Do you remember the secret recipe? What makes a simple dish so scrumptious? That’s the power of adding a magic ingredient to your favorite dish! That’s the role of gamification in mobile apps. Gamification is the magic ingredient that transforms the user’s mood invoicing a desire to spend more time on the app.
Creative brains have found an innovative way to make users stick around the app and serve them with desirable and fulfilling experiences. Read on the blog to learn about how gamification can transform your user engagement, and improve the stick-around time on the app. Also, learn more about how the industry biggies of all industry vertices are implementing gamification into mobile apps.
Research Insights about the gamification Industry
Research conducted by the National health institute concluded that gamification in mental health apps was effective in reducing Depression symptoms among patients. Gamification in mental health can help users engage in behavioral therapy sessions to improve their mental health.
From mental health to fitness apps, gamification is now successfully a part of apps of all niches. A recent study conducted reveals how 89% are inclined towards using apps with gamifying elements in them. The latest survey by SocialTimes reveals app owners have witnessed additional traffic of 200% on their apps resulting in an increased number of downloads.
What makes Gamification so effective in mobile apps?
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Gamification provides customer insights
Gamification provides several data- points in the form of Customer Insights. Brands can learn how customers interact with the gaming elements. gain exclusive insights about their behavior and preferences on the app. It allows brands to learn about products or experiences that delight users. A game is a strategic attempt to enhance organizations, services, learning, or activities in the app.
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It amplifies Employee training outcomes
Let’s all admit it, employee training gets monotonous and boring after a certain point of time. Moreover, it becomes a point of compulsion to get done with it, only to resume back our “real work”. But how about adding a whole new layer of excitement and fun?
Gamification is a creative approach that engages and motivates the employees to actively participate in the training programs.
A recent study from a firm KPMG reveals that gamification if incorporated “strategically”
can improve employee performance over time. The firm introduced a campaign called ” Race Around the World” that allowed its employees to design their virtual characters. Each correct answer about the company’s offerings earned some travel points. This move enabled the employees to progress rewards and learn more about the company’s services and products.
Top Benefits of Gamification
Now that we have learned how gamification can be an effective tool, let us now explore the benefits.
Improved engagement Rate –
Gamification has proven to impact the innate desire of humans for recognition, accomplishments, and a healthy flow of competition. Gamification improves the users’ behavioral response and social needs by designing interactive elements. By elevating users’ level of interest you improve their engagement rate on the app.
Reduced Churn Rate
By creating a challenge-reward environment, you naturally draw more users to be a part of game dynamics. Hence, introducing badges, streaks, and rewards fosters a sense of community building. For example, Duolingo’s gamification in the app has significantly reduced the overall churn Rate. By introducing features like reward points, and performance charts to motivate users to be a part of the app.
Improved Customer Retention
Retaining customers has been a top priority for businesses of all niches. Gamification is a strategy that has helped brands get a better understanding of what the users truly want from their products. By creating elements that make their on-app journey smooth and fulfilling, brands can drastically improve their customer acquisition rate.
Crowdsourcing
Gamification is a robust tool leveraged in crowdsourcing. As crowdsourcing relies on a pool of individuals to contribute actively, gamification can improve the outcome of their projects. Users actively contribute to the crowdsourcing platforms to earn monetary benefits and customizable rewards. For example, an app like Waze collects data from its users to provide real-time traffic updates.
Deliver better services/products to target customers
Understanding the pan areas of customers can help brands resolve those concern areas. By introducing gamified interactive components into their apps, brands can learn what kind of solutions their target users are looking for. Hence, brands can make improvisations to their products making them appealing to the masses.
Improved learning and skill-building
I am sure you all wouldn’t deny the importance of the right skills over the education you have. In the constantly evolving world, it becomes imperative to constantly upgrade your knowledge to adapt to the market necessities. Hence, several learning apps and employee productivity apps have emerged in the market. Introducing gaming components can involve their interest and enhance their learning curve.
Constant reskilling and upskilling
In the modern dynamic business world. It becomes essential to introduce employee training programs to help working professionals identify business opportunities. Gamification has been a creative tool that assists employees in constantly polishing their skills for real-world applications.
Reinforcing Knowledge Retention
Integrating the spaced repetition technique with gamification elements has allowed brands to improve their knowledge retention. The gamification components can help learners in moving information from short-term to long-term memory. This allows information to be stored in the long-term memory of the brain leading to better retention.
Collaborative Adobe
Online entertainment platforms have been a catalyst in connecting like-minded individuals from the other side of the planet. Including features like chat systems and chatbot gamification has taken user connectivity to a whole new level. By establishing quests and challenges, there is a healthy flow of competition among the users. Furthermore, it raises excitement and willingness to participate in the game.
