How to Boost Sales with Gamification

Games have always played an important part in our lives and can be used in many areas to encourage action for various reasons, mostly psychological. It also holds great importance to boost sales in eCommerce and will be inevitable as its usages diversify. Gamification in eCommerce also improves abandonment rates and customer engagement.

Before you read this article, you can read our extensive guide on gamification, which explains why it works, its benefits for eCommerce businesses, and different gamified designs.

Key Takeaways

Create game-like experiences to encourage your customers to get engaged in your content.
Pique customer interest and make them feel appreciated with rewards and coupons.
Don’t limit their options. Offer multiple ways to use their rewards.

How to Use Gamification to Boost Sales

Let’s see how you can implement gamification for your eCommerce business.

1. Use a Points System

Set up loyalty programs and a points system where customers gain points whenever they make a purchase, review a product or use a selected method of payment. Possibilities are plenty.

Enable customers to use their accumulated points in various ways. You can either let them pay a part of the order amount with their points, or make them wait until they have enough points equal to the total order amount. When they get rewards, they will feel appreciated for their achievements, which will urge them to repeat their purchases.

2. Use Leaderboards

Create leaderboards where customers can see the status of others and their position among the others. This will make them compare themselves with others and trigger them to be more active to get ahead and make more purchases or whatever they need to do to get to the top.

3. Use Badges and Certification

To motivate the customers to buy more, or even to turn visitors into customers, attract them with rewards like badges and certifications to increase the feeling of appreciation and achievement.

When they see they get a badge and there is more to be obtained, they will want to continue doing what they do and it will drive them to do things as if missions to be completed. For example, you can give a persistence badge for, say, 3 purchases made within a month.

4. Use Virtual Currencies

There are lots of options when it comes to payment methods. Setting aside the question of which one is the best, a wide range of payment options allows you to address different customer preferences and provide them with a more convenient shopping experience, increasing customer engagement and revenue.

If you want to spice it up and maximise the benefit of payment methods, use virtual currencies. Although it is only another transaction option, you may turn it into a game-like experience and get inspired by video games and board games.

Tools and Resources for Using Gamification in Business

Bunchball

With Bunchball Nitro, you can engage online users through gamification. Its features include badges, leaderboards, and team points, which may be applied to websites, social networks, mobile apps, and desktop and enterprise applications.

Badgeville

Badgeville engages enterprise customers across the globe by promoting the use of enterprise applications with gamification. This includes online community engagement, sales performance, learning management, customer support and compliance training.

Segmentify

You know that urge to spin a wheel of fortune when you see it regardless of where it is, right? Or that feeling you get when a lottery ticket piques your interest, and you just want to scratch it off to see what’s underneath?

These are the things that make a visitor stay on your website. Offer coupons and discounts via gamification plugins like the wheel of fortune or scratch. Besides creating a nice interaction, that also increases the chance of visitors making a purchase to use their discounts to avoid missing the opportunity.

Wrapping Up

Playing games will always be intriguing as it appeals to humans’ most basic instincts. We want to win and get something out of it, or even if we don’t, we don’t want to miss an opportunity we encounter. Use that to your advantage and don’t hesitate to experiment with different implementations and plugins.