Which gamification software is right for you? Top 5 gamification companies in 2023

When it comes to app development and gamification, you don’t need to build everything yourself! Instead, you can use gamification software. With a gamification company, you can build an engaging user experience with ease! So which software is right for you? Check out our list of the top 5 gamification companies in 2023.

• What is gamification software for web and mobile apps?
• Benefits of using a gamification company
• Why gamify the user experience?
• 5 key features of gamification software
• How to choose the right gamification company for you
• Top 5 gamification companies in 2023
• FAQs

What is gamification software for web and mobile apps?

Gamification software for helps cut down the hard work of gamifying your user experience. It’s simple - instead of spending time and money on coding features like points and levels into your app, you can simply plug in the elements and go!

In addition, software grants you access to a full range of tools to help facilitate and improve your gamification strategy. For example, a gamification company will offer gamification consulting to help you build your ideal user experience. That includes the ability to add elements gradually so that you don’t overwhelm the user. Essentially, gamification software is your one-stop shop for creating a great user experience!

Benefits of using a gamification company

App development takes internal expertise, time, and money. That’s fine for an app giant with deep pockets, but most apps can’t afford it. According to research, the world’s top 200 apps earn an average income of $83,500 a week, whereas apps in the top 8000 make just $3,500. In short, you need money to make money! But there is another way. Smaller apps can achieve scalability with gamification software and enjoy a range of benefits:

Gain the necessary expertise

A gamification company can lend you their knowledge! Gamification companies offer the help of their expert teams, who have spent years crafting gamification strategies. They can act as your support agent and design consultant at the same time. Basically, you can learn from the experience of others, instead of making your own mistakes.

Save time and money

You can start using the add-on gamification features immediately. As a result, you’ll spend less to develop and maintain features that might end up being either underutilized or overwhelming. In fact, if you build features yourself, you would pay 20% of the development cost in maintenance alone!

Why gamify the user experience?

Gamification is the use of game-like features like points, badges, and levels in non-game contexts. But these features are good for more than just fun! Game mechanics and rewards motivate users to perform actions that you want to see. For example, a fitness app might want users to run. Well, if the app ranks runners on a leaderboard, users will be motivated to hit the top and exercise more! In turn, the app provides more value.

Here are 3 big reasons why you should gamify the user experience:

Reduce onboarding churn

As many as 78% of those who download a mobile app will uninstall it in just 24 hours. But using a gamification company can combat that. For example, progress bars can reduce the ‘cognitive load’ of onboarding. In other words, things are easier for the user because you provide the information in steps. As well, simply rewarding new users with a badge after onboarding can ‘positively influence’ users to stick around!

This graph illustrates how gamification principles tap into core psychological drivers to boost and maintain user engagement over time.

User satisfaction

There are two powerful types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic. Basically, extrinsic motivators are tangible rewards like prizes, grades, and recognition. These work great - but to be fully satisfied, users also need to be intrinsically motivated! And that’s where gamification comes in! There are 3 needs you must satisfy to unlock intrinsic motivation:

1. Autonomy. Use avatars, quests, and content-unlocking to give users control.
2. Mastery. Show off your skills with challenges, leaderboards, and points.
3. Purpose. Badges, levels, and target-setting give users an end goal.

When you fulfill these needs, you increase user satisfaction. In reality, this is simple behavioral psychology. People like to become better at skills, they like to have a goal, and they also like having choices over their journey. That’s what makes gamification so powerful - every one of us has these needs!

User engagement

Gamification hooks users and engages them with a trigger, action, and reward cycle. This is the ‘Hooked Model’, which successful platforms like Facebook use to make their product a part of our daily lives. Essentially, users are given a cue like a push notification or a gamified challenge. In turn, this drives them into action. Lastly, the user is rewarded for their effort. Ideally, this ‘bit of work’ was so satisfying that they return for more! Indeed, studies show that gamification boosts engagement and leads to habit formation.

Nir Eyal's Hooked Model canvas shows the cyclical process of trigger, action, variable reward, and investment used to build strong user habits.

3 key features of gamification software

Flexibility

Your choice between build or buy should offer you a lot of flexibility. When choosing a gamification software, this should have various off-the-shelf gamification features such as challenges, quests, memory games, and the possibility to customize the experience after your own look and feel. In this way, you can experiment with different gamification mechanics inside your app and see what works best for your business goal and target audience.

Various Rewards

Of course, no gamification software is complete without a range of rewards! Whether you use points, badges, or discounts, a reward can incentivize users to complete actions like referrals and social media shares. In practice, people just like to know they are getting something for their time!

A/B Testing

Gamification companies make it easy to add new features to your web or mobile app. However, implementation is just half of the battle! To maximize the effectiveness of your changes, your gamification software empowers you with A/B testing capabilities. In short, this lets you test new features, choose the best-written copy, and listen to the feedback of your users. Through this, you can create the perfect platform for your customers.

How to choose the right gamification company for you

Not all gamification companies are created equal. Ultimately, picking gamification software depends on what you wish to make. For instance, you could be at the start of your journey, looking to build a whole new gamified app. Or, you might have an existing app and want to use layers of gamification to generate growth.

To help you make a decision, here is a list of the best gamification companies in 2023:

Top 5 gamification companies in 2023

StriveCloud

Based in Ghent, Belgium, StriveCloud is a leading gamification company. StriveCloud supports clients big and small across industries, from shared mobility operators like HumanForest or EVO Sharing to big enterprises like Siemens, or ABInBev.

In practice, StriveCloud’s gamification software makes creating a great user experience as simple as possible. For example, StriveCloud offers a modular platform, which means that you can select from 30+ gamification & loyalty add-ons and introduce them into your web or mobile app - without a line of code. Alongside that, you’ll always have an expert team free to provide advice and consulting on your gamification strategy. Ultimately, the goal is your growth!

The StriveCloud product dashboard provides a clear overview of available gamification and loyalty features for easy implementation.

Pricing:

StriveCloud is designed to grow as you grow! By segmenting the pricing into tiers based on monthly active users, StriveCloud offers a scalable solution. To be sure, this comes in useful when StriveCloud’s past customers have tripled their number of active users!

Prices start at $599/month for apps under 10k users. Following that, the 25k tier costs $1,199, and apps with up to 100k in users can expect to spend $1,799/month. For the full breakdown, check out the pricing table.

Key Features:

• API integration on web & mobile app/or stand-alone platform (web & mobile app)
• Admin dashboard
• Game thinking & design workshop

Gamification & Loyalty Features:

• Achievements
• Leaderboards
• Challenges
• Timed Challenge
• Leveling
• Hotzone
• Wheel of fortune
• Memory game
• Man of the Match
• Scratch cards
• Raffle/Lottery
• Badges
• Code Redemption
• Currency Bundle
• Virtual Currency Shop

Interactive Content

• Classic poll
• Dynamic poll
• Swipe poll
• Swipe quiz
• Classic quiz
• Time quiz
• Time score quiz
• Personality tests

Michael Stewart @HumanForest - "Personally, I really like the control panel of StriveCloud, and I think it is easy to use. I can instantly implement changes without having to wait 24 hours or more to deploy."

Gamify your app with StriveCloud! Use our gamification software to add loyalty & gamification features that support your app’s goals. Find out more!

This example from StriveCloud's UI demonstrates how a clean, intuitive interface encourages user interaction with gamified elements.

Funifier

From Canada, Funifier is a stand-alone gamification software that is “purpose-built for the enterprise”. They pride themselves on offering a flexible solution to boost audience engagement. That being said, the app lacks integrations in comparison to the other platforms listed.

Funifier provides a dedicated dashboard for tracking key engagement metrics, as illustrated in this software example.

Pricing:

Funifier’s pricing is not made public, so you have to contact them for a quote. For B2C apps, there is a tiered pricing model and B2B apps benefit from volume discounts.

Key Features:

• Game thinking & design workshop
• Stand-alone platform (web & mobile app)

Gamification & Loyalty Features:

• Achievements
• Point collection
• In-app currency
• Rewards
• Avatar stats
• Leaderboards
• Progress bars

Influitive

Toronto-based Influitive is another big gamification company. They specialize in building advocacy on their “customer marketing platform” for retail, publishing, and B2B software. In addition, they offer a big knowledge base to learn from, including regularly updated blogs, eBooks, and webinars.

The Influitive platform focuses on creating a community of brand advocates through its integrated challenge and reward system.

Pricing:

Starts at $1,999/month. To access extra community features, you must ask for a quote.

Key Features:

• Stand-alone platform (web & mobile app)

Gamification & Loyalty Features:

• Gamified Q&A (points, badges, and rewards)
• Leaderboards
• Achievements
• Point collection
• Rewards
• Badges
• Gamified virtual event hub

Interactive Content:

• Quizzes
• Surveys
• Live polls
• Q.&A

Other

• Rewards on referrals
• Rewards on references
• Rewards on user-generated content

Insert Coin

Insert Coin is a Swedish start-up for teachers, HR managers, and product owners. Their gamification software is called GWEN, and it comes complete with an admin dashboard and a wide range of features. At the moment, most of their clients are also based in Sweden.

Insert Coin's GWEN software interface shows how it integrates various gamification features for product owners and managers.

Pricing:

Not publicly available. GWEN is listed at around $99/month for every 5,000 monthly active users. However, Insert Coin may quote differently. In addition, this tier comes without any customer service or design assistance.

Key Features:

• API integration on web & mobile app
• Admin dashboard
• A/B testing

Gamification & Loyalty Features:

• Leaderboards
• Levels
• Missions
• Team levels
• Team missions
• Onboarding missions
• Achievements
• In-app currency
• Point collection
• Rewards

SaaSquatch

SaaSquatch, also from Canada, positions itself as a “referral & loyalty software”. In particular, they focus on referral programs, offering the ability to give users points, gift cards, credit, and even discounts. This differentiates them from the other gamification companies on this list, as they are less about the user experience as a whole.

SaaSquatch's platform is geared towards building powerful referral and loyalty programs, as shown in this dashboard example.

Pricing:

Starts at $1,750/month + set-up fee. This is limited to just 25k users, so for more, you need to ask for a custom quote. As well, it excludes Salesforce integrations.

Key Features:

• API integration on web & mobile app
• Integrations with big platforms
• Template library
• Widgets

Gamification & Loyalty Features:

• Rewards
• Points marketplace
• Point collection
• Credit and discounts
• Gift cards
• Leaderboards

Other:

• Cashback programs
• Referral program

FAQs

What is gamification software?

Gamification software is a fast and easy way to apply game mechanics to your app. Instead of building everything yourself, gamification companies offer pre-built, customizable game elements like badges, levels, and rewards to motivate users, increase engagement, and ultimately create sustainable growth!

Why gamify the user experience?

With gamification, you can leverage both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. And that’s powerful! When you implement features like points and levels, you satisfy intrinsic needs like growth. In turn, this reduces onboarding churn and boosts engagement! Gamification companies make this process easy.

What is the best gamification software in 2023?

StriveCloud is a gamification company trusted by clients across industries - from financial services, shared mobility, edtech, or health, to enterprise customers. Using our gamification software, you can easily build and customize a great app experience. In turn, you’ll increase engagement, retention, and customer lifetime value!

How to craft a great referral program with gamification? ( +8 examples!)

