Store promotion: How to create an effective lottery game?

The lottery gameplay is very attractive to users, who can obtain returns higher than their investment through the gameplay, which can significantly improve store activity, repeat visits, conversions and other data. How to maximize the effectiveness of the lottery game? This article analyzes the motivations of lottery user behavior and extracts gameplay design factors throughout the user life cycle to provide a reference for lottery gameplay design.

background

As the benefits of public domain traffic in e-commerce fade, refined operations of private domain traffic in stores have become a driving force for store growth, and marketing activities that are inherently "gambling" in nature have become one of the main operating methods on the market. By bringing offline activities online, such as capsule toys, red envelopes, claw machines, etc., users can randomly obtain coupons, red envelopes, physical rewards, etc. through simple interactions. At the same time, the store is converted when users obtain lottery opportunities and use subsequent prizes. The presentation layer of lottery activities is relatively rich, but the user operation path is relatively short. How can we maximize the commercial value of the lottery through user behavior guidance in a shorter behavior path, make the operation simple, and continuously attract user participation?

Addictive Model and Store Growth

In his book Addicted, Nir Eyal proposed a very classic Hook Model, which is translated into English as hook. Through these hooks, users are induced to take continuous actions and investment, thus forming habits. The addiction model consists of four stages: trigger, action, reward and investment. The stages of the addiction model run through the store user life cycle: attracting users through obvious triggers, activating lottery behaviors through simple interactions, and achieving user retention through reasonable motivation settings, ultimately achieving the goal of improving store conversion effects.

1. Triggering users

Trigger is the first stage of the addiction model, which prompts users to take action and needs to be obvious. Store marketing activities mainly add prompts and entrances within the store, which are autonomous triggers. Then, it is spread through mutual sharing among users, achieving interpersonal triggering. The core driving forces of users in the trigger period are concentrated on "unknown and curiosity" and "scarcity and desire". Satisfying user motivations can improve the efficiency of customer acquisition.

1.1 Users want to be amplified

The user goal of the store lottery is relatively clear. Users hope to win prizes through the lottery. Currently, the prizes in JD stores mainly include coupons, JD beans, physical items, and cash red envelopes. When planning an event entrance, users need to have a clear understanding of the event, quickly attract their attention through interest hooks, and stimulate them to take action.

Maximizing the prizes: Due to the screen effect, the store’s lucky draw entrance is relatively small, which allows the grand prize to be revealed and enhanced through pictures, motion effects and other elements, satisfying users’ desires most intuitively;

Minimize participation costs: Weaken the user participation threshold, and try to make users feel that the cost of the lottery is extremely low at the triggering layer. Use "0 yuan" and "free" in copywriting, and add behavioral guidance buttons in interaction to promote conversion.

1.2 Behavioral Cognition Prioritization

The goal of external triggers is to make users aware of the activity and take the next step. The lottery gameplay itself includes various gameplays such as puzzles, turntables, and flipping cards. Pre-setting the gameplay type at the trigger node can reduce the cognitive cost of the behavior activation stage and promote the occurrence of lottery behavior.

1.3 Internal trigger activation

Trigger upgrades convert external triggers into internal triggers, which are often associated with the user's emotions and thoughts. Doing so will not only significantly reduce the cost of implementing external triggers, but also increase user stickiness with the product. By collecting user information and starting from data analysis, we strengthen the interaction between products and users, and gradually bind products with user emotions, behavioral habits, etc.

2. Behavior Motivation Matching

Users enter the lottery driven by curiosity and the temptation of prizes, and win prizes through interactive paths. Because of the mechanism of random rewards and instant feedback, the brain secretes dopamine and produces pleasure, and users become addicted to it, which makes the event a success. However, the store prizes are often relatively simple coupons. Users tend to become psychologically lazy after the draw, no longer feel surprised, lose the motivation to complete the task to get a chance to draw, and eventually leave the event. Therefore, when designing a lottery, it is necessary to combine event planning with user behavior motivations, adapt to changes in user motivations, and maximize user incentive effects.

