Gamification

I love the concept of gamification.

Gamification is the act of introducing 'game principles' into a product, business or service. Primarily, gamification is used for maximising engagement. Whether it's having people come back over and over again or fulfilling on a business or marketing objective.

Games are incredibly engaging and it's possible to break down the elements of why that is. Fulfilling an objective, completing a mission, breaking a high score - all incredibly satisfying to the human being. They give us a sense of purpose and achievement and they augment our social needs in the multiplayer side of things.

We can take these particular elements and implement them in our own business practices.

Here's a great example.

LinkedIn. It's not usually that fun to put in all your details in the profile. After all, you've probably done it for numerous other forums, social media or even your CV. It's time consuming and a pain, often you just want to browse other people's profiles.

To increase the completeness of a person's profile (thereby increasing the value of their service), they introduced a progress bar. How many % complete is your profile. It's simple yet extremely effective. That little bar in the corner compels you to finish your profile so you can achieve 100%.

Another one that everybody can get, pedometers. The idea of walking every day can be off putting but introduce the idea of counting your steps and competing against other teams makes it fun. In fact, when I did it, I went from not walking much at all to doing a 2 hour walk home one night just so I could get a higher "score".

Then of course, you've got the obvious one of loyalty points. Spend money, collect points. For me, if they added a few more elements to it, it'd be even more engaging. Comparing your points collected against other people for example.

Bringing this to your own business is easy. Look at the engaging/addictive elements in games, especially simple ones and apply that to your business.