Creating a great referral program is your best option for improving user engagement metrics. As the attention span of today’s users is decreasing, companies have to choose what to employ in their referral strategy wisely. It has to capture the user’s attention immediately if a company wants a chance at gaining loyal users. Luckily, a gamified referral program does that splendidly - it sparks user curiosity and keeps them engaged!

Consequently, gamification is becoming one of the most popular ways to boost user engagement and create a great customer referral program. After all, it impacts user retention metrics greatly, lowering user churn and increasing user retention rate.

In addition, gamification creates an immersive experience. Why? Think of video games. No matter how simple the interface is, they are famous for creating immersive customer experiences and hooking their users.

This ensures that your users will stay excited to proceed with your customer referral program and recommend your platform and app to friends and family.

In other words, a great customer referral program includes gamification elements. Out of The Forbes 2000 global companies, 70% use gamification to improve their performance. If used correctly, gamification could play an essential role in your platform.

Before revealing the gamification elements that make up a great referral program, let’s uncover what “gamification” means. You need to know the term before you find out why you should use it in your referral system in detail!

We’ll also help you craft a great referral program with a step-by-step guide. To better imagine what a gamified referral program is, we’ll also discover the best industry examples!

• What is gamification exactly?
• How does gamification improve your referral system?
• Steps to creating a great referral program
• 8 examples of great referral programs with gamification
• FAQ

What is gamification exactly?

Gamification is the use of game elements and principles in non-game contexts. It taps into human emotions, such as the drive for competition and success. For the same reason, it significantly improves user interaction, motivation, and loyalty.

If you gamify your platform correctly, you will see this in your user retention metrics. For example, a streak feature should increase the number of your daily active users, and keep users motivated users to come back time after time, ultimately reducing users churn.

However, gamification is not just a tactic for engaging your audience or creating a great referral program. It’s also a way for businesses to collect data and analyze customer behavior. Companies can then use the data to create new marketing opportunities and improve their practices.

On top of that, gamification can be used at any stage of the customer journey. From introducing thrilling challenges at the awareness stage to rewarding actions that drive users into conversion, gamification supercharges key metrics at every stage of the marketing funnel.

Why is gamification crucial in crafting a great referral program?

Referral systems are an excellent option to create loyal advocates for your company. This marketing practice increases Word of Mouth, as users are motivated to spread the word for their benefit.

Gamification is common in a great referral program and for a good reason. Let’s take, for example, one of the most important user retention metrics - customer lifetime value. Astonishingly, user engagement through gamification increases CLV by 15%-40%!

One reason for this immense increase is maintaining user participation. A great referral program requires frequent interaction for users to gain rewards, or maintain their status. This level of engagement fosters a sense of loyalty towards the company. It makes the user more likely to keep participating in the program and fosters regular visits to the platform.

With gamification, users are more likely to interact with your referral program. Consequently, they share it amongst their connections to gain additional benefits or progress within the gamified system. This amplifies the reach of the program. Participants actively promote it to their friends, family, and colleagues to gain rewards or a better status.

By now it is evident that gamification gets users hooked. In any case, adding gamified experiences to a great referral program enhances user engagement, creates habitual visitors on your platform, and improves the program’s reach.

Check out how the Lime Mobility Service uses a gamified referral program to increase the likelihood of referrals!

Steps to creating a great referral program

#1 Identify which KPIs are going to determine your progress

It is important to know a progress measurement for your referral program. This could be, for example, one of the user retention metrics, such as customer retention rate from referrals. Set a goal KPI and maintain the same one after solidifying your referral system, to be able to evaluate your results effectively.

#2 Establish the rewards structure for your referral program.

Analyze your customer behavior so your referral program rewards align with their interests. Keep in mind that some of the rewards are pretty costly, so make sure you stay within your budget. Gamification is one of the most cost-effective options due to its implementation simplicity and non-tangible reward alternatives. A few examples of gamified rewards that you could include are:

1. Exclusive levels or tiers: Create a tiered system where customers can unlock exclusive levels or tiers based on their referral activity. Each level comes with its own set of perks or rewards, motivating customers to refer more to reach higher levels.
2. Points and leaderboards: Implement a points-based system where customers earn points for each successful referral. These points can be used for rewards or to climb up the leaderboard, fostering competition among customers and driving more referrals.
3. Virtual badges or rewards: Award customers with virtual badges or rewards for their referral activity, which they can then showcase on their profile or share on social media. These virtual rewards symbolize status and encourage others to join the referral program.

#3 Decide on your referral program type and design

There are a few ways you can construct your referral program. First of all, you have to choose between two types of programs: single-sided and double-sided.

The first type only rewards the referrer. A double-sided program, on the other hand, benefits both the referrer and the referee. With double-sided programs, you have a higher chance of creating a great referral program, as both parties receive a reward. It helps you achieve two objectives at once: making your existing customers happier and attracting potential ones.

After you decide on your referral program’s type, make sure to have foolproof design elements and compelling copy.

The CTA has to be visible on your referral program page, as well as highly motivating. They have to incite to act immediately, for example, “Refer a friend now and get 50$ in your account”! As for the design, your best bet is to choose a pre-existing template. This is more efficient and will help you avoid technical errors while crafting your great referral program at a quick pace.

This referral program template provides a clear, visually appealing layout for users to follow.

#4 Get a versatile referral program software to ensure effectiveness

When your referral program design is finished, you have to decide on what software you’ll use to manage it. Software that not only administers your program efficiently but also nurtures customer connections is a must for a great referral program. Here are examples of what features it could include:

1. Customizable reward structures: allows flexibility to choose various types of rewards, such as cash bonuses, discounts, or free products/services, and the ability to adjust their conditions according to changing customer needs.
2. A/B testing: grants the ability to compare different campaigns to evaluate what works best for your customers.
3. Conversion rate measurement: provides insights into how well your referral program is performing in terms of turning leads or prospects into active users.

Need a flexible reward system in your referral program? Strivecloud offers that and more!

#5 Advertise your referral system

After you publish your referral program, ensure its visibility across all customer-facing communication platforms.

1. Website: Direct customers to your referral program on your company's homepage and other key pages like the account login and checkout pages. Additionally, craft a dedicated landing page, laying out all essential details of the program.
2. Email: Design an email campaign outlining the benefits of your referral program and distribute it to customers who interact with your content frequently, or have voluntarily applied to receive more information. Make sure to include a CTA that encourages the customer to act immediately. The email campaign can be distributed to frequent website visitors, newsletter subscribers, and so on.
3. Social Media: Social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok are some of the most cost-friendly options for high conversion and engagement. Creating relevant and shareable content drives traffic to your referral program without extra costs. Another helpful practice is implementing a bio link that directs followers to the program landing page to streamline the process.

The most important thing to note is that the content has to have consistent, strong messaging across all platforms. Highlight the rewards your customers can earn, and what value will their referred friends gain from the company’s products and services.

Uber Eats effectively uses email to promote its referral program with a clear call-to-action and benefit-driven copy.

8 examples of great referral programs with gamification

Badges and achievements

You’ve probably seen the badge feature on various gamified apps, and simply, your favorite video games. But did you know that this feature is essential for a good referral program?

Badges can be used in multiple ways. They motivate users to reach referral milestones and can be combined with other rewards, like discounts or coupons.

#1 Bake’s badge system fuels engagement and motivates customers with growing commissions

A crypto exchange and investment platform Bake (known as Cake in the past), boasts a great referral program. Bake incorporates four referral progress badges, based on the amount of friends that were referred by the customer. This boosts user motivation and enhances the visual appeal of achieving these milestones. What’s more, with each badge, users receive a larger percentage of Bake's commission from their friends' investments they receive!

Bake's referral program uses a badge system to visually represent a user's progress and increase their commission rate with each milestone.

#2 Mailchimp's badge offers broader access to connections

The process of Mailchimp’s customer referral program is simple: all their customers have to do is flaunt a referral badge in their emails! When someone clicks on the badge and signs up for the service, both the old and new users get a $30 discount on their Mailchimp account. This CMS uniquely integrates badges, streamlining the user acquisition process, and strengthening brand advocacy!

Mailchimp's simple badge system turns every email into a potential referral, rewarding both the sender and the new subscriber.

Want to implement badges to your referral program today? Book a session with StriveCloud, and ensure a smooth gamification integration!

Referral progress bars

A progress bar shows customers how much they have progressed within an initiative. This illusion of growth, similar to seeing which level you have reached in a game, nudges users to participate more.

#3 Harry's referral progress bar visualizes rewards and encourages user engagement

Harry’s is a New York-based company that sells shaving equipment via mail order. They were acknowledged for their great referral program which featured a progress bar that illustrated users' progress toward earning rewards. From receiving shave cream at five referrals to unlocking a year's supply of free blades at 50 referrals, users got better presents each time they reached a new milestone. Just by launching this program, the company received 100,000 referrals in the first week!

Harry's famous referral campaign used a progress bar to clearly visualize the tiered rewards, motivating users to reach the next milestone.

#4 Morning Brew’s progress bar motivates users with small nudges

Morning Brew had a great referral program, which incentivized their engaged readers to share the Brew with others. After first gathering a devoted audience, the business news website launched a few referral campaigns. One of them was referral progress bars.

Because the company already had loyal fans, it had a unique strategy. By providing nudges to become a Morning Brew Insider along the way, they were incentivizing users to prove their loyalty. Even if this is a small part of the referral system, it contributed to Morning Brew reaching an audience of 1.5 million loyal subscribers!

This example from Morning Brew shows how a progress bar can motivate loyal users to share content and earn exclusive status.

Leaderboards

Adding a leaderboard to your referral program is a great way to instill a sense of competition between your users. It’s a great way to increase sales and engagement.

Customers love to see where they stand on a referral leaderboard. The desire to be at the top of the game motivates them to acquire as many referrals as possible.

#5 Swissborg raised funds and motivated users to participate in their referral program through leaderboards

Swissborg, a Swiss-based fintech platform, needed a great referral program to spread the news about their Series A funding event. The company offered a percentage of their referral’s investment and even bigger rewards, such as a luxury watch, depending on which place on the leaderboard the user was in. The results? Swissborg’s gamified referral program attracted 16,660 investors and generated over 1 million app users!

Swissborg structured its referral program around a competitive leaderboard, offering significant rewards for top performers to drive massive participation.

#6 Prezi launched a leaderboard referral program to expand its community

The presentation software Prezi created a generous tournament to expand its audience. Any person who was referred by somebody else got the first month free! However, the referee was also in a run for a prize. In the leaderboard, participants could check how many referrals they have compared to others. The one who had the most successful invites at the end of our referral program would get a USD 5,000 reward to foster remote work for their team or spend on anything they wish! Surprisingly, even users in the 2nd to 5th place could get USD 1,000 each! This campaign was a way for Prezi to advance in their competition with Powerpoint.

Prezi's referral leaderboard offered substantial cash prizes to the top referrers, creating a high-stakes competition to drive community growth.

Points

In games, users receive points to exchange them for avatars, exclusive goods, and secret items. This adds a layer of excitement and surprise. Without a doubt, this can also be applied to contests held in loyalty programs.

#7 Automotive company Lucid gives users points to exchange for high-end rewards

Lucid is the first luxury electric car company. However, it is not as well known as Tesla. To gain new customers, Lucid employs a great referral program. If a customer refers a friend, both them and the new car owner get points to exchange for various rewards! Evidently, receiving a car referral is harder than a simple signup. Naturally, the awards for this are impressive, ranging from a sapphire-branded leather duffel bag to a factory visit with two-night hotel accommodation. Lucid's great referral program offers enticing rewards, demonstrating a commitment to attracting new customers and distinguishing the company in the competitive electric car market.

