You may be the one who has just adopted gamification as a new strategy for getting more retention on you blog, or e-commerce website, or even for your company’s new software training module. The most common problem with a gamification platform that I see these days, is as soon as I land on the inter-phase, it shows 100 sign-up points, just verify your twitter or facebook account and have these 100 points in your wallet. This is very poor onboarding for a new player. Reason being :
- The player has just come to your site, without even giving time for having a look on your home page, he/she is thrown a bait of 100 meaningless points.
- There is no connection that you have made with this player, that will make the player return for feel attached to your site/blog etc., you haven’t established any empathy, that makes the player understand and share your importance.
If you have been to a retail store, a clever customer representative, will never start bargaining with you on the final price. This rep will first form a connection with you, will make you feel comfortable within the store, and after that this rep will show the skills of clever selling, making you pay more than the adjacent store. Hence this rep, has hooked you to the store, not only for this purchase, but for future purchases as well.
Lesson to draw from the above example is, your platform should not start with “here collect these 100 points”, but a compelling story, which will make your new player empathize with your system. And this story that I am referring to is not a long tale, or a lengthy video torture for the player, within the first 10 minute on your platform. Ths story can be anything even two words, a good mission statement, or even just a picture, yes the aesthetics do matter a lot as well. If the story is compelling, the onboarding will not only be easy, but will be memorable for the new player, making a small space in the mind of the player, playing in the players’ mind long after the player has moved from your system.
This story has to be carefully designed, as the player will forget the 100 meaningless sign-up points, but if a successful connection was made via your story, the player will return to your system, and drive further engagement, he/she will be intially hooked. Stories can be of various types, but the basic essence it must pass to the player is that he/she is the center piece of the story, he/she is in power, and this place was developed / customized for the player only. Once you make this happen, your gamification strategy will pass the initial failure stage (onboarding); the scaffolding and end game is a different story altogether, will take that in another post later.. 🙂
May the power of games--Gamify your life!! 