Psychological Effects: Gamification Strategies Based on User Growth

The gamified user growth plan explored through psychological theory is to better meet the needs of users, rather than to exploit the user's psychology for personal gain; gamified user growth is only a means to help products better build bridges with users, interact with users more efficiently, establish connections, and more comprehensively display product functions to users.

introduction

The author is currently in charge of building the company’s gamification user growth strategy system, which involves multiple business lines, including the front-end, service backend, content management platform, third-party development open platform, and corresponding planning of API interfaces.

At the same time, the roles involved include the user side, platform side, game developer side, (third-party) operation side, advertiser side, and the contact persons of the company's service components.

From a person who knew nothing about games to someone who can participate in the design and planning of game-related business platforms and products, I spent a lot of time learning the underlying logic of game products; I researched many popular games on the market and disassembled different modules, experienced many cases, and read many related books.

Among them, "Games Change the World" is highly recommended.

The game can make people so addicted, it must have its own unique design and charm .

Games meet real human needs that the real world cannot meet and bring rewards that the real world cannot provide. They educate us, inspire us, and impress us in ways that the real world cannot; they connect us in ways that the real world cannot.

We are "hungry", and games fill our hunger for more satisfying work, for a strong sense of community, and for a more meaningful life.

It is not difficult to see that the above statements about the value of games to people all influence, shake, and even control people's psychology.

It understands and satisfies people's needs and desires, grasps people's pain points and weaknesses, and inspires people's powerlessness and frustration. Is there really no methodology for how games influence and control people's inner world?

In addition to the Octagonal Behavioral Analysis Method (see my previous article for details: http://www.wosh ip m.com/operate/1305575.html), are there other established methodologies? In addition to being applied within the original game system itself, can it also be applied to strategies and fields related to gamification user growth?

The purpose of writing this article is to answer the above questions. By listing and introducing 5 popular psychology theories and their specific applications in user growth strategies, this article aims to help everyone understand the gamification growth strategies commonly seen in the market, its underlying logic, and the techniques for judging and utilizing user needs.

Only by understanding the underlying logic and essence can you apply it with ease to relevant user growth strategies in your daily work, without deviating from the essence.

1. Primacy Effect

1. Theoretical Definition

The primacy effect was first proposed by American psychologist Latane. It is also called the first effect, priority effect or first impression effect. It refers to the influence of the first impression formed by two parties on their future relationship, that is, the effect of "prejudice".

Although these first impressions are not always correct, they are the most vivid and solid, and determine the course of future interactions between the two parties.

If a person leaves a good impression when they first meet, then people will be willing to get close to him, and they will be able to understand each other more quickly, which will affect people's interpretation of his subsequent series of behaviors and performances.

On the contrary, for someone who arouses other people's disgust when they first meet, even if it is difficult to avoid contact with the person for various reasons, people will be very cold to the person. In extreme cases, they may even become antagonistic to the person psychologically and in actual behavior.

1. Theoretical interpretation

The primacy effect is easy to understand.

In simple terms: it is the first impression, the preconceived idea.

Logically speaking: Although the first impression is not always correct, it is the most vivid and solid. We always say that we should pay attention to our manners and expressions during interviews, which is essentially a manifestation of the primacy effect. "First impression", the primacy effect is widely used in our daily life.

1. Application Cases

The application of the primacy effect in gamification user growth strategy can be divided into the following aspects:

(1) Use images to attract users

When it comes to an H5 page or marketing campaign , the first impression that strikes users is the image.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to impress users with innovative copywriting , and the most direct approach is still stylized graphics and interactive design.

Taking Douban 's "My Spiritual Corner" as the theme, the form of secret room treasure hunt is used to express that Douban has guided the reading and movie-watching habits of countless users and occupied a spiritual corner of many people.

On Douban, I have seen various, colorful, and bizarre things, and there are still many more unknown and exciting things I want to see, waiting to be explored and opened. The design has a bit of a montage feel, with fertile red soil as the background, a green bean petal opening to reveal a blood-red eye, a secret room looking for the key, and an anthropomorphic layout that is naturally scattered.

(2) Collaboration with mature IP

The idea of ​​the first case is to focus on the screen touch, the first link between users and products.