Lucid's referral program uses a points system that allows users to redeem high-value, exclusive rewards, fitting its luxury brand identity.

#8 PC Financial has exchangeable points that can be used for groceries or even pharmacy products

PC Financial, a Canadian financial service, is closely connected to the President’s choice brand. It has products ranging from grocery to retail. Naturally, their gamified rewards are related to that field! If a referred friend spends 100$ a month on their new PC Financial card, the referring gets 50$ to spend on desired products. In essence, PC Financial's integration with the President's Choice brand not only offers a diverse range of financial services but also rewards customers with benefits relevant to their everyday spending habits. This makes the company relevant to all audiences, attracting a broad variety of customers.

This example from PC Financial shows how points can be tied to everyday spending, making the rewards feel practical and accessible.

We envision what your gamified referral program needs. Start with our free demo!

FAQs

What is gamification exactly?

Gamification is the integration of game elements and principles into non-game contexts. By leveraging human emotions like competition and achievement, gamification significantly enhances user interaction, motivation, and loyalty.

How does gamification improve your customer referral program?

Gamification drives engagement and retention within referral systems by offering incentives and rewards for user participation. It encourages users to share the program with their networks, amplifying its reach and impact.

What are the steps to crafting a great referral program?

1. Identify which KPIs are going to determine your progress
2. Establish the rewards structure for your referral program
3. Decide on your referral program type and design
4. Get a versatile referral program software to ensure effectiveness
5. Advertise your referral system

How to implement gamification? Tools your app needs to succeed in 2023

This article explores the best gamification tools and how to implement them to boost user engagement and retention in 2023.

Gamification tools are platforms designed to help you create engaging user experiences. Because they make it easier to add game features like points, levels, and badges, using a gamification tool can quickly make your app more fun and satisfying to use. In turn, this will improve user engagement, retention, and loyalty. But which tools for gamification are right for your app? In this article, find out all you need to know to pick the best gamification tool for your business in 2023.

• What is gamification?
• What are the benefits of gamification?
• 8 examples of how to implement gamification features
• What are gamification tools?
• What is an example of a gamification tool?
• How to pick the best gamification tool for your business
• Top tips for gamification in 2023
• FAQs

What is gamification?

Gamification is the use of game-like elements like badges, points, and levels in non-game contexts. In short, gamification tools help you leverage the data mined from user behavior to incentivize desired user actions. Essentially, it’s a means of persuasion!

But what makes it so persuasive? To start with, gamification is based on behavioral science. Research shows that gamification taps into the deepest parts of human psychology, and in doing so results in something powerful. By satisfying multiple innate and complex needs like fun, personal growth, and belonging, a gamification tool can improve user satisfaction.

That’s because, when you realize those inner cravings, you create intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivators make your app naturally satisfying to use, in turn, enticing users to return to your app! Indeed, studies show that while extrinsic motivators – based more on simple, transactional concepts like prizes and hard results – push users through the discovery phase, intrinsic drivers sustain long-term user retention.

What are the benefits of gamification?

Today, gamification is helping power a surge in mobile app spending. And that’s the case even in today’s unstable economy. Despite a recent decrease in disposable incomes, consumer app spending continues to rise. Likewise, spending on gamification tools is increasing. In 2022, the global gamification market was valued at $15.8 billion, up 26.5% a year. By 2030, the industry is predicted to be worth an impressive $95.8 billion!

Here’s why the world is gamifying:

Slash onboarding churn

Without a doubt, the most important part of the customer journey is onboarding. This is when users have the least amount of attachment to your app - so it doesn’t take much for them to quit! In fact, industry wisdom states that each onboarding step results in a 20% increase in user churn.

To combat this, gamification provides users with instant value! That’s because games are built on a simple concept: complete a task, get a reward! In short, using checklists, interactive onboarding missions, and progress bars makes your onboarding way more fun, not to mention easier to understand. All in all, this makes it harder to quit!

This graph illustrates how gamified onboarding can dramatically reduce user churn by providing instant value and making the process more engaging.

Drive user engagement

The average person spends 1/3 of their time on mobile! And they are always searching for a place to engage. This makes users fickle - and prone to churn - but it also means that there is a huge, untapped reward waiting to be seized! Using a gamification tool can help you attract that potential engagement. Indeed, case studies show that the right implementation of gamification features can increase mobile user engagement by 47%!

Improve user retention

Apps with the best and most exciting user experiences will dominate. In fact, just one bad experience can turn off 2/3 of your users forever! Conversely, tools for gamification can create an app experience that fulfills the basic needs which users crave. Gamified elements are shown to increase perceived levels of usefulness, social influence, and enjoyment. To be sure, when you boost these triggers, you unlock a powerful user motivation that makes retention less of a challenge!

8 examples of how to implement gamification features

When you use a gamification tool, it is fast and easy to implement new game elements. Indeed, there’s no need to code and spend huge sums on app development. But you still need to know what to use and when! Here’s how it works:

Avatars

Avatars are like profile pictures - but better! Essentially, they are just images that represent the user. But they come in different forms, ranging from a simple image to an animated person, such as Snapchat’s Bitmoji.

Basically, avatars let you feel more personally involved, which increases perceived autonomy and your sense of ownership over the app. That makes users less likely to want to leave! Not to mention, avatars help facilitate social behavior because people feel like they’re talking to a person, not a bot! To sum up, use avatars to enrich socialization and ensure a good level of customization.

Customizable avatars, like Snapchat's Bitmoji, are a powerful tool for increasing a user's sense of ownership and personal involvement in an app.

Badges

Badges are primarily achievements, however, they are also a form of feedback called positive reinforcement. In other words, the great feeling of getting a badge motivates users to continue! As well, badges can be used as a status symbol. Users love to show off their badges to their peers because it’s a sign of their personal growth and competence. That’s why, when Duolingo introduced badges, their referral rate jumped 116%!

To maximize the effectiveness of badges, time them right. When you receive a badge just after completing a task (and the dopamine hit that comes with it), the effort expended feels all the more worth it! Indeed, research is clear that timely positive reinforcement enhances the effects of a reward.

Duolingo effectively uses badges as a form of positive reinforcement and a status symbol, which significantly boosts motivation and user referrals.

Challenges

Challenges work because they’re fun. It’s as simple as that! Looking closer, behavioral studies show that challenges are a great way to test user skills, or ‘perceived level of user competence’. This is highly motivating and increases app reuse intention. What’s more, the fact that users choose whether to participate motivates them further. Science shows that people look more positively at their own choices - and they will stick by them!

Enhancing user engagement: The role of gamification in mobile apps - "Gamification examples such as challenges have been shown to evoke feelings of freedom in users and, thus, perceptions of higher autonomy."

Ultimately, you can use challenges to get users to perform the behavior that you want to see. A fitness app might want users to run for longer, for example. Well, set a public challenge and watch your users compete to outdo each other! Using a gamification tool, you can easily implement all kinds of challenges.

Lottery

Lotteries make rewards unpredictable, and that’s exciting! For one, unpredictability keeps the user experience fresh, which gives users a reason to stick around. What’s more, lotteries motivate us whether we win or lose. Research shows that just the fear of missing out is motivating enough to make users engage!

To really boost engagement, you can let users make more entries depending on how many points they have. This incentivizes users to engage across your whole app! Not to mention, holding a lottery is more affordable for you than simply doling out prizes. In the end, it’s the fun of the game that matters, not the prize!

Features like lotteries introduce an element of unpredictable rewards, which can keep the user experience fresh and exciting, motivating users to return.

Polls

Interactivity is important. Elements like polls can draw users in, simply by asking for their opinion! For you, this is a great way to gather user feedback and inform how you use your gamification tools. And for your users, polls can be hugely positive:

1. Empowers users and shows you value their input. In effect, this builds trust;
2. Regular polling incentivizes daily engagement by promising something new;
3. Creates a shared interest among your users, which builds a community feeling.

Of course, to ensure maximum engagement, keep your questions short and sweet!

Quizzes

Quizzes are a quick and easy way to test your user. It’s true that people enjoy testing their own skills. In fact, studies show that this need motivates us to take on challenging and satisfying experiences, which ultimately leads to increased well-being!

When you implement quizzes, you can use them to encourage daily activity and act as flashpoints for rewards, such as extra points or level upgrades. For instance, when ESTUDIOS came to StriveCloud to take advantage of our gamification tools, quizzes were one of the 20+ features that they found most useful.

Matthias Zander, Head of Platform @ESTUDIOS - "The biggest advantage is that on the platform you can create a place where it’s worth coming back on a daily basis. For example, you can organize daily quizzes."

Virtual currency

An in-app currency is a form of ‘status points’. In other words, the more you have, the more valuable a user you are! Currencies also provide instant feedback, as they reward users for their effort and growth. And simply put, earning currency is just a great feeling! What’s more, when users already have coins in their wallets, they’re incentivized to stick around. This is called ‘stored value’. Essentially, it is difficult to abandon a currency that you’ve gained and still own. People don’t like to lose out!

To maximize the usefulness of an in-app currency, set up a marketplace where users can redeem their earnings. For example, somewhere to buy app perks and bonuses, as well as merchandise and other goodies that deepen their engagement with your brand!

Wheel of Fortune

In a ‘Wheel of Fortune’, users spin the wheel for the chance to win a random prize. This is a way to further gamify your rewards and even emails. Basically, they are a way to quickly reward your users and entice them to come back for more. That’s because a wheel of fortune boosts the unpredictability of your experience!

A great example of this is the KFC Rewards Arcade app. By implementing games like Wheel of Fortune, the popular restaurant chain wanted to increase loyalty, engagement, and customer lifetime value. Without a doubt, KFC achieved its aims! Their use of the gamification tool Antavo resulted in a 53% increase in loyalty program participation.

KFC's Rewards Arcade app uses a Wheel of Fortune to gamify rewards, leading to a substantial increase in loyalty program participation and customer engagement.

What are gamification tools?

Gamification tools make gamifying your user experience faster and easier. It’s simple - instead of spending time and money on coding features, you can use a platform that has already done the work for you! On that note, using a gamification tool gives you the flexibility to add features gradually. Like that, you won’t overwhelm your users!

In addition, many tools for gamification have expert teams ready to help. Their advice can help you better understand gamification, know what gamified user experiences look like in your industry, and ultimately design an app that’s effective and engaging!

What is an example of a gamification tool?

All kinds of industries can use tools for gamification. A gamified app is simply a mobile app experience that has been enriched with features like points and badges. In short, what’s important is that you want to create growth and improve user engagement!

Here are some examples of gamification tools in 2023:

StriveCloud

Based in the heart of Europe, Belgium’s StriveCloud offers a flexible gamification tool that is trusted by clients across industries: fintech, shared mobility, edtech, health, and enterprise. And because the software is fully modular, you can easily create a great app experience. With over 20 interactive features like rewards and challenges at your disposal, you can easily increase engagement, and user loyalty, and maximize customer lifetime value!

Michael Stewart @HumanForest - "I really like how easy to use StriveCloud is. I don’t need to interrupt any developers or use any code, there’s no lengthy deployment process & changes are updated instantly."

