For better or worse, nearly everyone enjoys a little friendly competition. A study by JWT Intelligence found that 63% of surveyed adults agreed that making everyday activities more like a game would make them more fun and rewarding. With this in mind, how can businesses capitalize on their customers’ love for game-like experiences?
- Implementing an effective gamification strategy that ultimately drives the most ROI for your business isn’t always as simple as it sounds on paper. For instance, many gamification platforms are standalone applications, separate from the rest of the elements of its corresponding site or app.
- Pitting your gamification platform against the other interaction points on your web properties defeats the entire aim altogether, which is to encourage valuable on-site behavior and drive loyalty.
Gamification Isn’t a Single Player Game
After examining thousands of gamification implementations, we’ve found that the most effective user experiences are tightly interwoven across different points of social engagement. In other words, gamification makes the biggest impact when it’s integrated with social tools such as social login and plugins like comments, ratings and reviews, sharing, and more.
Why is it so essential that gamification relates directly to the social elements of your site? In a nutshell, gamification drives engagement with your site’s different points of interaction. It offers incentives for consumers to sign into and actively participate in your online communities by leaving comments, sharing content and site activities, writing product reviews, and more.
Gamification as a Driver
As the infographic above shows, gamification drives other site actions that facilitate user engagement and brand awareness. Therefore, businesses seeking the most ROI for their gamification efforts need to invest in a solution that incorporates loyalty-building game elements with social plugins that act as catalysts for nurturing consumer engagement.
