AMs!! ThePOGG Auditing Service

[iGamingWriter]

I'd like to introduce everyone to our newest service - ThePOGG Audit.

If you're a casino operator and looking to give your properties the best chance of receive positive placement with your reviews, this is the service for you.

When you agree to an Audit, you will receive a 15-25 page report compiled by our reviewing team addressing every aspect of your customer facing service. This will highlight all the areas that are likely to present barriers to receiving a positive review alongside dozens of smaller factors that have the potential to generate player complaints or result in a poor user experience.

Other benefits include (for those operators that address the issues highlighted in the Audit Report):

• Use of 'ThePOGG Audited' seal.
• An increase in starting Trustworthiness stat from 6 to 7, reducing the length of time required to reach our 'Recommended' list from 12 months to 6 months.
• An increase in maximum Trustworthiness stat for non-Deposit Guarantee sealed properties from 8 to 9.

This service is intended to allow you to get the feedback and perspective to allow you to address any issues before they are publicly highlighted in a review and to ensure that operators that have a genuine interest in offering the best possible service receive the best placement.

You can read the documentation we've compiled on the Auditing service here.

You can see a full example of an Audit report here.

If anyone has further questions regarding this service or would like to request an Audit, you can PM me here or email us at audit@thepogg.com.

ThePOGG




Testimonial

Trada Casino - "The level of detail in ThePOGG’s Audit Report is second to none. I knew from the beginning that this would be an extremely useful service, but I can happily say it has surpassed my expectations.

A pair of fresh eyes was exactly what we needed. The audit reported on items such as brand identity, player experience and site speed, while delving into individual terms, FAQ’s and how we present information to customers.

Following receipt of this report, we made over twenty changes to TradaCasino.com. The most valuable learning from the audit was in relation to how we present information, the feedback helped us to optimise our FAQ’s section, present more relevant information in more accessible places and improve the user journey in general. I would highly recommend this service to other operators in the industry. "

[PromoteCasino]

Great idea Pogg,
Let's hope all will take you up on your offer as TC says a pair of fresh eyes was what they needed. Some casino operators are blinkered and this will help them to improve the usability and look of their sites.
Good job

[dfiocch]

Simply great, thePogg! Very, very good idea.

[sweetbet]

ThePOGG Auditing Service is a brilliant idea.

[Progger]

Hello

The current price for an Audit is £1250

"Pay for a good reviev" or "how to earn money with minimum investment"
I dont see any reason for a AM to use and pay for this pointless service.

This is an affiliate website like many others...

BTW: My feedback is costless.


Regards
Progger

[iGamingWriter]

Sorry you feel that way Progger.

Did you actually take the time to look through the report? Not paying for a good review - you're paying for our time to highlight any issues with your service. If you then choose to address those issues this will have the consequence of making a positive review more likely, if you don't, well you've paid for the service that's your choice, the review will go up as it would have without the Audit.

Feel free to be a bit more constructive with your feedback next time Perhaps if you did that your feedback would be worth paying for.

TP

[Doolally]

I think it's a good idea. Some casino websites are terrible with very basic errors on the homepage causing visitors to leave immediately without finding out what the site contains and if it's a good fit for them.

[iGamingWriter]

I think it's a good idea. Some casino websites are terrible with very basic errors on the homepage causing visitors to leave immediately without finding out what the site contains and if it's a good fit for them.

Essentially this has been put together as I've grown frustrated with operators requesting a review (with plenty of detail on site regarding what a review will involve) then receiving snippy emails afterwards when they're unhappy with what the review says. A lot of operators seem to feel that we should be coming back to them with feedback before we publish anything that could be construed as negative, but with nearly 900 sites listed and between 5-15 properties being added/week that's simply not achievable. This process justifies us setting aside the time to give full and detailed feedback before publishing for those operators that are really serious about gaining prominent position with us by offering the best product.

And I couldn't agree more - it's actually frightening the number of operators we find making really basic mistakes with fundamental stuff like displaying the payment information, linking to the right licensing agency and telling players to look for information in sections of the site that simply don't exist.

TP

[thebookiesoffers]

if it improves customer experience, which then should increase player value for us all and if you can pinch a few quid doing it as well fair plays. good idea to me

[mojo]

Use of 'ThePOGG Audited' seal.

To me there are far to many accredited seals. No offense but there is already APCW, GPWA, CM, IGB, gaffg, eCogra, AGD and more. All affiliate sites. If a casino chooses to use these seals (links) it's in direct competition with the rest of us if you don't mind me saying so.

I might have missed the withdrawal process details, like APCW and CM etc does with real players. Are there any complaints as far as cumbersome docs or catchy T/C's?

I could be wrong but it looks like an advertisement for spellcheck, aesthetics and contradicting written terms etc? Is that correct? Not that there is anything wrong with that! It's a very nice service.