Grow your active users with StriveCloud! Discover how to create an engaging app experience with our gamification tool.

StriveCloud's platform offers a wide range of modular features, allowing businesses to create highly customized and engaging user experiences.

SaaSquatch

SaaSquatch, from Canada, positions as a “referral & loyalty software”. In particular, they offer referral programs that can integrate into both web and mobile apps, with features like points, gift cards, and cashback. This focus on loyalty and tangible financial rewards differentiates them from other gamification tools, as they focus more on sales and user referrals than generally improving the user experience.

SaaSquatch focuses on referral and loyalty programs, using financial incentives to drive sales and user acquisition.

Insert Coin

Sweden’s Insert Coin is a start-up geared towards teachers, HR managers, and product owners. Their team understands the ins and outs of gamification and is ready to help design and improve your app. At the moment, most of their clients are also Swedish.

The Insert Coin platform demonstrates how gamification principles can be applied to diverse fields like education and human resources.

How to pick the best tools for gamification for your business

Gamification tools let you improve your app fast and flexibly, all the while being guided by expert advice. Still, every product is different. Ultimately, picking a gamification tool depends on your needs. Whatever you do, keep in mind 3 key elements the tool must have:

• Feature availability. A wide range of interactive features opens opportunities.
• A/B testing. To ensure that you maximize your success!
• Expert gamification consulting. Put your plan on track - and avoid costly mistakes.

Picking the right platform is one thing. You also need a team that understands your needs and goals! That’s why StriveCloud offers free consultations, so you can quickly get to know our friendly team and discover if our loyalty & gamification tool is right for you.

Top tips for gamification in 2023

More than anything, the success of your gamification relies on understanding what motivates your users. With this knowledge, you can use rewards to satisfy the needs that humans crave like progress and achievement. But you can’t just tack on gamification elements. Indeed, you need a clear strategy! Given this, building a gamified app can be intimidating. That’s what makes gamification tools so helpful!

Whether you use a gamification tool or not, here are 3 top tips to keep in mind:

1. Have concrete goals and track your progress.Gamification drives the action that you want to see. Naturally, then, it’s important that you know what action it is that you want to promote! Having a concrete goal, like increasing user retention by 10%, can help guide your design strategy and also act as a progress tracker.
2. Implement game elements gradually.The more choices that someone has, the more likely they will be overwhelmed and quit! That’s why tutorials don’t bombard with you information all at once. Essentially, it should take minimal effort to learn how your app works.
3. Remember to reward participation.Gamification is all about rewarding users for engaging. Like that, they keep engaging! In practice, that means giving users with things like points, badges, and redeemable prizes. When rewarded at the right time, (usually right after the task), the benefits can be huge! For example, research finds that badges result in a ‘significant positive effect’, leading to higher user engagement!

New to gamification? Discover all you need to know about how gamification tools can optimize your app experience.

FAQs

What is gamification?

Gamification is the use of game-like elements like badges, points, and levels in non-game contexts. In short, gamification leverages the data mined from user behavior to incentivize desired user actions. Essentially, it’s a means of persuasion!

What are gamification tools?

Gamification tools make gamifying your app faster than building each new feature from scratch. Instead of spending time and money on coding, you can choose an off-the-shelf solution with all the functionalities you need! Given this, a gamification tool lets you add features gradually and A/B test the response to each. Like this, you won’t overwhelm your users!

What is the best way to use gamification tools in 2023?

To get the most out of a gamification tool, you need clear goals from the start! This way, you will understand better which user actions you should promote to achieve them, and in turn, which gamification elements to use!

How do you gamify successfully? The complete playbook to app gamification

For apps, the world is a fight for attention. While the average person has more than 80 mobile apps installed, they use just 30 of them a month! Making your app so good that people want to return to it is hard. To hook in your users, try app gamification! Firstly, you can define gamification as more than a “game” - it’s actually a way to build a fun and interactive user experience. Ready to find out more?

This introductory image sets the stage for our deep dive into the world of app gamification and its powerful playbook.

Discover everything you need to know in our complete playbook!

• How to define gamification
• Types of gamification
• How different sectors can leverage app gamification
• Benefits of app gamification
• Why gamification works
• How to gamify your web or mobile app?
• 5 app gamification examples from 5 industries
• KPIs that define gamification success
• 3 top tools for app gamification
• FAQs

How to define gamification

What is the meaning of gamification?

Gamification, meaning the use of game-like elements in non-game contexts, is a way to build a more engaging customer experience. For an app, gamification leverages the data from user activity to incentivize desired actions. Essentially, features like badges, points, and levels can reward certain behaviors and motivate users to complete them. In short, you can define gamification as a means of persuasion!

How does gamification drive behaviors?

Firstly, gamification is based on decades of behavioral science. Research shows that gamification taps into the deepest parts of human psychology, and in doing so results in something powerful. In short, by satisfying multiple innate and complex needs like fun, personal growth, and belonging, gamification can improve user satisfaction.

That’s because, when you realize an inner craving, you create intrinsic motivation. And intrinsic motivators make your app naturally satisfying to use. In turn, this entices users to return to your app! Indeed, studies show that while extrinsic motivators – based more on simple, transactional concepts like prizes and hard results – push users through the discovery phase, intrinsic drivers sustain long-term user retention.

Learning the basics of gamification? Start here!

3 common misconceptions about gamification (and the truth)

#1 Gamification is a fad

Even in today’s unstable economy, spending on gamification is skyrocketing. In 2022, the global gamification market was valued at $13.4 billion, up 28% a year. And by 2030, the industry is predicted to be worth an impressive $96.8 billion!

This graph illustrates the projected exponential growth of the gamification market, underscoring its long-term relevance and dismissing the idea that it's merely a fad.

#2 Gamified apps are a one-size-fits-all solution

Slapping points, levels, and badges on your customer experience won’t cut it. That’s because your goals, target audience, and value proposition are unique to your product! Given this, your gamification plan is only effective when it’s built with your business in mind. At the end of the day, you should define gamification as a tool that can put your wider strategies into action - not a solution in and of itself.

#3 Gamification means building a game

Gamification is just an added layer over the user experience. At the end of the day, if you have a gamified banking app, it’s still a bank app! Not to mention, you can customize your gamification design to reflect your chosen vision. For instance, gamification features such as personalized avatars, progress bars, and lotteries are elements that can provide rewards and leverage user data without ever feeling like a ‘game’.

Types of gamification

Gamification is a flexible tool. Because of this, there are many ways to gamify! Indeed, how to define gamification depends on your industry. Here are just a few examples:

App gamification

Apps are perfect for gamification! That’s because apps generate tons of user data, and data is the bedrock of gamification. By tracking user activity, you can learn what makes your users tick - and double down on it with gamification features that unlock intrinsic motivation. More specifically, app gamification is effective for a few reasons:

• Data-driven. A great advantage of apps is that you have access to so much rich user data. This can be used to bolster your marketing and development efforts. And app gamification is another way to use that data to create growth!
• People want to engage with apps. In fact, 40% of people download as many as 5 new apps a month!
• User-centric. App gamification is designed to put the user’s needs and preferences front and center.

Marketing gamification

Gamification in marketing is all about creating unforgettable brand experiences. How does it work? Simply put, gamified marketing is memorable because it’s interactive and purposeful. In short, behavioral psychologists note that when people engage to achieve a direct goal, such as to gain points, they remember better! That makes sense, right?

Loyalty gamification

Loyalty is the ultimate prize! Usually, loyalty gamification aims to reward the most valuable customers, encourage repeat purchases, and reciprocate the trust loyal users offer. To be sure, people expect this! This is what we call the ‘Lucky Loyalty effect’, where customers feel that their rewards should scale with loyalty.

Loyalty gamification is especially important for growth when the economy is turbulent (like now, for instance). To illustrate, in the post-2007 recession, loyalty programs boomed, growing 19% in 2 years.

Gamification in education

When it comes to education, there is a different meaning to gamification. While the end goal is the same - to make learning interactive and enjoyable - it goes about this in different ways. For one, educational gamification focuses on achieving specific goals, namely the acquisition of knowledge. As a result, this narrows the target audience and KPIs you might choose to track. Not to mention, everybody learns differently!

Employee engagement gamification

Using gamification to engage employees, as well as onboard new team members, is increasing in popularity. By introducing game elements in the workplace, gamification can emphasize the purpose of tasks and reward certain behaviors. According to Hewlett-Packard, employee gamification can boost revenue by as much as 42%!

How different sectors can leverage app gamification

Banking & fintech

App gamification is a great way to make repetitive tasks more interesting. That’s because gamification can create unpredictability. For instance, game features can reward users who save money and hotzones can act as spontaneous challenges to earn bigger rewards. In essence, gamification can give banking & fintech apps a competitive edge through differentiation and the offer of a great experience.

Education

It’s true that learning is sometimes hard. After all, it’s full of things you don’t know! Given this, no wonder educational apps can be demotivating. To combat this, and instead provide positive reinforcement, you can gamify! Studies have explored how gamification in education creates a more motivating experience for students. And in education, high motivation can be the difference between passing or failing.

Enterprise

All kinds of businesses can use gamification to make their platforms and customer engagement strategies more exciting. Basically, it doesn’t matter whether your goal is employee engagement or driving sales. Features of gamification, meaning things like points, badges, and levels, are all flexible tools that you can use to create an interactive experience that pushes people into action!

Health & fitness

Over a quarter of major mHealth apps are already gamified. That’s because gamification suits the health & fitness model so well! Consider these factors:

• Fitness app users already have a clear goal, they just need the motivation
• mHealth apps generate lots of actionable, quantifiable data
• The sector often focuses on repetitive tasks like exercise
• Can lose motivation to engage easily

Shared mobility

Shared mobility is growing fast. The sector could be worth as much as $1 trillion by 2030. And gamification is helping fuel the rise! Shared mobility is a super competitive sector, which is why app gamification is popularly used to boost customer loyalty. For example, by rewarding riders with free minutes for making purchases or hitting milestones. When you do this, customers are incentivized to stick around! Benefits like this are why micromobility apps like EVO Sharing come to StriveCloud to develop gamification plans.

Jennifer Dittmar @EVO Sharing - "Our business model is also very suitable for gamification. Receiving rewards based on distance, kilometers, or minutes driven makes a lot of sense to use and goes well together."

Sports

There’s always growth to be found in sports and fan engagement! In both traditional sports and esports, every brand has a highly active and unique fanbase of people searching for new ways to engage. To bring back this fanbase regularly, you can post daily quizzes and polls to increase fan engagement and interaction.

How to gamify your product? Get expert advice delivered to your inbox! Join our weekly app gamification crash course.

Benefits of app gamification

Today, the average person spends 1/3 of their time on mobile. Given this, they are always looking for a place to engage. And that’s where app gamification comes in! Game elements can help you maximize app engagement and create a better experience for your users. In addition to higher user engagement, gamification can:

1. Drive users towards certain actions, so you can achieve your business goals
2. Encourage engagement with rewards, leading to higher retention
3. Enrich the user experience, boosting overall satisfaction

To be sure, you should not underestimate the benefits of increased user satisfaction. In practice, satisfaction is a great predictor of loyalty. And loyal, engaged customers are the ultimate goldmine! Time and time again, apps report that their top 20% of engaged users make up 80% of revenue! If that’s not enough, here are a few more statistics on why you need engaged users:

• 8 in 10 people will pay extra for a more engaging experience
• Engaged users are 63% less likely to churn
• Top 10% of engaged app users spend 3x more
• 82% of engaged users will promote your app

Why gamification works

It’s simple - games are enjoyable and people crave fun experiences. That’s why nearly 82% of the world’s internet users are gamers. However, you don’t need to like games to enjoy gamification! That’s because gamification is based on the behavioral psychology that is common to us all. In short, it’s backed up by decades of science into what makes humans tick. And because these principles are so broad and relatable to the way our brains work, it means that any kind of industry can benefit from a gamified app!