Exploring different elements of Game Mechanics
Do you wonder what makes apps more fun? The right gamification components can increase the accessibility bar of your app making it appeal to broader masses.
- Progress bars – This is the most crucial part of the gamified component is the progress bars. They allow the users to evaluate their progress and navigate their way up. Progress trackers make the users aware of what steps they need to take to accomplish a specific goal.
- Micro levels of challenges – Designing micro levels encourages users to be involved in the game dynamics. Rewarding users at the end of every correct micro action motivates them to indulge in the mobile app daily.
- Customizable rewards – Customized rewards are a definite way to ensure that the users are getting remunerated for their active contribution to the app. Customizable goes even a step ahead in allowing the users to use the reward points the way they want to.
- Leaderboards – Leaderboards are a great source of keeping a tab of the competitor scores. Hence, it urges the players to strategize and plan in order to outperform the score of their competitors.
Key tactics/Practices for implementing Gamification
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Research target segment
Defining your target audience creates the groundwork for your gamification project. This will create personalized and reflective experiences that resonate with your target audience.
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Define the purpose of gamification
The purpose of gamification plays a crucial point in determining the overall success of your gamified app. This can make winning an easy-to-grasp move.
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Incorporate gaming elements strategically
Integrate elements and mechanisms that invoke their interest levels and desire to play the game. For instance, prioritize the use of rewards, especially for crowdsourcing projects. Likewise, it becomes important to optimize challenges and reward systems. This step plays a non-negotiable role.
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Test and Iterate
This step is highly customized as there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Leverage the most gamification tactics by consistently testing the system and collecting user feedback. Reiterate the different gamification components and choose the best gamification strategy that is a perfect fit for your organization.
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Keep the Fun Alive
Refrain from intentionally incorporating too many gaming elements that overwhelm you. Incorporate the elements that align with the purpose of your app.
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Keep the UI simplistic
Another best gamification practice is keeping the gamification design user-centric and friendly. This makes the entire design intuitive and eases the navigation flow. This will instantly raise the accessibility bar for more users to interact and participate in your gamified app.
Let’s talk about success stories!
Several successful projects injected adequate gamification components by incorporating the right gamification strategies. By partnering with one of the reputable Mobile App Development Company you can deliver your customers a gamified app to plunge into and cling on.
Todolist – A Productivity app
The app Todolist adopted the most fun environment to incorporate gamification in its productivity booster app. It incorporated positive karma points for every task the users accomplished and negative Karma points for every missed deadline. Whether it is a simple task or a goal set to accomplish professional goals, Todolist rewards its users for each earned point.
As the users pave the way up to higher levels, they can share their accomplishments with their peers and friends. Users are allowed to share their ” Karma score “over social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Woot – A gamified e-commerce platform
Woot is a perfect example of an e-commerce platform that creates scarcity and integrates it with gamification elements. Woot runs a surprise sale of selected products on its app for a limited period. In this way, it allows its users to leverage this sale opportunity with their reward points.
Creating an environment of unpredictability and desirability allows the users to engage in its app.
Fitocracy – Gamification for Health and fitness application
There is no point denying that getting out of bed every morning can be an overwhelming task, especially when you have to hit the gym. Fitrocarcy collects the users;’s health and past health data to transform into exclusive workout plans and meals for their users. It rewards its users for sticking with the preferred workout plans or meals. Thus, users can seamlessly use gamification to stay on track embracing their fitness journey.
Goibibo – Travel and Tourism Industry
With the ongoing craze for IPL and the arrival of summer Holidays, Goibibo leveraged both events into a successful business opportunity. They achieved it by successfully implementing gamification elements into their travel app. They gave reward points to the users for every milestone achieved by Mumbai Indians in real-time. Masses have used the reward points to book their favorite destinations.
The popularity of IPL and summer Holidays sparked an atmosphere of excitement. This was leveraged by gamifying Goibibo to create a win-win situation for users and the brand.
Key Takeaways – Redefine the Success of your Mobile Apps
Gamification has proven to be a highly effective pattern in making our day-to-day activities more fun and inclusive. Ultimately, this improves customer engagement and stick-around time of users on the app. An add-on gives them the ability to track their progress and evaluate their performance. For businesses, it amplifies the success ratio as users truly love their games. Quite a win-win for everyone!
Virtual reality experiences have made gamifying experiences even more appealing and vivid. Moreover, the adoption of artificial intelligence has added realism and personalization making it appeal to a much broader segment of the audience. Partnering with the right virtual reality company can elevate your user’s in-app experience.
As more people prefer their Android devices to complete several tasks, adopting a gamification pattern is defining the success of mobile apps. At this point, the role of a Mobile development company comes into play for creating intuitive and immersive gaming encounters.