The idea of ​​the second case is to use IPs and products that have already given users a good first impression, and integrate and link them with existing products. By taking advantage of people's interest migration and the psychology of "love the house and love the dog", the "primary cause" of other products can be well grafted onto the branding of one's own products and attracting new customers .

The best example is the brand cooperation between ofo and the Minions . The iconic image of the Minions and the yellow-based ofo yellow bike are a perfect match. Specifically in the design of the H5 page, the ofo team also put a lot of thought into making a set of H5 page games that are still talked about today. Users can personally participate in the production process of the yellow bike. It can be said that it perfectly combines exquisite graphics + mature IP + sense of participation.

2. Threshold Effect

1. Theoretical Definition

Skips threshold effect/Foot In The Door Effect The Foot In The Door Effect is also known as the push-and-pull effect; it means that once a person accepts a trivial request from others, in order to avoid cognitive dissonance or to give others a consistent impression, he or she may accept a bigger request.

This phenomenon is like climbing a doorstep one step at a time, which makes it easier and smoother to reach a higher place.

1. Theoretical interpretation

Psychologists believe that: Under normal circumstances, people are unwilling to accept higher and more difficult requirements because they are time-consuming, laborious and difficult to succeed; on the contrary, people are happy to accept smaller and easier to complete requirements. After achieving the smaller requirements, people will slowly accept larger requirements. This is the impact of the "foot-in-the-door effect" on people.

To put it simply, the same is true in interpersonal communication.

If you agree to a small request from someone, but then he gradually escalates his demands, you will gradually be able to tolerate his excessive demands. Anything, once opened, has the possibility of being completely broken in the future.

1. Application Cases

The application of threshold in gamification user growth strategy lies in two aspects:

1. Establishing initial thresholds;
2. Design gradients across thresholds.

(1) Setting initial thresholds

Here is an example of Taobao’s Double 11 event, a marketing activity where groups compete to win energy.

During the Double 11 period, this event was very popular, and many of my friends were addicted to it. However, many people did not participate. The main reason they did not participate was because of their complaints about the event itself:

Why is this activity so complicated? I feel like I don’t understand how to play it. Can’t we just do a simple activity of giving out coupons and receiving prizes?

This actually reflects the role of setting an initial threshold.

Currently, marketing activities, or activities aimed at increasing user growth, are showing a trend of gradually increasing the difficulty of activity gameplay, lengthening activity cycles, and running multiple activities in parallel. The current user growth approach is no longer about simply increasing the number of participating users, but about "growth quality" and "growth efficiency."

The core of user growth is the growth of the product's target users , rather than simple numerical growth.

If some users cannot cross the initial threshold (here it refers to learning how to play group PK to win energy), then they will not be able to effectively participate in subsequent team formation, channel page sign-in to win energy, and other new tasks, and will not be able to create value for the activity, which is also a waste of operating resources.

On the other hand, these users who are able to cross the initial threshold are often the ones who can make greater contributions and add greater value to the platform, because they are aware of the activities and also attach more importance to honor and rewards.

(2) Designing a cross-threshold gradient

As mentioned earlier, the threshold effect is to establish an initial threshold on the one hand and to build a smooth and natural threshold gradient on the other.

Just like a person climbing up stairs, if one of the stairs is too high or too low, the person will inevitably fall. The same applies to gamification user growth strategies.

We should maximize the value of these " seed users " selected by setting up initial thresholds through the setting of multiple levels.

As shown in the figure below: these seed users first need to pay a little action cost to participate in the event, and then they need to pay relationship costs to win energy. After establishing an understanding of energy, they also need to tap into more user value through a variety of tasks with gradually increasing gradients.

The value that can be generated by the 10% of highly committed seed users at the top of the threshold will be far greater than the sum of all the users who are "eliminated" by the initial threshold.

3. Birdcage Effect

1. Theoretical Definition

The birdcage effect is a famous psychological phenomenon, also known as the "birdcage logic". It is one of the ten major psychological phenomena that are difficult for humans to get rid of. Its discoverer is the outstanding modern psychologist James.

In 1907, James retired from Harvard University, along with his good friend, physicist Carlson.