[Triple7]

Well, for £ 1.250 you cannot expect someone doing for example advanced DTAP (which would have been a good thing at for example Real Time Gaming), LAC and BCM tests. For a player this seals means dat T&C's are checked and are ok for him. For players a great thing as most players do not want to read T&C's or do not understand (the implication of) all terms written in the T&C. It improves things for a player and that's an important thing, because many affiliates are forgetting that it's bottom line the player who's paying their income.

I also think there are way too many seals, but that's also because many seals do no say too much. An eCOGRA-seal just tells you're paying for MicroGaming stuff, a GPWA-seal just tells that you did pay your sponsor money, etc. Here's an audit, an objective audit, like also ThePOGG's rating system is objective and clear for players. If as a player I see somebody with this seal, I know thePOGG checked a lot of things and I know they paid him (which is normal, because it's a lot of work) for that. That's transparancy.

Same thing for the thePOGG-seal! It's clear what are conditions to get it and that it's giving you some extra points in the reviews. Fair and square, everybody can read it on the website of thePOGG. If I wanna do some research, I could even reproduce thePOGG's rating, because it's objective and all the information is there. Big difference with 99,9% of all affiliate sites where is nowhere written that Casino A is having a better rating than Casino B, because Casino A has a nicer affiliate manager and is giving a better commission or because the website has a playerdatabase with Casino A and has to keep on promoting this casino because of some predator affiliate program T&C's. At thePogg all the information is on the website. Transparancy: 100%.

And yes, thePOGG is competition, like everyone is somehow competition. But it's a good idea and it's shared here, so everybody is free to have his or her own seal! I think you should be worried more about competitors that are doing blackhat, not about competitors that are trying to increase player value and player experience!

Keep up the good work, the POGG.

[iGamingWriter]

To me there are far to many accredited seals. No offense but there is already APCW, GPWA, CM, IGB, gaffg, eCogra, AGD and more. All affiliate sites. If a casino chooses to use these seals (links) it's in direct competition with the rest of us if you don't mind me saying so.

I couldn't agree more about seals. I think that Triple7 hit the nail on the head on this one - while there are useful seals out there the reality is most are simply using this as a link building exercise. Nothing wrong with that per say but they don't bring a lot of value to players.

There's no requirement to use the Audit seal. With the other seal we run (the Deposit Guarantee), there's no requirement to link to us. Displaying the DG seal is mandatory but is about demonstrating acceptance of the terms and conditions of the seal, not about link generation, as such that seal can be displayed in a variety of ways and not all of them require a link. With the Audit seal, display isn't mandatory but we do require a link (to the Audit report) as I think it's very important to demonstrate exactly what the operator's done to get the seal (like testing lab certificates, license pages etc etc).

I might have missed the withdrawal process details, like APCW and CM etc does with real players. Are there any complaints as far as cumbersome docs or catchy T/C's?

We're not doing withdrawal testing at the present time. I used to do this just for basic reviewing, but with the introduction of the UKGC license preventing the majority of operators from accepting UK play (our team's based in the UK) it would become a piecemeal section that we could only provide to certain groups. What we are doing is ensuring that all relevant financial information is displayed in a logical fashion and in the correct places on the site (personal bugbear of mine is operators that give players loads of info on deposits, but are strangely quiet about withdrawals).

Term formatting (which is what I take you to mean by "cumbersome docs and catchy T/C's") is one of the significant factors addressed by the Audit as is checking for complaints at other significant portals. To be fair we generally do both these things during the reviewing process anyway, we just won't be providing feedback on fixing them any longer as this was taking up far too much time and many operators were disregarding the feedback anyway (in other words they wanted to argue for an improved position without fixing any of the issues that resulted in their poor position in the first place).

I could be wrong but it looks like an advertisement for spellcheck, aesthetics and contradicting written terms etc? Is that correct? Not that there is anything wrong with that! It's a very nice service.

As far as this being an advertisement, I don't think that could be rationally denied even if I wanted to lol. But from a personal perspective I feel that "spellcheck, aesthetics and contradicting written terms" doesn't quite do justice to the service offered (especially putting spellcheck first!!).

The whole point of this exercise is that we are posting between 5-15 new casino reviews per week and of those only a little more than 1 in 10 end up with any form of positive review. We provide plentiful information on our review criteria (more than I'm aware of any other review site providing) yet again and again we get the same problems coming up that prevent operators from receiving positive placement. Then when a negative review goes live I end up getting angry emails from AMs telling us that if we had criticism to make we should have come to them first. We're not in their employ and neither do we have any moral obligation to spend our time fixing other services, yet the more properties we add the more often I'm having to spend my time either arguing with AMs or providing a free consultancy service. The Audit service allows me a deflection to say 'if you want feedback before hand here's the service' and to ensure that if we're going to invest our time helping improve someone else's product that we're not losing out (due to lost hours that would have been spent improving our own product).

TP