Gamification is the use of the game design concepts in non-game environments to enhance user engagement. Games have been popular among the masses for centuries. Gamification has been in use for many decades across various industries in the form of loyalty and reward points. With user attention so little on the web, gamification could be a handy strategy to apply to your website to engage users on your site and make them spend more time on your website.

It is a known that Businesses have started using this as a strategy to drive user behaviour. This will make sure that it will increase engagement of the users.

Amy Jo Kim, has a background in neuroscience, computer science and psychology, who is also a social game designer has contributed to many gamification projects. The following is her approach to making great work in a fast-changing terrain.

There are  a lot of research articles on how gamification has yielded better results for the business.

Gamification is not a new technique, a lot off applications have become successful by implementing exactly this in their business plans.  There a lot of gamification cases that have been documented over time.

Let’s look at some successful applications of gamification in recent times

1. Nike +

In 2006, Nike launched Nike+ which allows people to do a lot more with their exercise. The made it possible for you to track and share your daily “fuel points” that you earned via your activities and also compare them to other people.
In 2013, Nike + FuelBand was known to gamify the daily activities of the people using it. They track and monitor each activity and the level of difficulty. This then leads to earning some amount of NikeFuel which will enable them to move to higher levels. There’s how Nike captures you into their team

2. Foursquare:

Image credits: Cambodia4kids.org Beth Kanter

A location-based social network that enables people to share their location and connect with people. They followed a system of to “turn life into a game” by providing their users with badges and points for visiting locations. They would reward them for finding new locations or even for returning to one. According to Search Engine Land’s post by Greg Sterling gamification is in Foursquare’s DNA.

3. Stackoverflow/Quora points/upvoting system

The questionnaire system has also adopted the gamification way of encouraging your users to engage with their platforms.

Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professionals and enthusiasts. They launched in 2008 and in 2010, brought out there gamification approach to the whole venture.

Quora Points:  Quora in order to engage more users on the site, brought out a system where the users obtain credits depending on whether they ask a question, get an answer upvoted, or whenever you add exciting content.

Image credits:Jurgen Appelo

4. Duolingo:

Image credits: Wikipedia

Gamification in the education sphere! Duolingo is a free language-learning platform that uses gamification to keep their users on their toes. They have levels, points, social ranking, and a friendly owl who is your cheerleader throughout to keep you motivated.

5. Starbucks:

In their gamification tactics, Starbucks used reward points to increase their sales. How does it work? People would register through an app and every time they bought a Starbucks product they would accumulate more stars. There were 3 levels to this and depended on your frequency of Starbucks visits.

Core concepts of gamification and how to apply them:

1. Identify your business goal before choosing to go down the gamification route. The easiest thing to do is copy popular tactics that you see elsewhere like points, badges and leaderboards. But without a larger goal, these tactics will not yield the right results. The game has to be designed for the social crowd you are targeting

2. Once the goal is identified, we should look at what will engage or motivate the user behaviour that is beneficial to our business goal.  Keep them motivated with stats, rewards. Keep it in such a way that the learning is fun and easy but the mastery is challenging and more engaging.

3. Apply the appropriate game mechanics.This should be progressively leading the way to learn and eventually mastering the game (or here your end goal). Having points system and leaderboards to create a sense of competition.

4. Track and measure the effectiveness. You need to keep up with the maximum engagement and making the whole process fun for your audience. Once that is done, you need a feedback mechanism to let you know what the stats are for you to analyse. To measure how effective the whole process has been.

Gamification should engage, motivate and be a fun process to everyone. It should never turn into a manipulative process which can lead to adverse effects. Create a great engagement loop keeping in mind the legal/ethical factors.

WordPress plugins that can help you gamify your website

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A great plugin to add badges, leaderboards, and levels to your website.

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[accordion_item title=”WordPress Quest”]

A plugin that grants users points and rewards achievements based on the type of interactions they are involved in.

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[accordion_item title=”shareThat”]

This plugin includes great gamified promotions. They have spin the wheels, word search, memory match, and more.

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[accordion_item title=”Achievements for WordPress”]

A plugin that has challenges, badges, and points. A great way to track user activity and progress.

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[accordion_item title=”User Badges”]

Here is a great gamified structure to help the user gain achievements by posting comments or reading posts. You can also customize the achievements.

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Would you like to gamify your website and increase visitor engagement?  Let us know!

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