One day, the two made a bet, and James said: "I will definitely let you have a bird soon." Carlson disagreed: "I don't believe it! Because I have never thought about raising a bird." A few days later, it was Carlson's birthday, and James gave him a gift - an exquisite birdcage.

Carlson smiled: "I just think of it as a beautiful work of art. Don't bother yourself." From then on, whenever guests came to visit and saw the empty birdcage next to the desk, they would almost invariably ask: "Professor, when did your bird die?" Carlson had to explain to his guests again and again: "I have never kept a bird." However, this answer was always met with confused and somewhat distrustful looks from the guests.

In desperation, Professor Carlson had to buy a bird, and James' "birdcage effect" worked. In fact, many of the people around us, including ourselves, first hang a cage in our hearts, and then involuntarily fill it with something.

The "birdcage effect" is a very interesting law. People will continue to add more related things that they don't need based on accidentally obtaining an item they originally didn't need.

Birdcage effect: If a person buys an empty birdcage and puts it at home, then after a period of time, he will generally buy another bird to use in the cage instead of throwing the cage away. In other words, this person is alienated by the cage and becomes a prisoner of the cage.

1. Theoretical interpretation

The reason is this: Even if the owner does not feel uncomfortable facing the empty birdcage for a long time, every time the guests come to visit him they will be surprised and ask him what is going on with the empty birdcage, or cast strange eyes at the empty birdcage, and this happens every time.

Finally he couldn't bear the trouble of having to explain himself every time, so he threw away the birdcage or bought a bird to match it. The "birdcage effect" can also cause people to feel psychological pressure, causing them to take the initiative to buy a bird to match the cage.

There are many examples of this kind of psychological application. For example, in the game " Zhengtu ", the official will distribute some treasure chests to users during the mission. The treasure chests themselves are free, but the keys to open the treasure chests need to be recharged and purchased.

For example, iQiyi , QQ Video, and WeChat Reading provide users with free one-month trial cards, membership experience coupons, etc. Once users choose to accept, it is often troublesome to unsubscribe after using it for a period of time, so it is better to continue to choose the service.

1. Application Cases

First, let us take a familiar case.

In the inscription lottery of Honor of Kings , the first lottery is free, and almost all users will choose this free lottery. But after the first free draw, users get rewards, and driven by vanity and the desire to get a bargain, as well as the temptation of the copy "Buy 5 more times and you will definitely get a quality rune", users will often buy the option five more times.

The key here is not simply the design of free first draw, but the text setting of "buy 5 more times, you will definitely get level 4-5 inscriptions".

Because after the user passes the first free lottery, there may be two results: the user gets the desired reward, or the user does not get the desired reward.

If the user gets the reward he wants and sees this copy, because he has tasted the sweetness, human greed will drive the user to try to buy five times.

If the user does not get the desired reward, the user's vanity will drive the user to try to buy five times to get the desired reward. Many of the ways to achieve gamification growth apply closed-loop thinking.

The case of Tencent Da Wang Card is very typical and is the most thorough example of the application of the "birdcage effect".

Even though data traffic is cheaper now and WiFi is more common, data traffic barriers still exist when playing large-scale games or sending attachments via email.

Tencent has 100 products. Whether you are a loyal user of Tencent products or not, you will always use several mainstream apps such as WeChat and Honor of Kings. The significance of the King Card in the birdcage effect is equivalent to this "birdcage". In the past, you liked to play Honor of Kings and Chicken Dinner, but the traffic was limited.

Now I give you a "bird cage" that allows you to play unlimitedly, which is equivalent to giving you the best choice to get rid of the excuse that you don't have enough data. Similarly, because of the birdcage in the app, users may not choose other competing apps.

4. Zignik Memory Effect

1. Theoretical Definition

You might as well try it: draw a circle with one stroke, and intentionally leave a small blank space at the intersection. Look back at this circle again. At this moment, the idea of ​​filling in this blank arc will surely flash through your mind.

Because you always have a sense of incompleteness and try your best to find a way to end it in order to gain psychological satisfaction.

There is a psychologist named Bluma Ziegnik who gave a series of assignments to 128 children. She asked the children to complete some of the assignments, and paused in the middle of the other assignments, and then tested the results one hour later.

