How can “cultivation games” improve user retention and conversion rates?

In recent years, all major leading products have launched small-scale development games within the App, including Taobao, Meituan, Pinduoduo, and Word of Mouth. Games seem to have become a standard feature of many e-commerce and service products, and an important means to increase retention and revenue.

At present, the mainstream games on the market are highly similar in terms of gameplay and mechanisms, and judging from public data, the effects are significant.

For example, within less than 15 days of Pinduoduo's "Duoduo Orchard" being officially launched, the number of users reached nearly 40 million, with over 200 million people using it every day, and a total of 2 million users receiving fruit.

Even most professional mobile games cannot achieve such results.

So, why do leading products, especially e-commerce products, launch development-type mini-games? What can we learn and draw lessons from it?

Games are addictive, and product gamification has become an irreversible trend.

We can give the product gamification features through phased tasks, but a more direct method is to design a small game within the product to make users dependent on the product.

After deeply experiencing more than a dozen mini-game products from many large companies, we found that all development mini-games have rules to follow. As long as there is a common theme related to the product + a set of common incentive mechanisms and task systems, you can create your own mini-game.

So how do you do it? Let’s analyze it step by step.

1. Why are big companies launching small-scale development games online?

Before talking about how to do it, let’s first talk about the background of this issue. Why are major manufacturers launching mini-games one after another?

We believe there are three main reasons:

• 1. The traffic dividend period has ended, and there is an urgent need to tap the value of the existing market;
• 2. It has been proven that development games can significantly improve users’ core behaviors;
• 3. The threshold for developing mini-games is extremely low and they are easy to copy.

Let’s talk about them one by one.

1. The traffic dividend has disappeared, and tapping into the existing market is more valuable

Since June 2017, the development momentum of mobile Internet has begun to slow down.

At that time, China's Internet penetration rate had reached 54.3%, there were 751 million mobile Internet users, and the proportion of Internet users using mobile phones to access the Internet reached 96.3%.

The scarcity of traffic has led to increasingly expensive traffic and higher costs for attracting new customers.

The Internet traffic dividend has disappeared, and the competition for traffic has turned into a competition for user time, which has gradually become an industry consensus.

This means that for most companies, the barbaric era of achieving large-scale revenue growth by quickly attracting new customers is gone forever. Therefore, compared to acquiring new traffic, companies need to tap the value of existing traffic, enhance the core behaviors of existing users, and drive continued revenue growth.

Especially for leading players with huge traffic, they need to operate existing users in a meticulous manner, seize user attention, reduce churn, and maximize value.

2. Cultivation games can improve user retention and conversion rate

So how to improve user retention and conversion rates?

From the earliest QQ Farm and QQ Space Flower Vine to later Alipay's Ant Forest and Pinduoduo's Duoduo Orchard, the market has proven time and again that social interaction and games are human nature, and that social development games can significantly motivate users' core behaviors in the product, thereby improving user retention and conversion rates.

As a result, smart businessmen smelled new opportunities, followed suit, and achieved surprising results.

For example, the incentive mechanisms of development games for e-commerce products are all linked to the length of time, quantity, and number of comments on the products. And these behaviors are directly linked to the final purchasing behavior. The longer a user browses, the more likely they are to buy the product.

After discovering this, everyone naturally followed suit.

3. Cultivation games have low entry barriers and can be quickly copied

You have to be able to see clearly and learn well.

Fortunately, the mode of development-type mini-games is clear, the gameplay is simple, and the cost of copying is not high. Especially for mature leading products, it is not difficult to launch such a small game within the product, both in terms of technology and financial resources. Moreover, after going online, it will not cause much disturbance to users. On the contrary, after a period of operation and optimization, it can enhance the sense of interaction and greatly improve the user experience.

The effect is good and simple, so it is not difficult for us to understand why major manufacturers have launched small development games online.

2. How to quickly copy a development game?

After talking about the question of why, let’s talk about what we need to pay attention to if we want to quickly copy a development game?

