Gamification design for user activation and retention

Gamification design can be seen in many products. It can increase product usage and user activity, and create more design opportunities for the product. Gamification design is also an effective way for many operators to activate and retain users. What is its underlying logic?

Preface

The Internet and video games both appeared in the late 1960s, but video games have been popular since their appearance, while the Internet only gradually came into the public eye in the 1990s.

Although the paths of the two are different in the process of development, games, especially current Internet games, are also a type of Internet product. If we measure the user stickiness of a product by the time users use the product, games can be said to be one of the products with the highest user stickiness and one of the products with the longest single usage time.

Why are games so special among products? Can it occupy such a large amount of continuous time of users?

Because from the moment you enter the game, it cultivates your habit of using the product, helps you learn, helps you deeply explore the characteristics of the product, adds certain surprises within your expectations, and then adds means of self-propagation. The achievements gained in the game can be shared by yourself, completing self-propagation, and the addition of payment links allows you to experience different levels of products.

Isn’t this very similar to the user growth model proposed by Eric Rice?

That’s right. The game achieves new user acquisition and retention through a sticky growth model, achieves user self-propagation through a viral growth model, and then opens up a payment model to give users product experiences of different levels and depths.

Games are products born from the deep integration of these three models.

Take King of Glory as an example:

• After registering and entering King of Glory, there will be an introduction to the game mode, which will help you get familiar with the game operation, complete the basic levels, and give you certain rewards (to help you gain an in-depth understanding of the product)
• After completing the novice tutorial, there will be some phased rewards, such as a small gift package for completing XX games, a skin for completing XX ranked games, etc., to encourage you to stay in the game for a long time. At the same time, rewards are distributed at certain fixed time points, such as gifts for logging in between 12:00-14:00 noon, to encourage users to log in to the game at fixed time points. (Cultivate user habits through fixed time points).
• Help users share (self-propagation) through special methods such as battle record pictures, sharing pictures after purchasing skins, video records, etc.
• By making the skin feel different and issuing inscriptions to members every day, users are encouraged to consume and gain a different experience from non-paying users (paid growth model).

To some extent, the common point of successful games is that they occupy a great deal of users' time, making users invest time and energy in the products.

1. User activation and retention of game products

Why can gaming products occupy so much of users’ time and energy?

The design of most game products is inseparable from the study of user self-motivation. According to the "self-determination" theoretical framework that emerged in the 1970s, a person's continuous participation in an activity is inseparable from the following key points: autonomy, mastery and goals.

• Autonomy can be understood as a feeling of being in control of one’s own destiny;
• Mastery, usually defined as the state of approaching greater proficiency in a skill;
• Purpose, which we can generally interpret as a connection with something greater than ourselves

If we discuss the three together, we can simply explain the state of an individual's continuous participation in an activity as: connecting with greater things through a skill that he is familiar with and good at within the scope of his control.

What would happen if we put this concept into the game?

In the game world, you accumulate game skills through learning, become stronger in a controllable and expected direction, and finally launch an impact on an event that seems out of reach.

We can take the existing popular games on the market as examples: Taking Honor of Kings as an example, the "King rank" seems to be an unattainable goal for novices, but as the game skills improve, choosing heroes that you are familiar with and good at will slowly move towards this goal.

Back to the question we asked at the beginning, why do so many products imitate the design concepts of games?

It’s simple, user activity.

From the perspective of the AARRR model of user growth, the AARRR model breaks down the process into user acquisition-user activation-user retention-revenue-recommendation. The model is sorted according to the order of users in the entire business process, placing activation and retention in the second and third place in the entire process, before revenue, indicating that these two processes provide a solid foundation for product operators to obtain revenue.

Affected by the epidemic, a large number of offline businesses have been transformed into online businesses, and a large number of users have poured into the Internet market. In the current Internet market, the benefits brought by the demographic dividend are nearing the end. On November 14, Miao Wei, former Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, also put forward the view that the demographic dividend period has passed. When there is a bottleneck in user acquisition, activation and retention become even more important. The methods of user activation and retention in game design can be used in product design and operations.

