Gamification is one of the most talked about topic in last couple of years and it was shortlisted for Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2011. The concept of Gamification has moved beyond badges & points and is recognized as a methodology based on behavioural and motivational psychology. Along with enterprise applications, customer service systems and marketing campaigns it has also been used by several ecommerce websites to drive participation & engagement.
Driving more traffic, converting visitors into users and then consumers, engaging consumers to drive more participation and motivating them for social advocacy are some of the challenges faced by most of the e-commerce sites.
Gamification provides varieties of options to e-commerce sites that they can gamify. It allows e-commerce sites to motivate consumers for engaging with the site and getting rewards in return. Some of the activities that can be gamified (at e-commerce site) are as follows:
Referring a Friend: Allow customers to earn points, badges & recognition for referring a friend. A separate leaderboard can be created to demonstrate people who are leading the referral game on the site. Reward people if referral turns into a purchase.
Rating Products: Allow customers to earn points for rating products. Rewarding points will motivate customers to rate products and products with higher rating leads to higher purchase.
Writing Product Reviews: Getting product reviews from customers is not easy as it requires time and effort. Concept of gamification such as points and badges can be used to motivate customers for writing more reviews.
Social Sharing: Sharing content, product pictures or videos on different social channels can create a buzz and customers can be inspired for social sharing through gamification. Reward people who are advocating the brand on social channels. Use points, badges and social leaderboard for recognizing them.
Completing Site Feedback Form: Getting feedback about site from customers is a not an easy task it is a challenge for every webmaster and this can be solved by using concepts of gamification. Allow people to earn points and recognition for completing feedback forms. Reward them with special badges.
Apart from driving participation & engagement, e-commerce sites can also use gamification to boost sales, average sale value and customer count. The implementation of gamification is a step-by-step process and ultimate aim is to have increased revenues and delighted customers.
Nitesh is a former Happiest Mind and this content was created and published during his tenure.