It’s very simple. As mentioned earlier, all you need is a common theme and gameplay related to the product + a set of common incentive mechanisms and task systems.

1. Find themes and gameplay related to the game

Generally speaking, there are three mainstream gameplay modes on the market:

Pet mode: Raise a pet, and the pet will give you some rewards from time to time, for example, chicks hatch eggs, or after a period of time, the animal will develop love; typical examples include Alipay's Ant Farm and Xiami Music's Raise Shrimp, which have similar gameplay, and the animals here are the mascots of the products.

Manor model: After operating a farm, a manor or a plant and accumulating a certain amount of energy, some rewards will be given; for example, games such as Duoduo Orchard and Meituan’s Xiaomei Orchard are all operated through the model of planting fruits and then delivering fruits, because their own products include fruits.

Dress-up mode: By completing tasks and obtaining new outfits, you can then grow your virtual character, such as Taobao Life on Taobao, because its products include clothing for sale.

In short, in this process, we need to find the connection between this gameplay and the main product and take the most common scenario in order to reduce the user's memory cost and quickly establish cognition.

2. Design an effective incentive mechanism and task system

After determining the major themes and scenarios, we also need to design an effective incentive mechanism and task system to truly stimulate user behavior through mini-games.

1) The design of the incentive mechanism should ensure that users are willing to come and that they can continue to take action

Generally speaking, the incentive mechanism of development games can be divided into three types:

Before completing a task, select a reward and get motivated by completing a series of tasks. The most typical one is Duoduo Orchard. After growing fruits, you can get a free gift of fruits. Xiaomei Manor, Koubei Manor, and Yunji Farm all offer similar in-kind incentives.

After completing the task, you will get points and redeem them for some rewards, such as some coupons, points rebates or discounts. The incentive systems of JD.com, MiYa, etc. have adopted similar methods.

After completing the task, we can help complete a public welfare project together. Alibaba’s development-type mini-games all have similar incentives, such as Ant Farm, Ant Forest, and Gaode Bridge, which all have similar gameplay.

When choosing incentives, if it is a physical incentive, it is best to follow these three standards: high frequency, rigid demand, and consumable. This ensures that players are willing to play the game and that they are continually motivated to return.

If it is a non-material incentive, we hope it can have a better meaning or motivation as much as possible. The reason why most non-material incentives choose public welfare activities is mainly because users have a higher degree of recognition of incentives for public welfare activities.

2) A good task system can establish a connection between the user’s key actions and incentives

Generally speaking, common task systems link the core user behaviors of the product with task incentives.

Take Pinduoduo’s Duoduo Orchard as an example:

• Active: Sign in, daily lucky bag
• Attract new members: Invite friends to plant trees and help Lingshui
• Conversion: group purchase rewards, rewards for browsing corresponding pages

It is worth noting that the task system of Ant Forest is quite special. In addition to obtaining energy through daily payment actions, users can also obtain energy by walking, ordering takeout without tableware, etc., which further highlights the public welfare value.

In general, when you have chosen the most core incentive system and the task incentive system to achieve the incentives, the design of the game is 80% complete, which will have a significant effect on user activity and data improvement.

Of course, this is just the basis of game design. In addition, there may need to be some irregular activities, adding new props, new tasks, and introducing some higher incentives to help users maintain freshness.

Finally, let’s summarize as follows:

To design a good development game, you need to consider the following key issues:

• 1. Find a gameplay and theme that is relevant to the product and can quickly familiarize users with it;
• 2. Design an effective incentive mechanism and task system. In the design process, the following points should be considered;

The design of the incentive mechanism must ensure that users are willing to come and that they can continue to take action.

A good task system is one that can establish connections between some of the user's key actions and incentives.

The above is our analysis of the cultivation game. We hope this case can be helpful to you. In the future, we will continue to pay attention to the gameplay and design of more mini-games. (over)

Author: Three Lessons

Source: Three Lessons