2. Gamification of User Activation and Retention

First, let's restore the process of game from user activation to retention:

After downloading the game, users will try to play it. At this time, most games will have a mechanism similar to a novice tutorial or novice protection, which will lead you to experience some game functions in depth, encourage you to participate in certain activities through rewards, give users clear goals, and determine how many activities they participate in to get certain rewards. At the same time, some hidden goals will be set to help users determine their goals for the next stage.

For example, in Pokémon, there will be some rewards distributed in the early stage, and then after completing the first week (the first stage) by following the guide, there will be some hidden levels set for the first week, with hints of special Pokémon habitats, encouraging users to choose one of the multiple hidden goals for an in-depth experience.

The same is true in product design.

When users first use a product, they usually have a relatively clear demand point, or are curious about the solution to this demand point, and this demand point is basically consistent with the target demand of the product (the view comes from Rogers' innovation diffusion theory). Users usually have a problem that needs to be solved urgently, and they can tolerate some more confusing solutions to achieve core values. When users are experiencing the problem, if the pain points are not met, the probability of user loss will greatly increase.

Through gamification settings and the use of a "newbie guide" model, users are led to have an in-depth experience of the product, which simplifies the process for users to explore the core value of the product and solve their own urgent needs, and the core value of the product is directly provided to users.

However, such demand satisfaction may be temporary. This is equivalent to the "trial" provided by various merchants in shopping malls. You can experience it first, so that users can feel what life is like with this product. Just like the game introduction, the game constructs a virtual world for you to experience and make you feel that your needs are met to a certain extent in this world.

This kind of temporary need satisfaction is what we mentioned earlier, and it has a certain connection with goals beyond one's expectations.

The next two goals to be achieved are "autonomy" and "mastery"

We have already "implanted" this idea in the users' brains, so the next step is to help them develop the habit of learning.

Let’s discuss the simple “sign in and get rewards” model: the act of signing in is something that users can control 100% by themselves, and the reward itself is the key to motivating users to perform this behavior.

But as we described earlier, after a certain connection is established with the unexpected great goal, the operator needs to help users learn the product. The process of learning the product is the process of users mastering product skills. At the same time, in this process of mastery, users need to constantly receive feedback to convey to users a feeling that the process is expected and controllable.

Taking well-known game products as examples: the rank improvement of Honor of Kings, the improvement of hero lane combat power, and the hero combat power ranking are actually a product of the combination of "mastery" and "autonomy". Users accumulate proficiency in a hero in the game and improve the hero's winning rate, which is "mastery", and the improvement of different ranks, hero combat power ranking, etc. are the process of constantly communicating with users and providing users with a "sense of autonomy".

Non-game products that use gamification thinking:

Coursera, the leader in the international online education industry. For users in China, we offer a discount of 7 yuan per month for first-time course purchases, and at the same time give users certain expectations. These expectations come from the ratings of some users after they have completed the course and obtained certificates. These evaluations help new users build an expectation that may seem difficult to achieve. This expectation is not necessarily about the knowledge learned in the course, but can be about finding a job or studying.

After building expectations, the course will usually simplify the product into phased goals, assisted by some encouraging words and countdowns to help users break down time nodes and provide a sense of "autonomy."

Add small questions to the course for users to answer, so that users can feel their skill level grow during the learning process.

It can be clearly seen that the design methods of Coursera and games do have certain similarities.

at last

We can briefly summarize the key ways to gamify products:

1. Provide users with a blueprint that goes beyond their expectations and helps them find reasons to use the product.
2. Provide users with periodic feedback during product operation. This feedback can be the cumulative results of a certain skill value of the user in the product.
3. Help users refine their needs, break down a goal that exceeds their expectations, and enhance their sense of control through phased implementation.

Of course, user activation and retention are not limited to product gamification. Some products do not need to occupy a large period of user time due to their characteristics, such as social products and short video products. However, this does not prevent these products from learning the activation and retention methods of game products.

As the demographic dividend reaches a bottleneck, the focus of Internet user growth personnel has shifted from traffic itself to traffic quality. This requires operations personnel to spend more time and energy to explore the characteristics of the product and improve user activation and retention.

Author: Logan_RRRC

Source: Logan's Operational Learning Diary