How does gamification increase user engagement?

Firstly, you should know that there are 4 key types of user engagement. And to build a truly successful app, you should focus on optimizing all of them!

• Contextual engagement. Your content is in the right place at the right time.
• Ease-of-use. Ideally, your users should be able to engage in 3 clicks or less!
• Emotional engagement. Strong stories or visuals can wow your users.
• Social engagement. People love to connect and compete with others.

When it comes to creating user engagement, the mechanics that define gamification tap into our brains to motivate us and elicit an emotional response. Here’s why it works:

Leverages the power of loss avoidance

Loss avoidance is one of the most powerful psychological forces! In fact, the fear of losing out is more motivating than winning. Gamification thrives on this principle. Even a simple reward for completing a task can motivate users to engage!

Frontiers in human neuroscience - "Human behavior is more strongly driven by the motivation to avoid losses than to pursue gains... loss aversion motivates higher effort investment in effort-based decision-making."

People crave validation

Validation, or positive reinforcement, is a human necessity. When you provide this with a badge reward or even just a filled-in progress bar, you unlock the intrinsic drivers of growth and self-worth. Satisfying these needs makes a completed task more enjoyable, and it encourages us to engage again!

Simplifies the user experience

Essentially, you perform a task, and you get rewarded for it. It doesn’t get clearer than that! In scientific terms, they call this “reducing the cognitive load”. In other words, a simple story makes your app easier to use because it requires less mental effort to follow. That’s thanks to 3 gamification ideas:

• Clear goals and progress
• Feedback and rewards
• Guided pathways

Engaged users are your route to app growth! Discover here how app gamification drives engagement.

How to gamify your web or mobile app?

App development takes internal expertise, time, and money - lots of money! Given this, only big organizations can afford to build and maintain a gamified app. But there is another way. Growing apps need solutions that can grow with them. And that means using specially designed app gamification software that doesn’t require much investment! In doing so, you will:

Immediately gain the necessary expertise

Gamification companies offer the help of their expert teams! These are professionals who have spent years crafting gamification strategies. They can act as your support agent and design consultant at the same time. In short, you can learn from the experience of others, instead of making your own mistakes.

Save time and money

You can start using the add-on gamification features immediately. As a result, you’ll spend less to develop and maintain features that might end up being either underutilized or overwhelming. In fact, if you build features yourself, you would pay 20% of the development cost in maintenance alone!

How can a gamification tool help you? Book a free consultation with StriveCloud and find out!

5 components and design principles that define gamification

• Achievement. Badges and levels celebrate user engagement!
• Competition. People are naturally social and competitive.
• Feedback. Instant feedback positively reinforces the user.
• Reward. Earning a reward feels great and helps give tasks purpose.
• Unpredictability. A fresh user experience will keep users returning for more.

The essential frameworks of gamification design

Using a framework for gamification, meaning a set of existing guidelines or design principles can help you implement game elements in non-game contexts. In short, they provide a base of psychology and theory to make you more effective. Although app gamification frameworks can lend structure, you don’t need to use one. If you are confident, you can design a gamification plan that’s more intuitive and creative.

However, it’s useful to know some of the major gamification frameworks today:

MDA framework

MDA refers to 3 key aspects of any game: mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics. In brief, mechanics are the game’s rules, dynamics describe gameplay, and finally, aesthetics combine your visual design and emotional intent. When you define gamification using this method, you can better understand how game elements are interconnected. And with that, you can make a product where the whole is more than the sum of its parts!

6D framework

This gamification framework outlines the steps you should take to gamify successfully. First, you must establish your measurable business objectives and the user behaviors you plan to leverage. Next, that leads you into defining personas and their motivations. Following this, you can design activity cycles to hook users with fun game features!

The 6D framework provides a structured, step-by-step process for implementing a successful gamification strategy, from defining objectives to deploying features.

Octalysis framework

In essence, you can define gamification as the art of motivating people. And the Octalysis framework breaks down exactly what makes humans tick! According to the model, there are 8 core motivational drivers:

1. Purpose/mission. People need a goal to strive towards!
2. Growth & accomplishment. Celebrating progress is crucial.
3. Creative autonomy. Empowering users to be free and explore.
4. Ownership. When people feel they own something, they want to improve it.
5. Social relatedness. Social influences like competition can be hugely powerful.
6. Scarcity & impatience. We inherently want rare things. It shows off our status!
7. Unpredictability. Fresh user experiences drive retention & repeat engagement.
8. Loss and avoidance. The fear of negative consequences pushes us into action.

This diagram visualizes the eight core drives of the Octalysis framework, which are central to understanding human motivation in gamified systems.

How to develop your own gamification strategy

A gamification strategy outlines your planned approach to implementing game elements into your app. Ultimately, your strategy depends on your goals. Are you trying to create a hazard-free simulation where users can learn safely, or just trying to address short attention spans? Once you figure out the issue you are trying to solve, and the users you are targeting, you can develop a strategy for success!

How do the world’s best apps gamify? Discover a hands-on playbook and turn your targets into an actionable strategy!

3 top tips for thinking like a game designer

The success of your gamification relies on understanding what motivates your users. So you can’t just tack on gamification elements. Indeed, you need a clear strategy! For sure, this can be hard to devise. To help, here is how our experts define gamification design:

1. Have concrete goals and track your progress. Gamification drives the action that you want to see. Naturally, then, it’s important that you know what action it is that you want to promote, and when it is that you have achieved success!
2. Implement game elements gradually. The more choices that someone has, the more likely they will be overwhelmed and quit! In short, don’t overload your users and ensure that learning how your app works remains effortless.
3. Reward participation! Gamification is all about rewarding users for engaging. Like that, they keep engaging! When rewarded at the best time, (usually right after the task), the benefits are huge. For example, studies find that winning a badge results in a ‘positive effect’ that leads to higher user engagement!

Our game designers can help! Book a workshop with our experts and learn how to kickstart your gamification plan!

5 app gamification examples from 5 industries

#1 Fintech: Cowrywise

Initially, Nigerian investment app Cowrywise found that many of their customers lacked financial knowledge. As a result, new customers were churning. To combat this, the fintech app implemented a clever gamification strategy!

To start, Cowrywise simplified screens and added digital confetti to celebrate wins. Plus, they reframed tasks as “challenges” to add a competitive element. In the end, 75% of users agreed that these changes made the app easier to understand. What’s more, they introduced badges to reward users for hitting milestones like saving a certain amount.

They also have some more unusual app gamification features. For instance, sports fans can pick out their favorite teams. Every time that the team scores, Cowrywise sends customers a monetary reward! How’s that for uniqueness!

Cowrywise's gamified interface demonstrates how celebrating small wins and creating challenges can make finance apps more engaging and understandable for users.

#2 mHealth: Adidas Runtastic

Before, Adidas Runtastic used to support all kinds of sports. But the app really found success when it simplified the user experience and added gamification. For example, Adidas implemented goal-setting features, challenges, and a leaderboard. In particular, the leaderboard made a huge difference. For one, it introduces social interaction where users are motivated to beat their peers. In addition, a leaderboard provides positive reinforcement and fast feedback. And this keeps users engaged time and again!

Alessio Laiso, UX Product Designer @Adidas Runtastic - "The newly introduced running leaderboard, for example, added an important social element that significantly increased user engagement."

The Adidas Runtastic leaderboard is a prime example of leveraging social competition to boost user engagement and motivation in fitness apps.

#3 Sports: Team Vitality’s successful loyalty app

Team Vitality is a leading esports team in Europe. To maximize their fan engagement and loyalty, they knew they could do more! That's why they developed a loyalty app called V.Hive built on a gamified points reward system.

Essentially, fans earn points straight away for completing quick tasks, like connecting their wallets and socials. Once they hit a number of points, they then unlock a customizable avatar! Following that, they can then take on a series of quests where they rank against their fellow fans. In the end, the top tier of fans can access exclusive fan experiences, including meeting Team Vitality players.

V.Hive achieved great success, no doubt thanks to app gamification! Within just 30 days, the app garnered over 50,000 downloads and 10 times that engagement on social media!

Team Vitality's V.Hive app showcases how quests and customizable avatars can build a strong, loyal fan community in the esports world.

#4 Shared mobility: EVO Sharing

EVO Sharing’s orange e-scooters can be found in cities and towns across Germany. The company came to us at StriveCloud with the aim of maximizing rides per customer. To achieve this, we designed a gamification plan together! For instance, we introduced challenges. If you define gamification as a way to engage users, then this is how you do it! For example, challenges asked customers to ride over 10km in a period of time. If they succeed, they are rewarded with coins with which they can buy free minutes of riding!

Jennifer Dittmar @EVO Sharing - "With Strivecloud, we want to create incentives to drive more often with the electric scooters from EVO Sharing. Through the challenges and the achievement of milestones, the customer shall be motivated to use our scooters more often."

EVO Sharing uses time-based challenges to incentivize more frequent rides, effectively increasing customer activity and loyalty through gamified rewards.

#5 Education: Open University

Studying requires dedication. That’s where app gamification can help motivate! When students log in to Open University, they see a progress bar and checklist of unfinished tasks. Essentially, when a checklist displays unfinished items, this results in the “Zeigarnik effect”. Basically, incomplete tasks stick with us more than those we complete! In other words, students are motivated to return and study.

Moreover, checklists and progress bars provide positive reinforcement and direct students to their goals. As a result, this reduces negative feelings like anxiety or being overwhelmed! In short, Open University’s gamification features create better students!

Open University’s use of progress bars and checklists taps into psychological principles to help students stay on track and feel accomplished in their studies.

Need more inspiration? Discover 68 actionable app gamification examples!

KPIs that define gamification success

How can you know that you’re on the right track? Easy - measuring certain metrics can quickly convey the effectiveness of your new strategies. Using the right tools, you can leverage real-time data to provide responsive and actionable feedback. This way, you can gather helpful insights into user behavior that you might otherwise have missed! Here’s a handful of key performance indicators that can inform your app growth plans:

Active users

Simply put, this metric counts the number of active users during any time period. It is most common to track the daily active users (DAUs) and monthly active users (MAUs). With this data, you can learn a lot about your users.

Retention rate

One of the most important metrics you can track is the retention rate. Essentially, it measures how many users across a time period are still active, in contrast to those who have churned. In 2023, the average retention rate for all mobile apps after just 3 days was a low 33%. That’s not unusual – but tracking the rate is the first step to improving it!

Research shows a modest 5% jump in retention can lead to a 95% revenue boost. Better yet, by combining the retention rate with a cohort analysis, you can narrow down the effects of your changes on certain segments of users and make your data more reliable.

Retention rate = Active customers across period / Active customers in previous period x 100

Stickiness rate

On the topic of active users, the stickiness rate compares your daily active users and monthly active users to communicate how ‘sticky’ your app is. That is to say, how hooked your users are. If a higher proportion of your users engage daily, then that’s a sign you’re providing value!

