So, are you the “one shot, two targets” kind of developer? Or want to take the humblest of app ideas and make them go huge! Then ‘Gamification’ is the word you are looking for. Today, many of the big brands to small businesses are using this concept as a part of their online marketing strategy. The core intent of the gamification technique is to elevate the engagement of internal (employees) and external (external) resources of the organization to improve the bottom line.
Similar to every weekend, last Friday, we had to attend a session on Gamification that is hosted by our Head of Marketing. Well, it was a knowledge gaining session indeed. Before this session, I had a basic idea about this term. But the session has unveiled not only the definition of the term but also key elements and strategies of gamification.
In this article, we will go to step by step discussion to explore gamification in detail. Let’s start!
Conception of Gamification
Gamification is an online marketing tactic that involves game principles and game-design elements in a non-game context. Motivate your customer to discover more about your offerings by delivering them a fun experience. Basically, it’s all about manipulating your website or mobile app visitors. With an interesting gaming program, you can easily promote your stuff to the consumers.
The concept of the game is based on human psychology. We love achievements, rewards, community involvement, competition, high scores, leader boards ranking, etc. Games address all these human tendencies, and that’s why people get addicted to them. Gamification is more similar to a game. It is one of the unbeatable methods to retain customers.
The best part is, one does not need to redesign and redevelop the website or mobile application entirely. If your website or mobile app is already performing pretty well, the implementation of gamification can be the icing on the cake. It offers lifetime value to the users by offering them a fun experience to motivate the end-users to improve loyalty, interaction, and eventually sales.
The crux to Setup an Excellent Gamification
Set clear objectives
Usually, each new idea is inspired from somewhere. Well, you are allowed to take inspiration from someone’s work/idea, but not to create a replica of it. Because whatever is good for others might not be good for you. So, the primary task of gamification is to be very specific about your organization needs.
Get clarity about what you want to achieve through gamification, define your business objectives and shape your gaming program accordingly. It helps you in planning out a perfect strategy and attaining your business goals quickly.
Define your target audience
Always think from the end-users perspective. Understand and consider their interest areas and shape your gaming to satisfy their needs. Review and analyse consumers’ behaviour on a regular basis and decide what type of design you should go for.
Determine user journey
Never assume the things! Gamification is the journey of your users and not yours. So, before creating a draft for the game design, always learn about customers’ expectations. Craft the gaming experience in such a way that users stay engaged throughout the journey and do not lose the excitement at any point.
Maintain users’ interest by informing them about their current position and what would be the next level in the game. Also, facilitate them with the complete guidelines on how they can reach that next level. It immensely improves users’ excitement and interest level.
Keep it simple and real
Achievements of customers should be recognized through tangible rewards and leader board points like vouchers or coupons. Such rewards seem more real to the end-users and add value to their life.
Explore different gaming designs
Consider all the above points while exploring the gaming designs. Identify the interests of your target audience and design our game accordingly in order to achieve anticipated output. Also, make sure, all the options you select should be visually rich, engaging and interactive.
Set the rules of engagement
Don’t go complex! Users get confused if you set complicated gaming standards. Define simple rules of the game so users can easily understand them and move ahead to enjoy the game. Complex things steal their interest from the game.
Don’t miss social media platforms
Don’t forget to integrate the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. into the game. It enables users to share their achievements on different social platforms.
A consistent improvement as per users feedback
To analyse the effectiveness of the gamification, keep checking the reviews and feedback shared by the users. Update and optimize the game in an agile mode as per customers’ demand.
Strategies for Effective Gamification
Launch a sensible game
The reward system is the heart of gamification. Try to make it as simple, short and interesting as possible. If users find your reward system complicated and time-consuming, they simply leave your website or mobile app. In such a case, you cannot attain the favourable results of gamification.
Rather than pitching all the information at a time, divide the information into small activities. So, it will be easy for users to learn about the rewarding process. Enable users with the required information so they can smoothly move towards the next level.
Start with small things
If you are trying gamification for the first time, then start with a simple and easy game. It helps you in analysing users’ behaviour and response, and the game’s effectiveness. For example; you can try the trick of giving a reward to the users who visit or like or follow your Facebook page, Twitter page, YouTube Videos, etc.
Gamification must be in-line with marketing and organization goals
Core purpose of gamification is to improve awareness of your products and services as well as increase the bottom line. Thus, design the gamification in such a way that it provides information about your offerings to the users along with the gaming excitements. The game must encourage users to explore the different parts of the website and learn more about the stuff offered by you.
Consult Professionals
Working with professionals gives you assurance about tremendous success. Be a partner with a marketing team that has exclusive to work for the versatile industry. Marketing experts can guide you in defining a customized and full proof gamification strategy that aids in increasing your sales and ROI by boosting customers’ interest and engagement.
5 Best Gamification Mobile Apps
1. McDonald
McDonald has started offering various deals along with exclusive fun experience. The newly designed app delivers exclusive weekly deals on tasty food. For example; All Day Breakfast and McCafe coffee. At the end of each deal, the food giant enables users with reward. Access the McDonald mobile app from iOS or Android platforms and enjoy its reward system on each of your purchase.
2. HealthifyMe
This is a fitness app that permits users to stay fit and healthy by losing weight through regular exercises, yoga, and an appropriate diet plan. Users can set their personalized fitness goals and track the progress every day using the app. User can download HealthifyMe from Android and iOS app stores.
The fitness, yoga, and diet plans are pre-defined by the experts. Users have to perform each of the activities strictly to achieve expected results. On the completion of each task, the app credits few points in user’s account. This works as a motivational factor as the user can compete with others on the leader board.
3. Habitica
It’s a simple yet very popular productivity app available on iOS and Android. Users can create a to-do list of their tasks in the app and accomplish them as per your convenience. It’s a fully gamification app that keeps user organized and motivated. It adds the flavour of fun and excitement while attaining the goals.
4. Mint: Budget, Bills, Finance
Mint performs the duty of your money manager. It’s a financial tracker app where you can integrate your bank accounts, credit cards, investments, and bills. In this app, you can have a clear idea about your credits and debits. To maintain a balance between your earning and spending, you can use Mint to save the money.
Set your financial goals for saving in the app and follow the pre-decide activities to control spending and improving saving. With each of your savings, you can get free credit scores and more. User can install the app either from Android or iOS platform.
5. duoLingo
It’s an education app where users can learn various languages for free such as Irish, Swedish, German, Dutch, Russian, Polish, and more. duoLingo helps users in learning how to speak, write, read, and listen to different languages. The app improves the knowledge of students by teaching them the basic vocabulary, grammar, phrased, sentences, verbs, etc. of each language through questions and answers.
duoLingo is a free app and is available on both Android or iOS app stores. Learners can pre-set their daily goals. Completion of each lesson helps users in moving ahead to their decided goals. Users can track lesson completion in a pictorial view in the form of a graph.
So, are you ready to implement gamification in your mobile app?
Intuz is a premier web and mobile app development company where clients can get inclusive guidance and support in defining exclusive designing, development and marketing strategies. We have suggested the gamification strategy to a few of our clients for their mobile app. We are glad to announce that our clients are enjoying maximum ROI by engaging a massive user base through gamification. If you are in search of a similar kind of solution, then share your requirements with us
