Online gaming is one of the most competitive markets in the world, with brands having to come up with all sorts of innovative ways not only to win new customers but to keep them playing on their sites. We’ve seen this in online casinos, poker and sports betting. And now it’s the online bingo sites who are going the extra mile to woo us.

In this article, we’ll look at the five key ways online bingo operators push the boat out to retain their players.

Cool promotions

Let’s face it; we all like something for free, right? Well, look around, and you’ll see the bingo market is full of special offers to tempt you to join this brand or that.

All the top online bingo sites in the UK, see www.bestcasino.co.uk for a great selection, bend over backward to tempt you to sign up and keep playing. Mostly, this will be in the form of a first deposit bonus. For example, you go to 888 Ladies now and deposit £10, and you’ll get a 400% bonus bundle - £40 extra to spend on bingo or slots.

Some sites are even prepared to offer free money before you make a deposit. Sun Bingo offers £10 free, for example. But there’s always a catch – you can not just withdraw the £10, that would be a little unfair to the platform. You’ll also need to play through the money, with minimum wager requirements.

Other offers might include reload bonuses to tempt existing players to deposit more money and keep playing.

New bingo games

Once there was one simple bingo game when you had one card, and you needed to cross off all the numbers on that card. Now, things are moving up a gear. That’s not to say the games have got complicated or difficult to understand. Games are still easy to play – that’s the beauty of bingo, after all.

The new variants were brought in to mix things up and to make sure life on an online bingo site does not get boring too quickly. Even free-play social game giants like Zynga have cottoned on.

Now, you can play 90-ball bingo with 9x3 tickets where prizes are only awarded on horizontal lines. With only three prizes on offer, these games are usually faster than 75-ball games. If that’s not fast enough, you might find a “speed version” of this variant, too.

With 75-ball bingo you have a 25-square card in 5x5 format. The middle square is marked as if you already have those numbers. There are then the line prizes to be won. The first line can be horizontal, vertical or diagonal, but after that, each must be horizontal. Then there’s the full house to play for, landing all the numbers. Mixed bag games shuffle around how large the prize is for each line, rather than the increasing amount in the standard game.

Finally, try 75-ball bingo where each player has three strips, each with the 75 numbers. These tend to be more expensive games and can come with progressive jackpots.

In different rooms, you’ll find themes based on these variants, much as you do with different slot games.

Building communities

One of the oldest attractions for bingo, long before the age of the internet, was it became a social occasion for most ladies to meet up and have a game of bingo in a large hall. The chance of winning was one thing, but the company and opportunity for a good chin-wag were too good to miss.

Even though you play online bingo alone, the community aspect of the game is still important to players. That’s why the online bingo sites spend so much time and effort on building the community aspect of their platforms. The live chat facility is one way for gamers to interact with each other, but there might also be forums and meet-ups.

Slick software

As technology advances at a rapid pace, so the gaming experience improves continually. Perhaps you remember the clunky online bingo games of old, with old-school graphics, slow speed and woeful sound effects? Even if your internet connection was solid, you might be disconnected mid-way through a game.

Now, the experience is super slick. There are incredible graphics and sounds to keep you entertained and coming back for more. You might return to a site you haven’t played for ages, to see what improvements have been made to game engines.

Mobile

Perhaps the biggest gaming advancement in recent years has been mobile gaming. The attraction of being able to play a quick game of bingo while sitting on the bus or over lunch is strong. All the big bingo operators now ensure their mobile offering is as strong as it can be, just the ticket for you to keep coming back, time and again.