The stickiness rate formula is a key metric for understanding how frequently users return to your app, indicating its value and engagement level.

3 top tools for app gamification

App gamification tools can unlock real growth for apps. If you’re looking for a fast, user-friendly, and scalable solution that requires little technical knowledge, then using a software might be right for you. Here are 3 examples of gamification tools in 2023:

StriveCloud

StriveCloud offers a flexible gamification tool that is trusted by clients across industries: fintech, shared mobility, edtech, health, and enterprise. And because the software is fully modular, you can easily create a great app experience. With over 25 interactive features like rewards and challenges at your disposal, you can easily increase engagement, and user loyalty, and maximize customer lifetime value!

Michael Stewart @HumanForest - "I really like how easy to use StriveCloud is. I don’t need to interrupt any developers or use any code, there’s no lengthy deployment process & changes are updated instantly."

These screens showcase StriveCloud's flexible and modular gamification features, which can be integrated to enhance user loyalty and engagement.

Gamify with StriveCloud! Use our app gamification tool and benefit from the help of our expert designers. Find out more!

Insert Coin

Insert Coin is a start-up geared towards teachers, HR managers, and product owners. Their gamification platforms offer dozens of ways to buff up the user experience.

Insert Coin provides a gamification platform aimed at improving user experience across various sectors like education and product management.

SaaSquatch

SaaSquatch positions itself as a “referral & loyalty software”. In particular, they offer referral programs that can integrate into both web and mobile apps, with features like points, gift cards, and cashback. The focus on loyalty and tangible financial rewards differentiates them from other gamification tools, as they focus more on user referrals.

SaaSquatch's platform focuses on referral and loyalty programs, using tangible rewards to drive customer acquisition and retention through word-of-mouth marketing.

FAQs

How to define gamification?

Gamification, meaning the use of game-like elements in non-game contexts, can build a more engaging app experience. Essentially, gamification leverages the data from user behavior to incentivize desired actions through fun and psychological satisfaction. In other words, it’s a means of persuasion!

What are the benefits of app gamification?

App gamification can maximize your app engagement and retention. That’s because game elements enrich the app experience, leading to higher user satisfaction. Not to mention, gamification drives users towards certain tasks, for instance with rewards, so you can reach your app goals!

How to add app gamification to your web or mobile app?

App development takes expertise, time, and cash. Instead, using gamification software is a scalable solution! Essentially, you can borrow gamification know-how while using flexible tools designed to easily customize and build a gamified app.

How to build the best gamification system? Use a gamification platform software.

Gamification is the use of game-like elements to make your app more engaging. And it works - studies show gamified apps can boost engagement by as much as 47%! To make the most of the benefits of gamification, you need your very own gamification strategy. And that’s easier and faster to implement with a gamification platform software! That’s because you’ll be able to build a gamification system much easier using a modular builder. More than that, you’ll also have a team of gamification experts to back you up! So how do you go about selecting the right gamification platform for you?

This visual sets the stage for our deep dive into gamification platforms and how they can revolutionize user engagement. Let’s find out how.

• Understanding what gamification is
• Key components of a gamification system
• StriveCloud: Selecting the right gamification platform software
• FAQs

Understanding what gamification is

Gamification is...

Gamification is the strategic use of game elements and psychology in a non-game context. This means implementing gamification features like progress bars, prizes, and reward systems into your app to drive the user behaviors that help you grow.

However, a gamification system doesn’t mean that you are making everything a game. Rather, you borrow the psychological elements that make a game fun, and introduce those into your customer experience! And the benefits of gamification are huge - not only will customers be more engaged and loyal, but they will also spend more and more often!

The chart clearly shows how much more time users spend on gamified apps compared to non-gamified ones, highlighting the power of this strategy.

To turn your app into a gamified experience, you have a few options. For one, you can develop the features yourself. That gives you control of the project, though it will also be costly and time-consuming. Not to mention, you have to know exactly what you’re doing - and that means hiring an in-house team of gamification experts! Instead, for a faster, more flexible solution that requires less expertise and a lower investment, use a gamification platform software.

If you’re selecting the right gamification platform, you can get more than just a handful of features ready to customize. You’ll also gain the help of gamification experts to guide you on how to build the best gamification strategy for your unique needs. Gradually, you’ll begin to learn yourself the secrets of how to gamify!

Let’s start you off right away. One of the most important keys to your success is understanding gamification psychology.

The psychology behind gamification

Gamification is more than just points, levels, and badges. On a deeper level, a gamification system offers much more to drive customers forward in their journey. Essentially, game mechanics and features tap into shared human behaviors to motivate.

Gabe Zichermann, gamification expert - "Gamification is 75% psychology and 25% technology."

Put simply, gamification psychology relies on satisfying three motivational drivers:

1. Autonomy. People like being empowered with a choice – and this motivates them to stick to their goals. Personalization and custom rewards achieve this.
2. Value. Show the user your value to them and their value to you! Reward them with badges and points, and let them socialize to buff up their social status.
3. Competence. The need for personal growth is a powerful motivator. Gamified elements such as challenges and levels can test and track user competence.

These three drivers are linked to what we call “intrinsic motivators”. In other words, factors that appeal to our emotions, innate desires, and fears. Once you inspire this, you unlock a long-lasting and self-sustaining motivation!

At the same time, your gamification system should also motivate people extrinsically, with achievements and results-based drivers. Utilizing both forms of motivation is crucial for your success. While extrinsic motivation pushes users through the discovery phase, long-term retention needs intrinsic motivation!

What really is gamification? Discover the mechanics and basics of gamification psychology on our ‘What is Gamification’ page.

Benefits of gamification in different industries

Travel & hospitality

One bad experience is enough to lose a customer forever. To avoid this, hospitality & travel companies can gamify. For instance, implementing gamification features in a loyalty program, like rewards or unpredictable lottery programs, can create the positive experience that customers demand!

In fact, this satisfies the “Lucky Loyalty” effect, another element of gamification psychology. Essentially, the more loyal that a customer is, the better treatment they expect to get! In other words, your benefits should scale with loyalty and gamification is a great way to provide this value without just doling out unaffordable discounts. Over time, this gamification strategy will reduce churn and boost customer lifetime value.

Sports & fitness

Did you know that over half of all sports & fitness apps contain a gamification system? That’s because fitness apps are super social and generate lots of great, gamifiable data such as daily steps or exercise length. For a great example, the workout app SWEAT encourages users to share a side-by-side photo of themselves before and after exercise to show off their progress and increase their social status. CEO Kayla Itsines credits this as the biggest reason her app became the most profitable fitness app in the world!

The SWEAT app's progress-sharing feature is a prime example of social gamification driving user motivation and community building.

Financial services

Banking and fintech apps are well suited to take advantage of the benefits of gamification. That’s because gamification psychology is suited to financial services, where customers often come in with a clear goal, such as to save money. Features like points and badges can give users a feeling of progress towards these goals. In turn, this motivates them and they stick around for longer!

Mobile apps & technology

Gamification is one of the most powerful tools that mobile apps and tech companies can use to supercharge user engagement and retention. Today, a third of all our time is spent on mobile. That means the opportunities for engagement are endless! To capitalize on this, a gamification system engages users by increasing your product’s usefulness, social influence, and enjoyment - making it more likely that they engage for longer.

Education

Education is the second most gamified segment, behind only retail. Why? Because implementing gamification in education can improve how feedback is given - and that’s important as students need plenty of motivation! Research shows that students are motivated by the positive reinforcement provided by a gamification system, as well as by negative reinforcement. With that in mind, selecting the right gamification platform means finding a flexible solution with a varied selection of features to choose from.

This pie chart illustrates the growing market share of gamification across various industries, with retail and education leading the way.

Implementing gamification for success

Getting your gamification system right is important. But it doesn’t come straight away. Over time, you’ll optimize and improve your gamification strategy to maximize your success. To get started on your gamified app, here are four things you should consider:

1. What does your app do? Analyze your app’s key features and user actions.
2. Who are your users? Learn more about your users and what motivates them.
3. Identify the touchpoints. These interactions are what you can leverage. Imagine the ideal user behavior at each point in the customer journey.
4. Learn from the best! They say that no ideas are original, just their executions. To be sure, it is smart to learn from other gamified apps, especially if they have the same goals as you.

Bjorn Cumps, Professor @Vlerick Business School - "Have a very clear goal, incentivize ideal user behavior, and make the process fun and engaging. Gamification should be used to take away the barriers that limit a user from fully engaging."

Ultimately, you need what makes your customers tick! The best way to do this is by implementing gamification gradually. For one, you don’t want to overwhelm your user. More importantly, though, gamification is all about data. And if you rush your implementation, you risk your gamification strategy backfiring. Only by analyzing and optimizing after each iteration, can you achieve success!

However, some things simply don’t need thorough testing because the evidence is already out there. For instance, badge rewards are more effective when given right after the relevant task. So while testing can tell you what and when is optimal, the faster and better way to find out the answers you want is to consult an expert! There are many insights that an experienced team at a gamification platform software can give you.

Want to reap the benefits of gamification? Chat with our experts & discover your next steps!

Key components of a gamification system

10 essential elements of a gamification system

Gamification is built on several behavioral dynamics that will lift user motivation:

• Accomplishment. Give customers goals to strive for!
• Constraint. Lock off certain features to incentivize usage.
• Empowerment. Customers need autonomy and personalization.
• Relationships. People are naturally social and enjoy friendly competition.
• Unpredictability. Delight your customers with a fun, surprising experience.

When implemented together, these are the mechanics that make a gamification system so engaging. And because the motivations are shared by all humans, gamification targets more than just ‘gamers’, but rather a wide range of audiences. By the way, given that close to 3 billion people play games in 2023, gamers are no longer a niche! Not to mention, that number is only rising.

This graph shows the consistent upward trend in the number of gamers worldwide, confirming that gamified mechanics appeal to a massive and growing audience.

In short, gamification psychology runs deep. By learning about and then leveraging the behavioral science that powers gamification, you can make the most out of the benefits of gamification! Aside from the main mechanics mentioned above, there are other principles that you can exploit.

These are a few supporting behavioral principles that fit well into a gamification system, and can be used to provide an extra shot of motivation:

• Liking. We’re far more likely to engage with things that we like. Simple, right?
• Loss framing. To maximize motivation, present benefits as an avoided loss!
• Narrative bias. Relatable stories create context and bring your app to life.
• Relativity. Comparisons, like loyalty tiers, enhance perceived value.
• Scarcity. Trigger users into action with limited rewards & challenges.

These psychological principles are the building blocks of an effective gamification system, creating a multi-layered motivational experience for the user.

How data can help you implement gamification

Ask yourself, what data are you gathering from your users? This changes what you can leverage. Without data, you have nothing to gamify! That’s because gamification is a data-driven tool, and it uses data to drive users to achieve your goals.

However, not all data is actionable. Indeed, you’ll need to sift through and figure out what relates to what. In short, that means being able to answer these questions:

• What data is available and is it useful? The more, the merrier. Better data powers your analytics, which can form the basis of a more effective gamification strategy. More data allows you to narrow your scope and develop more reliable insights, for instance with cohort analysis.
• Are they meaningful performance indicators? In other words, make sure that what you plan to track and measure actually affects the change you want.
• Do they relate to your business targets? Don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal!

