How to Use Gamification to Improve Your App – Part I

Using mobile apps have become part of our day to day life and, consequently, the work to develop an impressive app is becoming more demanding.

There are a lot of apps being launched every day and, once your mobile app starts to get thousands of downloads within the first few days of its launch, you should create strategies on how you are going to prevent users from uninstalling it. Gamification can be the key to make it more interesting for users on your non-gaming app.

What is gamification

Gamification is the process which through game dynamics helps your app to boost the user engagement. Although to this process to succeed, the user needs to be familiar with your app.

User engagement is the most important thing when launching an app. The popularity, the user activity, the profits, all of these will be determined by the user engagement and, I can guarantee, this is no small task!

The users lose interest very quickly and, even if your app is a value add, it is fated to be forgotten by the user if it is not interesting enough. It doesn’t matter the core of your business, users need excitement around apps to continue using them.

And this is where gamification comes in. This is the process which motivates your app users to engage with the app and earn rewards. Don’t you feel successful when your step-tracker tells you that you achieve the daily goal? And if you could share this with your friends? That is what the game is all about.

Gamifying apps allow the user to challenge themselves and to compete with their friends and, we have to say outdoing someone give us a satisfaction feeling – it is basic human psychology.

And gamification explores this psychology. We find the motivation to do something when we feel pleasure and sense of achievement doing it. This is what the gaming experience intends to add to app usage. Add these feelings into any non-game app and you instantly make the app more pleasurable for users.

The best part about it is, you don’t need to redesign or redo your mobile app completely. It can increase user engagement by offering a fun experience to users and improve interaction, loyalty and drive sales.

Despite all the possible incentive strategies to improve the engagement of your app, there have to be objectives and proper comprehension of how the user will connect with the app.

Check the 6 points below to make sure you don’t make any mistake:

1 – Set objectives

One might just be enticed to dash into gamification just because it is large wildly utilized by a mass of different applications. Nonetheless, it is essential to note that in that sea of apps and games, the successful ones are those with an intentional purpose behind fusing gamification. One needs to pinpoint what objective, specifically, they are planning to accomplish. It could be the building of a network, the production of a viral circle, to acquire and increment of user engagement or even simply sustaining the retention levels.

What works for one app might not work for another. The essential task in defining a good strategy is to define your business objectives and plan the gamification program around that. Setting the targets objectives and objectives helps you plan the right gaming correct gaming procedure for your application.

Don’t forget to identify the target audience – their age group, their interests and consider these when shaping your gaming strategy. Analyze the user behavior regularly – analytics play a big role in defining how your strategy should be implemented and how successful it will be.

 
2 – Prepare challenges

Challenges are what makes people feel the value of achievement while using an app or game. The value of gamification is the commitment that the user makes with the app – the user take any challenge as a goal they need to reach. Those goals should be obviously displayed in your app. While creating predesigned goals, be sure to work on their variety and complexity to avoid the boring “same old” stuff.

Ensure the balance between the complexity of tasks, in order to provide users with the experience they would enjoy. Let users a chance to gain from disappointments. Achieving accomplishment after failing for a few times gives more fulfillment.

 
3 – Simplification

Despite all the work that developers have to apply gamification, the user may not feel any type of complications when using the app. The simpler, the best!

Avoid adding one too many features that may confuse the user. The design that you go with will define in a big scale how users will engage with your app.

Keep it simple for easier user interaction.

If you came this far, congratulations! Today, I am not going much further so you don’t get too bored. I will present you the next 3 points in my next blog post. Stay tuned!