Airline customers were willing to sit still for six minutes while mortgage applicants were positively plodding, willing to endure a full ten minutes before assuming the bank was never going to approve their loan, putting their teeth back in and shuffling off to the pub to drown their sorrows.

Experian suggested the relative youth of online gamers compared to the study’s more tolerant sectors could have played a role in the gamers’ premature unverification. On the bright side, gamers lasted a mere three minutes when Experian performed a similar study in 2011, meaning they’ve learned to whisk themselves away to their happy place for a whole extra minute, so hope abounds. Then again, with young adults’ favored digital communication methods becoming ever more truncated – 140-character tweets, six-second videos, etc. – maybe in two years time we’ll look back on this four-minute mile as the high-water mark.

Either way, it rams home the point that online gambling firms need to make their customer experience as streamlined as possible, because their customers are a fickle lot. Study after study has demonstrated that if online consumers feel like they’re being made to wait, they’ll try waiting somewhere else. For around four minutes.