An Introduction to Website Gamification
Nowadays, there’s a website for everything (or almost everything) and the growing competition for your visitors time and attention is something that you can’t ignore. So what’s a marketer to do? A growing technique called Website Gamification can successfully set you apart from the others and is proving to be more fun and engaging for visitors.
What is Website Gamification?
Gamification is not a new concept but the creative ways web developers are using it within the site design has changed over the years. Website Gamification works by implementing gaming mechanics to create psychological effects, change behavior, increase engagement, and provide an invigorating experience visitors will remember.
Point & Rewards System
An example of this is providing a points and reward system to visitors that refer new users to your website. This can be implemented with the use of locked premium content that becomes unlocked once the user achieves his or her goal.
This provides 2 specific advantages:
- More engaged users
- An influx of new users that may not have previously landed on your website.
While this approach can be a great way to engage users, it does need to be used with a bit of caution. You may need to have a secondary approach to provide access to content for users who aren’t interested in playing to earn access.
This point reward and badge system can also be used for sites that would like to encourage visitors to post content on their site or blogs. In this case, it serves as a way for contributors to compete with one another and promote future engagement.
Incentivize Users
For e-commerce businesses, using a gamification strategy that provides a discount once a user achieves their goal is a great way to incentivize users to interact and experience all your site has to offer.
This could be done using a Find a Hidden Object approach where a user has to locate a set number of items that you offer on your website to unlock additional discounts. The bonus for you? This approach provides the opportunity to introduce new offerings users may not have seen within the site itself.
Another approach that could be of use is an offer wheel that would allow users to spin a wheel to receive a discount in exchange for their email address or posting on social media.
Quizzes are often used as a marketing vehicle that provides engagement. They may have been around as far back as I can remember, but they are still a relevant example of Gamification at play.
Website Gamification does not have to be complicated to be useful. A simple approach could be the use of creative animation while large pieces of content like videos or games load on your site to keep users engaged and prevent them from bouncing while they wait. This approach is simple and can prove to be very important in some situations.
The use of Gamification within your website will vary depending on what your business does, who your target audience is and what you are looking to accomplish. But if you are looking for creative ways to capture your users attention, interactive elements are great way to improve engagement and guide your users to perform a specific task while providing a fun experience.
