If you want to harness the full power of gamification, you need to know the best gamification techniques.
But what is gamification, and how can it help your business succeed? In this article, we will look at 15 powerful techniques you can use to provide a more immersive user experience and drive revenue.
Games are not just entertaining; they also excite and inform us. And that’s why, for example, the video game industry has overtaken the filming industry by a large margin. Play is a natural human craving. Kids spend most of their time playing, and that’s one of the main reasons they learn so fast — they stimulate their brains while discovering the world.
Gamification is the process of applying game mechanics to non-game situations and environments.
You can create a game or gamify a process that might usually be seen as boring or repetitive for various reasons. Gamification can make your message stick, encourage specific behavior, or increase engagement.
With gamification by your side, you can also add an extra layer of fun and excitement to learning (for example, turning lessons into enjoyable missions).
So don’t miss out on providing a more engaging experience to your employees, learners, or customers. Find out about the best gamification techniques and how to use them to maximize results on all fronts in our list of 15 Best Gamification Techniques To Implement In Your Business Today.
Now, let’s get to the sweet stuff!
If you’re in the e-Learning industry, mark the beginning of your journey with a bang to excite your team for what’s to come.
Send out a curiosity-provoking newsletter with stories about previous learning initiatives and testimonials that emphasize your course’s immense value.
Schedule an email campaign and spread it out over several weeks. Include multiple communication channels.
Freebies are also a fantastic way to draw in people — welcome them with cool gifts, bonus points, or vouchers.
Keep track of people’s progress by using gamification checkpoints. You can mark completed tasks with a star or checkmark.
Employees or learners will experience immediate gratification and receive a quick mental push to keep on delivering solid performances.
As human beings, we have a natural urge to express ourselves. When providing an environment for people to unleash their creativity to create something (regardless of their field of work), they will invest their time and energy while having fun making your product or service as best as possible.
Celebrating those who perform best can sometimes make others feel undervalued, and keeping a score can demotivate low-scoring participants.
But what if you rewarded everyone for beating their personal best scores?
Avoid letting everyone know who the weakest performers are. Instead, give recognition to more than one person for the same achievement.
Visually pleasing elements have the power to get people’s attention and make them feel much more engaged with their learning or work, and when it comes to eye candy, bright colors and graphics provide the most visually-pleasing experiences.
Curiosity is one of the most effective ways to keep people engaged and wanting more. You can provoke people’s curiosity by, for example, creating a sequence-based challenge (e.g., 1-10) or using a ‘cliffhanger,’ so they would want to keep going to see how the story ends.
Teamwork produces much better ideas and results than one-man armies.
Allow people to suggest one issue per week that the group can work to solve together. Everyone can vote on which issues need resolving first. Spend a few minutes going through each topic; if someone’s suggestion fixes a problem, recognize them and make them feel appreciated.
Simple little challenges can do wonders to get users up and moving, and due to their simplicity, people cannot help but join the fun. One good example of such a challenge in action comes from Facebook. The challenge calls on people to invite their friends to get the first 100 likes on their page. There’s a tiny gamification element, yet it works like a charm!
Microlearning is (as the name suggests) a small bit of content created for a specific learning objective. It usually takes 2 – 7 minutes to complete and doesn’t necessarily have to be done in a classroom or office.
Think of powerful formats like interactive or animated videos and infographics.
If a task is too simple, a learner or employee can quickly get bored and lose motivation to perform at their best. On the other hand, if the job is too difficult, they can quickly get frustrated.
The gaming experience you create needs to be balanced. A task should excite users by challenging them, but it should also be within the reach of their abilities. If your game has that special sweet spot, it will open the door to what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly calls a’ flow’ state.
Leaderboards act as a visualizer for progress and winning. They can also be used to ignite friendly competition among users and can boost motivation with significant effect.
You can tie scores to any data point to reinforce the desired behavior.
If you wish to create more engagement and better performance, reward users for consistency, accuracy, and good overall results.
Leaderboards are a highly efficient way to get people working as a team to reach goals.
However, individual leaderboards are also effective in driving motivation, accuracy, and skill-building.
Talk about your people’s performance. Tell them what they’re doing right and what they could work on perfecting to keep them motivated to become the best version of themselves.
Constructive performance conversations help people see what is being achieved (boosts their confidence) and where they could improve (motivates them to do better).
The following gamification techniques work especially well within the iGaming industry, but also have the power to motivate and engage employees and learners.
Also, give people points for logging on to your website or learning system without skipping days.
To avoid confusion or people missing out on the action, make sure to let them know that there are secret unlockables upfront so that they can immerse themselves in the extra level of excitement. This will help ignite their curiosity and add another layer of addictiveness to the game.
Roleplaying is one of the most exciting aspects of video gaming. By allowing people to step into the shoes of different professionals such as a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, etc., you can unleash their hidden potential as they put their imagination to the test. In the process, they also learn new skills and increase their empathy levels.
For example, through roleplaying, you could train a group of future nurses on handling stressful situations in the hospital. Two people could be playing the role of a panicked mother and her son who needs urgent medical care, and the other could be the nurse. In this situation, the nurse would be able to test her reaction skills and her ability to remain calm under pressure.
A powerful narrative will keep learners, employees, and customers engaged and wanting to return for more. People need stories to feel like one with the world and make sense of it. That is why inserting a strong story into a gamified experience can have a solid and addictive effect on the user. Come up with stories that connect with players and let them know how completing specific tasks will move the story forward. Keep the experience interactive to drive engagement.
The key benefits of gamification lie in the realm of engagement and motivation. This could mean anything from giving people the push to visit the gym regularly to investing more focus and energy in studying or at the workplace.
One of the most exciting things about gamification is that it can be applied to virtually every industry due to the motivation and engagement factors.
So, where is the gamification train headed? Regardless of how much the concept might develop in the future, gamification has proved its value and is here to stay. Furthermore, with the advent of new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), exciting new realms will come into existence, and this will have a massive impact on how businesses of all sectors engage customers and employees.
Even though gamification has already been introduced in many areas with great success, it is still in its infancy. As video games keep on taking over the mediums that we now cannot do without (computers, mobile phones, etc.), gamification will keep on growing while creating never-seen-before conditions for business success.
If designed right, exciting gaming elements applied to relevant situations can help employees, students, and customers experience a rise in motivation and engagement. With the help of gamification, people can find the motivation to immerse themselves in their field of choice while building skills and improving their memory retention abilities.
So if you’re looking for an all-in-one solution to increase employee, learner, or customer satisfaction and productivity, gamification is an option you should strongly consider… and Smartico is here to help you shoot for the stars!
As a leading Gamification & CRM Automation solution, Smartico offers:
And that’s just a tiny sample of what’s on offer. Smartico can help your company grow exponentially by supplying the solutions needed to bring the motivation and engagement in your business to a whole new level. To start your journey to unparalleled success, book your free in-depth demo today at: https://smartico.ai/request-a-demo
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