Dr. Fogg's Fogg Model (B=MAT) summarizes the three core motivations of human behavior and the six major factors that influence user behavior. When designing, we must understand and satisfy the user's subjective motivations, and use motivations to achieve conversions. Motivations must be reasonable and behaviors must be easy to implement.

2.1 Satisfaction Motivation

2.1.1 Strengthening the subjective motivation for lottery draws

Pursue hope: Display information about prizes such as red envelopes, coupons, and physical items, and highlight the grand prize to increase users’ expectations of winning the prizes.

Pursue recognition: Increase users’ sense of inclusion through social information such as rankings, number of participants, and number of winners.

Avoid pain: Users will feel pain when prizes are lost, the number of times is reduced, or the event ends, which negatively stimulates users to quickly draw prizes;

2.2.2 Provide a free trial opportunity

Provide users with a free trial opportunity to allow them to start the activity smoothly and help them recognize behavioral patterns. The number of free trial opportunities is generally 1 to 3. The way to increase the number of free draws is generally to obtain them automatically every day or by completing tasks. Automatic daily acquisition can effectively increase user repeat visits, while acquisition through tasks can guide user behavior within the store.

2.2.3 Creating a near-miss effect

In gambling, a near-miss is a special form of failure, that is, falling just short of winning a prize. Near-miss stimulates the motivation to continue to draw the lottery, and is prone to show brain activity similar to winning.

Create a near-miss effect through motion effects: Slot machines, roulette wheels, claw machines and other games can use motion effects from fast to slow to focus the user's attention on the biggest prize and then on the smallest prize, creating a strong flow of mind;

Create a near-miss effect through packaging: blind boxes, gashapon games, etc., put the prizes in the same packaging to form a short-term memory of winning the grand prize;

2.2.4 Providing Remedial Measures

When users are unable to continue participating in the lottery, more options are provided to allow users to obtain lottery draw times or directly purchase prizes.

2.2 Reasonable behavior node settings

2.2.1 User Behavior Guidance

Effective button design will make users click “obediently” so that they can smoothly enter the activity and complete their participation. Such a design can also improve user efficiency and effectively prevent users from leaving the activity due to comprehension costs when they first enter. Fitts's law states that the larger the distance, the longer the time, and the larger the target, the shorter the time, so the lottery button needs to be maximized, and the lottery button needs to be placed on the first screen.

2.2.2 Prevent users from jumping out

In order to increase the number of times users can draw a lottery, many stores will set up tasks to obtain free draws. They will try to let users complete tasks on the current page to avoid users jumping out and causing loss.

2.2.3 Shorten the operation path

Sort out the possible subsequent behaviors after the user's current behavior, and make predictive designs to shorten the user's operation path, improve the experience and speed up conversion efficiency.

3. Variable rewards

Variable rewards are the third stage of the addiction model, which mainly include social rewards, prey rewards, and self-rewards. In the sweepstakes, the main thing is the prize, where users get specific prizes from the product. A variety of prizes can prevent users from getting tired of the lottery and increase long-term motivation for the lottery. By setting up tiered prizes, we provide users with continuous addictive incentives to participate and increase the participation rate in activities.

IV. Investment

Commitment is the last step in the addiction model and is also very critical for habit-based lottery products. In order for users to empathize and take automatic action, they must first be invested in the product. The idea behind the investment is that users believe that the more they use (invest), the better the service and the more they get.

Summarize

Raffles have strong user appeal in stores and are more likely to succeed if operated properly. When designing interactions, we should pay attention to the strategic nature of the rules. In particular, the logic of prize distribution should be progressive, simple and efficient. At the same time, we should adopt different motivation design methods to accommodate changes in motivation during user participation and maximize the effectiveness of event operations.

Author: JD Design Center JDC

Source: JD Design Center