In this digital era, games have become a significant part of the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. Recently, the term gamification has also emerged which is often applied to various contexts. Rumor has it that with gamification, the performance of a company or digital product can increase. What exactly is gamification? Does my business need gamification? How can my conventional business benefit from gamification?
What is Gamification?
Gamification is not gaming. This is the first thing to understand. Gamification is making a system look like a game by applying game design elements and principles to it. You've probably seen customer loyalty points, member level systems, achievement badges, sales leaderboards, or learning streaks on apps like Duolingo. These are all examples of gamification. The main goal of gamification is to make users or customers do what we want without coercion but by making the process fun. Think of gamification as spices sprinkled on your system, then too much gamification is not the right solution. You must ensure that gamification does not become a distraction in using your product or service.
How Can Gamification Be Applied To My Business?
Before you rush to add a leaderboard or point system to your app, first understand what the problem is You want to finish with gamification. Also understand that gamification does not always have to be applied to digital applications. You can apply gamification to your company's SOPs and get similar benefits. Gamification aims to help users achieve desired behavior in a more engaging and enjoyable way.
The easiest way to do this is usually by adding rewards or external rewards to your system. For example, if you create a points system or leaderboard that your employees can collect while working, which can later be exchanged for prizes at the end of the year, or employees with the highest points will get prizes at the end of the year. This can already be called very simple gamification. This system can also be applied to get customers to make more transactions with a system of lottery points, cashback or definite prizes if they reach a certain total transaction value. Even stamp cards at coffee shops that give one free drink after a certain purchase are also a very simple form of gamification.
Some more modern implementations, give users activities or mini games that they can play which again can produce certain rewards. This requires a bigger investment because it needs to be made into an interesting game and the company still has to give a prize at the end, even though the prize is usually not of very high value.
But gamification doesn't always have to be a gift. Many forms of gamification are simpler such as showing user progress, providing clear targets, displaying milestones, or breaking down complex processes into small steps that are easy to complete. In many cases, this approach is actually more effective than simply giving gifts.
In everyday life, people are often distracted by various things and thus lose direction or motivation. If your application or system can show clear goals and the progress that has been achieved, it will be easier for users to determine the next step. Therefore, displaying targets, progress bars, achievement levels, or stages of development can also be an effective form of gamification to increase motivation.
Some other popular gamification techniques include collections, social interaction and exploration. Humans naturally like to collect things, so you can provide collectible things that don't have to be of great financial value, but provide a target for users or employees to complete the collection. Social interactions such as exchanging gifts, collaboration between divisions or referral systems can also be motivating incentives. The desire for exploration can also be exploited by giving users the task of gradually unlocking new features, information, or experiences as they use the system.
Gamification Won't Help You In This Situation
Gamification is an addition that can make your application or system more effective, but is not a complete solution. right if the product or system you have is not running well. For example, if you create an application that does not solve your users' problems, or your application does not have a unique selling point (Unique Selling Point) compared to your competitors' products, then gamification will not help you increase sales. style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Another example, suppose you want to increase the number of users or duration of use of your application, but the main problem is the truth is in the ease of using your application. In this case, adding gamification features will actually make things worse. For this reason, you need to ensure that your application is well designed, easy to use and understand before adding gamification features to increase usage retention.
For implementation in the SOP system, make sure the gamification process does not distract your employees, thereby causing unhealthy competition or complicating the work process. Usually this happens if the prize offered is too large. So you need to balance the rewards offered so that they remain attractive but do not become the main focus for your employees. But keep in mind, gamification doesn't always have to be in the form of giving prizes.
Conclusion
In general, gamification is best used when you want to encourage repeated behavior. For example, increasing the frequency of customer purchases, encouraging the completion of employee training, increasing the use of certain features on an application, or helping users build new habits. If your goal is to change behavior or increase user engagement in the long term, then gamification is worth considering.
As I said at the beginning of this article, first understand the problem you want to solve, or the behavior you want to solve. changed before you determine what gamification to implement. Even if you are going to hire a professional vendor to help implement gamification, this is the first thing they will ask. Also make sure your company's application or workflow is mature enough without gamification. If there are still problems that can be solved without gamification, implement those improvements first. After that, if the results still feel less than optimal, then gamification can help you move to the next level