The 110 children still remembered the homework they paused in the middle of doing; Zignik concluded that people are more forgetful about completed work because the "desire to complete" has been satisfied, while the unfinished work lingers in their minds. This is what is called the " Zignik effect".

1. Theoretical interpretation

What is the psychological mechanism of the "Zignik Effect"?

Lewin, a German psychologist known as the father of modern social psychology, believed that humans have a natural tendency to complete a behavioral unit, such as solving a riddle, studying a book, etc., which is called "psychological tension." The study also pointed out that everyone attempts to satisfy their needs and complete actions ; these include both innate needs (hunger, thirst, etc.) and semi-needs (urgent tendencies).

In Lewin's view: the sources of personal initiative are diverse and varied.

I believe many people have had this feeling: when something important is not completed, you always feel anxious and have no energy to do other things. Aroused but unsatisfied psychological needs create a tension system that determines an individual's behavioral tendencies, psychological tone, and characteristics.

If the process of satisfying a need or solving a task is interrupted and a tension system is generated, it can cause a person to take action to achieve his or her goal.

Lewin believed that an unfinished task would cause an unresolved tension system to exist forever, and when the task was completed, the tension system that coexisted with it would disappear.

From this we can see that a person’s “psychological tension” system is the psychological mechanism that produces the “Zignik effect”.

1. Application Cases

Whether in games or on WeChat, there are many ways like the little red dots to guide and prompt users with important information. This is also the most common application of the Zignik memory effect. When you see these reminder messages or little red dots, you know that you have missed some information or have not done something, or there is new content that you have not seen.

These little red dots or reminder messages are eye-catching prompts. They not only mark out important information, allowing players to effectively obtain news and information, but also play a focusing role and attract people's attention.

What we just talked about are examples in the app, so how can we make use of this little red dot on official accounts or other channels ?

The design of the menu bar of Pinduoduo’s official account is a good example.

Pinduoduo app is the most widely used and best product for gamified growth thinking. This time, let’s take a more difficult-to-find detail to talk about the application of the Zignik memory effect. Let’s take a look at the “Bargain and Get It for Free” menu bar, which has a special red dot in front of it.

The text design here is to cater to the basic cognition and behavioral inertia of users in the WeChat ecosystem regarding the red dot on the light gray button bar - there is new content, I want to click to see it. It can be said that this case proves to us that sometimes there is no need to deliberately create the Zignik memory effect, but we can also use people's existing cognition and habits to do it.

In addition, the card collection games that we often see in various marketing activities actually use this effect in their design to induce players to collect all the cards and continue to participate in the activities.

In these card collecting activities or doll collecting activities, some cards or props can only be obtained through forwarding activities, recharging, or completing certain tasks, or can only be obtained through opening boxes such as lotteries.

Sometimes these marketing-type card collection activities do not completely use attractive prizes to attract users, but rather take advantage of people’s “desire to complete”. This design actually utilizes the desire to collect and complete unfinished things brought about by the Zignik effect to indirectly induce players to forward or complete certain tasks.

5. Endowment Effect

1. Theoretical Definition

The endowment effect means that once an individual owns an item, his evaluation of the value of the item will greatly increase compared to before he owned it.

It was proposed by Richard Thaler (1980).

This phenomenon can be explained by the "loss aversion" theory in behavioral finance, which holds that a certain amount of loss will reduce people's utility more than the same amount of gain will increase their utility.

Therefore, people's weighing of benefits and harms in the decision-making process is unbalanced, and their consideration of "avoiding harm" is far greater than their consideration of "seeking profit"; out of fear of loss, people often ask for too high a price when selling goods.

Because of the endowment effect, most people tend to overvalue things they once owned and would feel it a pity to throw them away. In addition, due to sunk costs, throwing away the resources that you have worked hard to accumulate for a long time, even sometimes, not a lot of resources, if thrown away, will also cause people to worry about gains and losses.

1. Theoretical interpretation

This effect is actually easy to understand, and it is also a key strategy for many marketing strategies to manipulate user psychology.