Following this process, A/B testing can tell you if your strategy actually works in practice. Then, powered by the data, you can change and optimize your tactics to reach success! To take full advantage of this process, you need a flexible gamification system that not only allows you to test features but to adjust them quickly and easily when you need to. That’s why selecting the right gamification platform software is so important!

Customizing your gamification system

Just like you wouldn’t expect to fit a square peg in a round hole, a gamification system is not one-size-fits-all. In fact, customization is part of why gamification is so powerful! And there’s plenty of scope for customization.

Firstly, before implementing gamification, you have to know your customers. That way, you can adjust your product to bring it closer to their preferences and motivations. To gather the user data necessary to power your gamification strategy, you can use surveys, feedback, and user personas to segment your customers.

Following that, you can customize your desired features and game mechanics! For one, they should align with your goals. For instance, if you want to boost engagement, you can implement milestones that push users to engage to hit a certain threshold. As well, you can personalize your milestones, badges, and achievements with fun names and visuals that tell a compelling story. This gives your product character, in turn making it more memorable, enjoyable, and ultimately more motivating to engage with!

For example, when e-bike operator HumanForest came to StriveCloud to gamify their sustainable shared mobility app, we gave each level a fun plant name and called their in-app currency TreeCoins. As a bonus, these were more than just virtual points. In fact, the coins actually represent how much trees worth of CO2 you save by riding an e-bike!

HumanForest creatively customizes its gamification by using themed currency like 'TreeCoins,' which connects the in-app rewards directly to the company's sustainability mission.

How to implement a gamification system

Implementing gamification takes money, time, and expertise. In particular, it can be hard to develop on your own the know-how needed to succeed. But, given the fierce competition in the app market, growing apps have little time or space to develop the necessary expertise.

Instead, apps with ambitions to grow can learn from a team of gamification experts! In other words, by using a gamification platform software you can profit from the knowledge of a team of gamification experts. Their consulting can help you put into action a gamification system fit for your app’s unique needs. What’s more, when you use a software, it is faster to implement new game elements. Indeed, there’s no need to code and spend time and money on development.

Having said that, you still need to know what to use and when! While a gamification platform software is not a simple DIY solution, it’s not a “do it for me” service either. Rather, the best gamification platform builders are a “do it together” kind of tool. With a collaborative process, a software team can combine your knowledge of your own product with the experience of gamification experts. Given this, selecting the right gamification platform to work with is a huge decision.

StriveCloud: Selecting the right gamification platform software

Why use StriveCloud’s gamification platform software

When you pick a gamification platform software, it’s not just the tool itself that needs to be up to scratch. Alongside that, you need a team of experts that you like and understand to support you through each step of your journey. And that’s what we at StriveCloud offer!

For one, we have modular software you can use to implement over 25 interactive gamification and loyalty features like rewards and challenges. In addition, our expert team is at your disposal to provide advice and consult on your gamification strategy. That’s what makes us trusted by clients across industries: fintech, shared mobility, edtech, health, and enterprise.

Ultimately, the goal is your growth! And when you go with a software like StriveCloud for your gamification system, you’re choosing a scalable solution that can grow with you.

Discover the benefits of implementing gamification with StriveCloud. Learn more about our software!

These screenshots from the StriveCloud platform showcase the variety of customizable gamification features available to engage users.

Designing and implementing gamification with StriveCloud

To form your gamification strategy and fuel your app’s growth, we start with a workshop. Together with our team of gamification experts, we will focus on crafting a gamification system fit for your target audience and maximizing the benefits of gamification. It’s all a part of our 3-step plan for success:

1. Gamification workshop. Bring your team, and we’ll bring ours! Our gamification experts will explore your app, its functionality and audience, your growth goals, and the obstacles currently blocking your path.
2. Gamification design plan. What features will make your goals a reality and what data will it leverage? Here, we’ll show you the exact tactics we’ve used to increase clients’ daily active users by 58% and increase user retention by 23%.
3. Set up! We’ll set up our software to integrate the new features into your app. Then, from our control panel, you can customize/add/remove additional gamification features yourself. We’ll train you on how to use our gamification platform software, so you can manage the gamified experience yourself!

Let our experts guide you towards actionable strategies to achieve your goals. Find out more!

This graphic highlights some of the key gamified features offered by StriveCloud, such as challenges, leaderboards, and customizable rewards.

How to optimize your gamification system

Building a gamification system doesn’t have to be hell. By using StriveCloud’s gamification platform software, you can introduce, tweak, and experiment with various gamified elements to see what works best for you.

Michael Stewart @HumanForest - "I really like how easy to use StriveCloud is. I don’t need to interrupt any developers or use any code, there’s no lengthy deployment process & changes are updated instantly."

With StriveCloud, you can optimize your product with an iterative approach. After all, nobody gets things right the first time! In short, this entails plenty of A/B testing and data analysis to make your gamification strategy more effective and flexible. And flexibility is crucial, given that your user base is changing all the time. For instance, the industry benchmark for 90-day app retention is just 20%. Assuming you keep acquiring users, that means most of your users are completely new!

In turn, increased flexibility leads to growth. Indeed, if you can keep up with the day’s challenges, you will develop a competitive edge. Without a doubt, the best way to grow is by implementing gamification using a gamification platform software like StriveCloud.

FAQs

What is a gamification system?

Gamification is the strategic use of game elements and psychology in a non-game context. This means implementing gamification features like progress bars, prizes, and reward systems into your app to drive the user behaviors that help you grow.

What is gamification psychology?

A gamification system taps into shared human behaviors to motivate. In fact, experts say that gamification is more psychology than technology! That’s because gamification relies on leveraging intrinsic motivation, using drivers like autonomy and competence. Satisfying these motivations leads to long-term success!

How to select the right gamification platform software?

Spending time and money to develop your own untested gamification system is risky. But when you use a gamification platform software like StriveCloud, you can implement features without any lines of code — all under the guidance of gamification experts!

10 gamification ideas that show how to create a great user experience

What features should a gamified user experience have? In practice, the answer depends on your business goals! Whether you choose to use challenges, points, leaderboards - or all of them together - gamification can drive users toward what you want them to achieve! To help you picture success, let’s see 10 gamification ideas in action!

This image illustrates how various gamification elements can be combined to create a compelling and cohesive user experience.

• What is gamification?
• What is gamification for apps?
• Why are gamification ideas so successful?
• 3 key benefits of app gamification
• 10 gamification ideas for apps
• Challenges
• Leaderboards
• Points
• Personalization
• Daily streaks
• Try out gamification with StriveCloud!
• FAQs

What is gamification?

Gamification uses game-like elements to motivate users in non-game contexts. And all kinds of apps can implement gamification ideas like points and levels! Essentially, a gamified app taps into human psychology by satisfying our innate needs for fun, growth, and belonging. In turn, this makes the user experience more enjoyable!

This is what we call intrinsic motivation, and it encourages users to return, leading to long-term app engagement. Unlike extrinsic rewards, such as financial prizes or cashback, gamification leverages internal drivers for effective and sustained retention.

New to gamification ideas? Learn the basics with StriveCloud! Our definitive guide to app gamification can act as a reference point for your engagement strategy.

What is gamification for apps?

Simply put, gamification runs on data. And apps generate tons of user data! A gamified app can leverage this user data to build a satisfying user experience. In other words, gamification ideas can turn mundane or routine tasks into more enjoyable and memorable activities. To achieve this, gamification relies on 4 simple mechanics:

• Achievement. Badges and levels celebrate user engagement!
• Competition. People are naturally social and competitive.
• Feedback. Instant feedback positively reinforces the user.
• Reward. Points, perks, and bonuses! Whatever you want to call it, rewards are extremely motivating and help give tasks purpose.

Why are gamification ideas so successful?

Gamification ideas are based on the behavioral psychology that is common to us all. In short, they’re backed up by decades of science into what makes humans tick. And all this research means that we know confidently how to motivate people and drive behaviors! And because these principles are so broad and relatable to the way our brains work, it means that any kind of industry can benefit from a gamified app!

Here’s why gamification ideas work so well:

Leverages the power of loss avoidance

Loss avoidance is one of the most powerful psychological forces! In fact, the fear of losing out is more motivating than winning. Gamification thrives on this principle. Even a simple reward for completing a task can motivate users to engage!

Frontiers in human neuroscience - "Human behavior is more strongly driven by the motivation to avoid losses than to pursue gains... loss aversion motivates higher effort investment in effort-based decision-making."

People crave validation

Validation, or positive reinforcement, is a human necessity. When you provide it with a badge reward, or even just a filled-in progress bar, you unlock the intrinsic drivers of growth and self-worth. Satisfying these needs makes a completed task more enjoyable, and it encourages us to engage again!

Simplifies the user experience

Essentially, you perform a task, and you get rewarded for it. It doesn’t get clearer than that! In scientific terms, they call this “reducing the cognitive load”. In other words, a simple story makes your app easier to use because it requires less mental effort to follow. That’s thanks to 3 gamification ideas:

• Clear goals and progress
• Feedback and rewards
• Guided pathways

3 key benefits of app gamification

The average person spends 1/3 of their time on mobile. Given this, they are always looking for a place to engage. And that’s where gamification comes in! Game elements can help you maximize app engagement and create a better experience for your users. That’s because gamification ideas result in 3 key benefits:

1. Drives users towards certain tasks, so you can achieve your business goals
2. Elevates user engagement strategies with rewards, leading to higher retention
3. Enriches the user experience, boosting overall satisfaction

To be sure, you should not underestimate the benefits of increased user satisfaction. In practice, satisfaction is one of the best predictors of loyalty. And loyal customers are the ultimate goldmine! Time and time again, apps report that their top 20% of users make up 80% of revenue!

10 gamification ideas for apps

Challenges

#1 GooglePay’s stamp challenge enthralled India

How did GooglePay stimulate product adoption in India? With a challenge! For Diwali, one of India’s biggest festivals, the app challenged customers to earn 5 unique stamps. Basically, they do this by completing transactions and earning randomized stamps. If you collected all 5 stamps within the 2-week deadline, you got a cash prize! In a way, this makes the challenge like a lottery, which makes it even more unpredictable and fun.

In the end, the campaign garnered over 37 million impressions and sparked 225,000 conversations on social media. Sounds good, right? Here’s why the challenge worked:

• Dopamine effect. Getting the right stamp feels great!
• Effort/reward balance. Making engagement easy is crucial.
• Habit formation. Repetitive actions and rewards hook customers in.
• Narrative. Centered around a cultural festival, GooglePay put its spin on a widely shared and beloved story.

GooglePay's campaign demonstrates how a culturally relevant and lottery-like challenge can create viral engagement in a new market.

#2 Santander Cycles incentivizes users to achieve (and win!)

Challenges are unpredictable - and that’s exciting! This freshness gives users a reason to return to the app. For instance, London’s Santander Cycles regularly challenges their customers. To make their challenges extra motivating, the app rewards successful customers with a lottery entry and the thrilling chance of winning a prize.

For one, this triggers customers to complete actions aligned with their business goals. It can be seen that Santander Cycles wants customers to take more rides. That’s why they create achievements such as “keep on pedaling” and “frequent flyer”, where riders have to ride every day or exceed 123 kilometers. And when riders pass these challenges, it increases their self-confidence and feeling of expertise!

This example from Santander Cycles shows how gamified challenges can drive specific user behaviors that align with business goals, like increased ride frequency.

