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May 16, 2024
The competition to grab users’ attention has never been so intense. More and more companies are trying to level up their website’s engagement with blogs, multimedia and games – proving that a successful business website needs more than good looks and detailed information.
At Ncoded Solutions, we’ve paid close attention to these trends.
As website owners, you want your visitors to stay engaged and interact with the content, but the thing is – how to achieve that?
At first, the problem seems pretty simple: we make a website and we want people to use it as long and as frequently as possible. But, it’s not that easy to grab a user's attention nowadays…
Let’s use good old-fashioned psychology for just a moment. Most people like the concept of rewards, right? We are inherently motivated by challenges and ability to overcome them, and that’s the engagement cycle that is hard to break away from.
So far, the best technique for managing this concept is gaming. In fact, gaming is one of the biggest growing entertainment businesses of the 21st century.
In order to truly stand out, you should consider gamification of your website.
What is Gamification?
Gamification is a special technique used for boosting user experience and engagement in digital products.
It adds game-like elements to non-game environments and that’s how it makes websites more dynamic and engaging.
Game mechanics may include points, levels, challenges, rewards, leaderboards, and more when applied to websites.
So it’s not about transforming your website into an actual game – it just uses game principles in non-game contexts.
As we like to say here in Ncoded Solutions:
If there are humans involved in some process, that process can be gamified.
Game elements can be seamlessly inserted into any digital product to increase its usability, engagement and performance.
For example, think of social media apps like Facebook. If we swap the concept of likes for points and number of followers for levels, we’ll soon see the growth in number of users and their overall engagement. Even a smaller change, like customizing your avatar in the app, showed to be very efficient.
The engagement cycle
The engagement cycle or the hook model is based on 4 main concepts:
Triggers initiate user–product interactions and they are usually connected to the user's needs and emotions.
Actions are basic behaviours that users perform to receive rewards. Balancing actions and rewards in the right way is a real challenge – if a game is too easy or if rewards are too frequent, users may lose their motivation. Rewards should feel earned and make the user come back.
Investment represents the effort we put into our product to upgrade it and give the user a reason to come back.
User experience (UX)
Exploring how people interact with digital technologies can be quite complex. Traditionally, the focus was on usability — how easy a technology is to use, learn, and perform tasks with. However, user experience (UX) goes beyond just usability by considering the emotional responses people have when using a product.
Gamification introduces emotional design elements into UX, which can dramatically affect how users feel about a product.
Game mechanics like points, badges or levels can evoke feelings of satisfaction which is crucial for positive UX.
User engagement
User engagement is directly linked to how often users return to a digital product and to profitability, that’s why it’s so important.
High engagement leads to higher retention rates.
Also, users that are highly engaged are more likely to return and share your app with friends.
A couple of researches show that fully engaged customers are not only more loyal but also more profitable.
On average, a fully engaged customer contributes to a 23% increase in profitability, whereas a disengaged customer can decrease profitability by 13%.
This demonstrates the significant impact that customer engagement can have across various industries.
Engagement isn’t just about making your product pretty or nice to use, it’s an interactive process that dynamically builds over time as the user finds new and rewarding things to do. There is no such thing as being done with engagement.
Gamification techniques and examples
Examples of Gamification
Let’s have a look at some real-world examples and see how diverse businesses use gamification techniques to engage their customers and achieve their goals.
1. Linkedin
Every profile on Linkedin has its own completion progress bar which encourages users to fill it up. The complete Linkedin profile increases its visibility on the platform and helps the user to attract more good opportunities. As it turns out, this game-like feature motivates users to engage much more with the Linkedin platform.
Another thing that Linkedin implements is the mystery box technique.
“Someone viewed your profile” – at first it seems useless, but the actual goal is to evoke the user's curiosity → “Who viewed my profile? Is someone considering me for a job?”
The user can get an answer by subscribing to Linkedin premium.
2. Duolingo
Another great way to use gamification for business is by encouraging competition. Duolingo uses game-like elements – points, levels and leaderboard to make learning a new language more fun and engaging.
3. Salesforce
Badges give users a feeling of accomplishment and push them to level up. A good example of this is Salesforce and their Trailblazer Community system. Salesforce encourages their users to gain more and more knowledge about Salesforce platform and move up in the ranks at the same time.
4. Starbucks
Points systems drive user engagement by rewarding them for doing specific actions. Starbucks loyalty customers can earn stars (point) every time they purchase and stars can be exchanged for free coffee or food later. Also, this program encourages customers to try out Starbucks new products.
To deepen customer relationships, consider integrating a points system alongside a leveling system. This approach unlocks new features or content for users as they progress, which will enhance their long-term engagement.
5. Nike
Nike uses gamification in their Nike Run Club product to make fitness more engaging – users can set their personal goals, earn achievements for their milestones and share their success with their friends on social media. Sharing achievements on social media not only provides social validation for the user, but also increases your product’s exposure.
6. Lacoste’s virtual store
Virtual reality (VR) enhances user experience by making interactions with digital products more intuitive and realistic. For example, Lacoste uses VR in their online store to showcase their collections in a more engaging way. They incorporate "hunting" elements, where users can explore the virtual space to find and collect vouchers and discounts, adding an interactive, game-like dimension to shopping.
Ncubed
Recently at Ncoded Solutions, we launched our game Ncubed — a memory game that challenges players in 3 dimensions. The game presents a cube composed of various cards, and your task is to match pairs of cards as usual. However, instead of laying flat, these cards are arranged on the faces of a rotating 3D cube.
But, it’s not just about what you remember, it’s about how quickly you can do it and with as few moves as possible.
To make Ncubed a little bit more exciting, we’ve added a leaderboard feature. After completing a game, players can save their scores and see how they rank against other players.
Ncubed serves as an example of how even simple games can be useful in driving user engagement and enhancing user experience (UX). It’s suitable for players of all ages and offers a great brain exercise – memory and problem solving skills.
How to play Ncubed?
Playing Ncubed is simple:
- Rotate the cube - use your mouse, touchpad or mobile screen to spin the cube and view all its sides.
- Find and match - click on two cards to turn them over. If they match, they'll freeze, bringing you closer to collecting the whole cube
- Dominate the leaderboard - continue matching pairs until all cards are matched and the cube is full. If time runs out, you’ll need to try again. At the end, you can save your score and see your place on the leaderboard.
Ready to play?
We invite you to try out the Ncubed game - it’s available now on the Ncoded Solutions' website. Happy gaming! 🕹️
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