Humans are emotional animals and are easily attached to the things they own. As time goes by, they are likely to develop a strong sense of dependence and marginal cost both emotionally and in terms of time. For example, a pet you’ve raised for years, a collection of letters, or a game you’ve played for a long time.

It is precisely because of these factors that when an item is about to be lost or the user decides to discard it, people tend to avoid risks and choose to keep it or continue using it. This kind of psychology is applied by most Internet products when users choose to uninstall or no longer use the product, and corresponding designs are formulated to induce users to retain the product.

Through carefully designed retention copywriting and intuitive data push, we leverage people’s endowment effect to make users stop uninstalling the product and choose to stay .

1. Application Cases

The application of endowment effect in practical work can be divided into two aspects: pre-endowment effect and post-endowment effect .

The prior endowment effect means that when a user chooses to leave, all the sunk costs the user has paid on the platform will be liquidated and presented to the user in an intuitive way, such as the number of answers posted on Zhihu, the courses studied on Keep, the girls met on Tantan , etc.

In this way, users are made aware of the amount of sunk costs they have invested previously, thereby developing a risk-averse mentality and retaining users.

The deferred endowment effect refers to: when other conditions remain unchanged, adding new sunk costs or items with certain implicit value to users will allow users who originally chose to leave to not only stay but even convert . Users had no prior awareness of the medium and had no cost investment. The platform later sent it to users and guided them to establish awareness.

Deferred endowment effect : For example, if a user spends 99 yuan to buy an online course, from the moment of purchase, this 99 yuan becomes the user's sunk cost.

As a business, how to hedge the user's sunk costs and make the user feel that they are getting good value for money, or make them feel that they are getting a bargain, may promote sales and also increase the trust in the business.

For example, when users purchase a 99-yuan course, they will receive a free paper handout and free shipping. At the same time, during the learning process, they will receive various services: pre-class reminders, in-class communication, after-class Q&A, homework, etc. Finally, they will receive a free daily exercise.

For companies, paper handouts, learning services, and daily exercises can all hedge users' 99-yuan sunk costs, which is beneficial for sales promotions and can increase users' trust in the company.

For users, although they spent 99 yuan to buy the course, they also received so many gifts. They must feel that it is value for money and they feel they got a bargain.

Prior endowment effect: Taking Pinduoduo's one-cent draw for gifts as an example, when the user chooses to leave the page at the shared location, a second confirmation pop-up window will appear with text, color processing, etc. to encourage the user to stay on the page. After confirming to leave, the user returns to the activity page. If the user leaves the page again, a similar second pop-up window will appear.

This is an application of the endowment effect in a simple marketing campaign. The sunk cost paid by users is the process operation of participating in the campaign. When users become aware of loss, they are reminded of the cost of the process operation - "there is only one step left", which stimulates their awareness of "loss" and encourages them to take the next step.

There can be many similar sunk costs, as mentioned above, which are nothing more than the operations, time, money, content, etc. invested by users.

Below is a summary of the different classifications of user sunk costs, as well as some corresponding copywriting used as user recall and retention prompts, for your convenience.

summary

Making products is about working on people’s hearts.

In the early stages of product operation , in order to attract users’ attention as quickly as possible, some exaggerated means or promotional areas may be used to attract users. However, once the number of users increases, the key lies in whether the product can provide matching services to users, whether it can be stable and sustainable, and whether it can meet users’ new demands in a timely manner.

Gamified user growth is only a means to an end. The goal is to help products build better bridges with users, interact with users more efficiently, establish connections, and more comprehensively display product functions to users. Only by quickly establishing connections and emotions with seed users in a short period of time can a product gain a foothold in the early stages of product operation and establish an advantage over competing products.

And this is exactly what gamification user growth is about.

Technology should assume social responsibility, and so should the products themselves.

How to protect the user's network environment and maintain the user's mental health under the regulatory mechanism is what we need to do now. Maintaining a balance between the health of the network environment, the adaptation of users' psychological needs, and the rationality and legality of the product's profit model is what Internet product developers need to do.

The purpose of gamification user growth solutions explored through psychological theories is to better meet user needs, rather than exploiting user psychology for personal gain. This is something we need to take seriously.

Source: chinoslab