Mobile app gamification — what options are there?
Thanks to one of my mobile app projects, I had to learn how to engage users through gamification. The goal was to make the users not want to put the app down.
What follows are the principles being used in the most successful apps. Pick whatever you think will work for you and you can start gamificating your mobile app right away.
Create a story
No matter the purpose of your app, have the users understand its goal through a story. Story is something that has a begining, journey in the middle and an end or a conclusion. If your app is designed to be used indefinitely and doesn’t have an end, just skip that part.
Making a story for your users to follow, will serve us as a platform to incorporate all the other elements that are described below.
Every task should be small
Imagine you have two options — either you have one big task to accomplish that will take an hour to complete or you have twelve five minute tasks. What are your feelings going to be when you are doing either of these options?
If you are doing a one hour task, you will be much more likely not to finish the task at all. You will also get tired quite quickly, you will be more bothered than excited. So unless you are really into the subject at hand, you will experience more negative feelings than positive ones.
On the other hand, if you can do a list of short tasks rather than a single big one, your whole mindset will change. Your brain will reward you after mere five minutes of concentrating. And that is some easy dopamine. So what will happen next? You’ll be hooked and you will want to do more. You will go on a streak and most likely finish all of the tasks in one go but being rewarded after every five minutes or so, you will end up excited, pumped up and happy about yourself.
So no matter what actions is your app devided into, make them as small as possible and give rewards to your users in short intervals.
Give out points
Completing actions or tasks in your app is a reward in itself, but lets take this a step further and start keeping a score.
It is better to make the score out of multiple metrics rather than just one. Create a formula that will take into an account how many tasks your users have completed, in what amount of time, how good the completion was, how many additional rewards they have gained (milestones, badges etc), on what level are they and so on.
Make sure they see their score on as many screens as possible — we tend to want to get to the next level, to round up the score to a specific amount or to set our own mental milestones. Let this specifically human trait work for you to keep your users engaged.
Let users compare to each other
Once your users can accumulate points, have them compare their scores with each other. There are two main approaches to this.
Allow your users to add friends and have them compare their results in their personal circles. You can even use this as another channel to promote your app — give your users an option to invite friends right from the app to build their circle.
Another approach is to create a leaderboard. Have your users compare each other. You can divide this into regions (e.g. countries, continents etc.) or just have one single global leaderboard for all.
No matter which one you will choose (or why not both?), you will make your users to start competing.
Create customizable characters
Apart from setting up a username, make the journey through your app more relatable by having your users create a custom character. This can be as easy as having some predetermined character base and having your users select a face for that character. They will now have their own individual app. The more option you give them, the more different accounts they will have.
Display these characters wherever there are user comparisons and they will be happy to recognize their account right away. And when explaining a story or a task within the app, make sure that the customized charecter is part of the graphic.
Reward bigger steps
To reward your users outside of the scope of mere points and levelling up, give out bigger rewards every couple of steps.
Milestones
These are meant to reward a set number of tasks related to each other. Does your app start with setting up your users profile, character, notifications and filling out a bunch of details? Make a milestone out of it and congratulate the user for completing that set of steps.
Badges
To be able to reward behaviour outside of the scope of tasks finished, give out badges to your users. Are they spending an above an average time with the app? Make a badge for that. Have they opened the app every day for a week in a row? Reward that with another badge.
Gifts
Who doesn’t like receiving gifts? Reward a predifined set of steps that don’t fall into any other categoriy and drive the user engagement. Or give them out on random — to earn them is not the point, making the user feel appreciated is.
If you are in a position where you can give out tangible gifts to your users, do that. They will feel that your app gives them an actual value and will reward that back with sticking with you. This can be for example a premium or ad free version of your app for a short period of time (e.g. 1 day).
If you can’t give them something tangible, create at least something symbolic. A special badge, a new character or something of a similar nature.
Level up
Apart from letting your users to climb on top of a global ladder of fellow users, allow them to track their individual progress by levelling up.
They should always see how many points they have left until the next level. This will compel them to try for a bit longer and reach that next step.
Try to make each level slightly harder too. As your users are using your app more and more, there are getting increasingly better at it as well. This means that if the levels would be the same amount of points apart. The challenge of getting to the next one would be decreasing. You want actually the opossite of that to keep them engaged.
Offer side quests
If you have a path to follow in your app to make progress and each step is increasingly harder to achieve, the users will need to unwind a bit after a couple of steps. By offering side quests which are not that relevant to the main story, but where they can make some easy points quickly, you will help them both to unwind and also to pump up their spirits up again.
Set reminders
All of the ideas above are meant for your users to stay in the app. But what about when they are not using it? To get them back, notify them after a longer inactivity. Make these notifications unintrusive though. It’s a balance hard to find, but when you get it just right, it will work for you.
These are the proven options you have at your disposal for increasing users’ engagement. Not all will fit all the apps out there but the more you will able to add to your project, the bigger chance you have.
Pair this with a great design and some nice illustrations and if your app is built around a great idea in the first place, it will be a definite success. Good luck!