Leaderboards

#3 Kazyr ranked their esports teams

Leaderboards help users compare their personal progress against their peers. For esports platform Kazyr, implementing a leaderboard was one of the gamification strategies they had when they came to us at StriveCloud to gamify their web app. On the leaderboard, gamers are sorted by their skills, with the top-ranking players winning prizes like merchandise and experiences, not to mention bragging rights!

For many apps, leaderboards can inspire a sense of competition. That’s assuming the information isn’t sensitive, like in banking apps for example. Indeed, users should want to publicize their ranking - after all, it’s a sign of social status and that’s motivating!

After implementing our gamification ideas, Kazyr achieved amazing results:

• 60% more daily active users
• 1 year of 24/7 eyeball time in a day
• 1.5h average session time per user per day

Pieter Verheye, Community Manager @Kayzr - "By gamifying the user experience, StriveCloud helped us grow our user base by 350%."

#4 Sweatcoin pays the board leaders

In 2021, Sweatcoin was just a growing fitness app. Back then, established leaders like Strava and Fitbit held the top spots. But by 2022, Sweatcoin was the most downloaded mHealth app in the world! Their implementation of gamification ideas like rewards and leaderboards is a huge part of their success. Essentially, users get “Sweatcoins” for their daily steps. These coins are actually digital currency, which users can then exchange for dollars and euros in their wallets!

To further encourage users to earn Sweatcoins, the app places users on a leaderboard. For one, the feature offers feedback and positive reinforcement. But it also helps create a community of Sweatcoin users! When users compete for the top spot, they share the same goals and interests as others. As a result, you fulfill the ‘need to belong’, which social psychologists call hugely powerful. In short, it’s how you keep your users around for longer, and in turn, boost loyalty!

The Sweatcoin leaderboard effectively combines competition with tangible rewards, fostering a strong sense of community and motivation.

Points

#5 Ready Telco One shows that gamification ideas are powerful

Gamification ideas are spreading far and wide, even to big telecommunications companies. Recently, telco giants Orange and Microsoft partnered to create an experiment called Ready Telco One. The app explored the benefits of gamification features, including points. As a gamified telco marketplace, they rewarded points to users for engaging in quizzes, making product searches, and even virtual testing telco products. Following that, the points could be redeemed for discounts at partner retailers.

As a result of the app, industry experts estimated that the gamification ideas shown off in Ready Telco One could deliver great outcomes:

• €18 million increase to monthly revenue
• 1 million new app customers
• €0.55 increase in ARPU

Ready Telco One's point system illustrates how gamification can directly translate to significant financial outcomes like increased revenue and ARPU.

#6 HumanForest uses points to send a sustainable message

To encourage Londoners to travel green, our team at StriveCloud helped the e-bike app HumanForest create and implement one of the most impactful gamification strategies. More than anything, HumanForest’s Michael Stewart wanted to reward customers for their positive impact on the environment. This led to the creation of ‘TreeCoins’. More than a simple points system, the scheme rewards customers for riding with free minutes or discounts at green retailers.

But here’s the best part – TreeCoins actually show users how many trees worth of CO2 they save! For every 5 miles that users ride, they earn a TreeCoin, and this TreeCoin represents 1 tree in saved CO2.

Michael Stewart @HumanForest - "StriveCloud really helped us fulfil our brand message. The TreeCoins explain our mission perfectly… the progress visualization mechanic prompts users to keep using HumanForest and rewards sustainable behavior with free minutes!"

Visualizing these real-life consequences makes the points feel tangible – and in turn more valuable. Users can literally see their positive impact on our planet! This incentive gives users a reason to return to HumanForest, and it clearly works. In June 2022, 70% of the 150,000 trips on HumanForest were made by repeat users!

HumanForest's TreeCoin system effectively connects digital points to a tangible, real-world impact, powerfully reinforcing the brand's sustainable message.

Personalization

#7 Muscle Booster lets users customize their exercise

One of the easiest ways to give users a purpose is by simply asking them what they want to achieve. Of course, you can’t ask 100 questions. Indeed, you need to keep it short and sweet, because every added step of onboarding costs 20% of your users!

Having a clear goal sets out a pathway for your engagement. In turn, this simplifies the experience. For a good example, look at MuscleBooster. The app lets users select their personal goals during onboarding, as well as customize their desired workouts to match. As a bonus, this takes advantage of the ‘endowed progress effect’. Essentially, personalized gamification for onboarding makes people more likely to complete tasks they begin!

Muscle Booster's personalized onboarding process shows how letting users set their own goals creates a sense of purpose and simplifies the user journey.

#8 Stitch Fix gets to know your preferences during onboarding

Ecommerce is a competitive industry. But gamification ideas can gift you the edge - and Stitch Fix is proof of that! Immediately when a new customer joins the platform, they participate in “Style Shuffle”. Essentially, users are shown different items of clothing, asked “Would you wear this?”, and tasked to thumb up or down the garments.

Next, these answers are used to personalize a surprise clothes box that Stitch Fix delivers monthly to your door. For one, this is a great way to gather data on users and create a more valuable service. What’s more, asking users for feedback shows that you value their opinions and this builds brand trust. And of course, it is also just more fun!

Since the game launched, more than 75% of Stitch Fix’s 3 million customers have engaged with it, generating over a billion ratings!

Torunn Skrogstad, Principal Product Designer @Stitch Fix - "Style Shuffle was a huge unlock for the company. I was sitting in Copenhagen fiddling with these thumb icons and I had no idea this would be a huge unlock for the business."

Stitch Fix's "Style Shuffle" is a brilliant example of using a simple, game-like interaction to gather valuable data for personalization at scale.

Daily streaks

#9 Duolingo streaks keep students learning

Streaks keep track of a user’s daily engagement. They are especially effective in habit formation and a popular feature for gamification in learning, especially for customer retention strategies. For example, the language learning app Duolingo uses streaks to incentivize regular engagement. And people love to keep their streaks! In fact, when Duolingo challenged users to keep their streak with a “wager”, 2-week retention rose 14%!

The iconic Duolingo streak is a powerful demonstration of how tracking daily engagement can build habits and boost user retention significantly.

#10 Snapchat combines socialization & streaks to maximize engagement

Snapchat is one of the world’s most popular social apps, with over 330 million downloads in 2022. To maximize daily engagement, Snapchat rewards users with streaks. Essentially, if you don’t message a friend for a day, you’ll lose your “best friend” streak! What’s more, users get trophies and badges for long streaks.

All in all, this leverages the gamification ideas mentioned earlier, namely loss avoidance. And by making the streak a social feature, it becomes even more powerful!

Snapchat's social streaks capitalize on the principle of loss avoidance and social connection to drive massive daily engagement.

Ready to implement these ideas? Booking a session can help you craft the perfect gamification strategy for your app.

FAQs

What is gamification?

Gamification uses game-like features to motivate users in non-game contexts. And any app can gamify! That’s because gamification ideas tap into shared human psychology by satisfying innate needs like growth and belonging. As a result, you create a more engaging user experience.

Why are gamification ideas so successful?

Gamification ideas are successful because they’re based on decades of behavioral psychology that explores what makes humans tick. For example, humans instinctively avoid losses and seek positive reinforcement. Features like points and badges can leverage these behaviors to create powerful motivation!

What is the key benefit of gamification?

Gamification can drive customers toward your business goals. This is done by rewarding specific behaviors with features like points and leaderboards. Essentially, rewards incentivize engagement and make the user experience more fun. In turn, this increases user satisfaction and leads to loyalty!

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Boosting trips and loyalty with gamification for mobility service

Imagine this – A bustling street corner, each person with a different destination from the next. For many, the quickest way to get to where they’re going is to hop on to one of the four electric scooters nearby, that are propped up, waiting to be picked by their next. Of the four choices, however, there are three different brands to choose from. How will they decide which one to take for a ride? Do they favor a certain brand?

The reality is that, in general, customer loyalty for a mobility service is less likely to be the deciding factor as opposed to convenience and better pricing. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. StriveCloud continuously works to find ways to get customers to keep coming back. Through gamification, customer engagement and loyalty for mobility services are greatly improved! Starting this year, their gamification software fully integrates within the Vulog platform.

• What is gamification
• More than a loyalty tool. The benefits of engaging customers with gamification.
• How to bring gamification to your mobility service with Vulog and Strivecloud
• Reap the benefits of gamification

What is gamification

Gamification means using the same elements that make playing games fun and motivating, but in a non-game environment. In the context of a mobility app, this could mean incorporating challenges for users to beat, a tiered leveling system, or a CO2 leaderboard that rewards end-users for their achievements with points, badges, or free perks hidden behind a scratch card. It’s a way to create a fun and rewarding customer experience that incentivizes end-users to use a company’s services more often, makes the service stand out, and most importantly, it rewards loyalty without compromising profit margins.

What is gamification and how does it improve the user experience?

This illustration highlights how gamification can create a rewarding and sticky user experience for mobility services.

More than a loyalty tool. The benefits of engaging customers with gamification

While gamification has the reward component of loyalty programs, it’s got the advantage of being considerably more engaging. Gamified systems encourage desired actions such as social sharing, content creation, and participation in interactive challenges, fostering a deeper and more meaningful relationship between the brand and the consumer.

Traditional loyalty programs send end-users away from the company’s platform to an external one to unlock rewards that depend on how often they use the mobility service. As more and more end-users participate in a loyalty program, the program becomes increasingly expensive for a company to sustain. With gamification, that’s not the case.

What does this mean for mobility operators? It means that fewer rewards need to be given, while the end-user feels more connected and engages with the company on a more frequent basis. Here’s some main advantages that gamification provides:

• Increased revenue by incentivizing end-users to choose the same brand, every time
• Reward loyalty without sacrificing profit
• Improve your brand awareness by giving your service the competitive advantage
• Improve customer satisfaction by creating a fun and rewarding experience around choosing to stick with a mobility service
• Improve data collection as end-users interact with the service more often

Creating lasting connections with customers is as easy as making the switch.

How to bring gamification to your mobility service with Vulog and StriveCloud

For the past year, Vulog and StriveCloud’s technologies have worked together in perfect synergetic harmony. This means that today, any Vulog customer can seamlessly add gamification to their loyalty strategy without a hassle. All the gamification mechanics in StriveCloud’s software integrate into the Vulog app without a hassle. The process is simple, just choose an option:

Option 1 - Use our standard gamification program

Choose a pre-build gamification program tailored to build loyalty in mobility. This means you get a set of pre-defined and completely configured set of gamification and reward mechanics that that will be immediately added to a pre-existing Vulog application.

How does it work? The gamification program connects the raw usage data from end-users (trips, invoices, and more) to StriveCloud gamification software, which generates member benefits based on predefined formulas. Then, end-users can claim their rewards straight in the Vulog app, without ever having to leave the provider’s platform!

Option 2 - Want customizability? We create a custom gamification program just for you!

Need something a little different? The standard gamification program is customizable! Opt into a customized approach to include additional mechanics, tailored for specific audiences and targeted user behavior.

The Vulog app seamlessly integrates StriveCloud's gamification mechanics, offering options for both standard and custom loyalty programs.

Reap the benefits of gamification

On average, customers that implement gamification into their mobility app experience 3x more active customers and 2x more trips completed per customer.

Contact Vulog and experience increased customer engagement and loyalty through app gamification!