If you’ve been in the eCommerce space for a while now, you will agree that one of the major challenges of running a store online is getting shoppers’ attention. And even when you get it, maintaining it long enough until they make a purchase is another hurdle.
Or, maybe you are still planning to start an online store. If so, you might find this stat interesting: the average attention span of web users is about 8 seconds.
This means you have a severely limited time window to convince prospective customers to buy from your store. To overcome this challenge, you have to give visitors a reason to stay longer on your website.
This is exactly where eCommerce gamification comes into play. In the simplest sense, gamification is the practice of adding gaming mechanics, coupled with a reward system, to your website.
In this post, you will get to learn what eCommerce gamification is all about and also the benefits it has to offer. Best of all, I will share some gamification ideas you can implement on your website without spending so much.
So stick around!
What is Ecommerce Gamification?
Ecommerce gamification is simply the practice of incorporating gaming mechanics into your eCommerce marketing strategy to give your visitors a memorable browsing experience.
A good example is a spin-to-win campaign. In this campaign, website visitors try to win coupons by spinning a wheel of fortune. If the wheel’s pointer falls on, say, 20%, it means they’ve won a 20% discount.
Now, why would you want to add gaming elements to your website, knowing fully well that it can actually distract visitors from what matters most: making a purchase?
Well, here is the thing: the human mind is naturally curious. This means that anything that stirs up curiosity in us gets our attention.
In addition to that, deep within us, we love a good challenge, especially if it comes with a reward. This explains why we value things we work for over things we get without struggling.
Ecommerce gamification works on these two psychological traits: curiosity and our craving for a rewarding challenge.
When you stimulate people’s curiosity and reward them for playing fun games, the result is better engagement and a higher conversion rate, which eventually will translate to more sales for your business.
Benefits of Ecommerce Gamification
Implementing gamification on a website is no easy feat. It will cost you money and time.
So why bother?
Well, knowing the benefits it has to offer will let you see the reasons why investing in eCommerce gamification makes sense. Below are some of them:
1. Reduce cart abandonment rate
Cart abandonment is a serious challenge many entrepreneurs battle with. In fact, studies have shown that the average cart abandonment rate for eCommerce is about 70%. This is to say, 7 out of every 10 shoppers who start the checkout process on a website will eventually abandon their carts.
At this rate, you’d lose a lot of sales, and your business could be wrecked. You certainly do not want that to happen.
Thankfully, gamification can help you overcome this challenge. Done right, gamification can drop your website’s cart abandonment rate considerably.
How’s that even possible, you may wonder?
Adding gamification to your customer’s buying journey does two things. One is that it intrigues their minds, making them want to stay longer than they would have.
Second, it will motivate them to go through their checkout, knowing they will be rewarded for doing so.
2. Better conversion
Email popups were a thing in the early days of the web. They were so effective that marketers relied heavily on them to harvest emails from website visitors. But not anymore. Web users are increasingly getting averse to popups, so using them might not be as fruitful as you would expect.
However, this is not to say that popups are dead; you just need to spruce them up a little to see the desired results. And what better way to spruce up your popups than by adding gaming elements like the Wheel of Fortune or falling gifts to them?
Offering visitors a chance to win coupons and discounts by playing fun games will make them want to give you their emails without hesitation, thus bettering your website’s conversion rate.
3. Better brand awareness
Positive experiences are contagious. As such, giving visitors an awesome buying experience will lead them to spread positive words about your business to people in their circles.
The end result of this is better brand awareness for your retail business. And the more aware shoppers are about your business, the more they will want to shop from your store.
5 Best Ecommerce Gamification Ideas to Try
If you’ve read this far, it’s safe to say that you now know what eCommerce gamification is about and why leveraging it makes a lot of sense.
The next big question is, how can you implement them?
Below are some ideas you can try.
1. Falling Gifts Game
The Falling Gifts game is an innovative eCommerce gamification solution to help online retailers boost conversions and sales. Basically, it’s a gamified popup that lets web users win coupons and discounts by randomly clicking on falling gift boxes appearing on their computer/phone screens when they visit a website to reveal what it contains.
Whatever gift the box contains becomes theirs.
To make the game interesting and engaging, you can set the minimum number of attempts visitors need to make to win a gift. For instance, you can set the minimum number of attempts to 3. This means your visitors will have to click the falling boxes at least three times to win a gift, which is often a coupon.
Once they make a win, the coupon will be automatically sent to their emails, which they can then use to shop from your store. This way, the Falling Gift game can boost your website’s conversion rate way beyond your wildest imagination.
2. Spin to win
The Spin-to-win, or Wheel of Fortune as some people prefer to call it, is another excellent gamification idea to try on your eCommerce website.
The working principle is also simple, possibly simpler than Falling Gift Game, depending on how you see it. So it works like this:
When visitors land on your website, they will see a popup with a fortune wheel graphic and an email opt-in field in it. To start the game, all they have to do is type in their emails in the opt-in field and then click the Start button.
Upon clicking, the wheel will start to spin and then stop at a random number.
If the wheel falls on 0, it means they didn’t win any gift and so will have to make another attempt. Of course, it’s entirely up to you to decide if they can make another attempt and how many times they can make a re-attempt.
But if the wheel falls on a figure other than zero, that value becomes your players’ winning. For example, if the wheel pointer falls on 30%, the player gets a 30% discount/coupon.
3. Treasure hunt
Treasure hunt games are another cool gamification idea that can drive massive engagement and conversion for your store if done right.
This gamification takes many forms, but the Easter Egg hunt game is the most popular.
It involves concealing gifts like Easter eggs across your web pages and letting your visitors hunt for them. To make the game interesting, you can plant empty eggs on your pages and let visitors scout through to find an egg that isn’t empty.
This game is similar to the Falling Gift Game, only that you can use it across different pages.
4. Puzzles
We all love to play a good puzzle game. Puzzle games are intriguing and rewarding at the same time.
As such, adding them to your eCommerce website will intrigue your visitors and make them want to play, so much so that they won’t mind spending a considerable amount of time playing the game.
It’s entirely up to you to decide how to reward players for solving your puzzles. You can choose to reward them with gift vouchers, coupons, free shipping, free product trials, etc.
5. Loyalty Reward
Rewarding your customers with points and badges for their loyalty and patronage is another gamification idea that is worth giving a try.
So how would this work?
First, you need to set milestones customers need to cross to win points and badges. For example, you can award them 10 points once their cumulative purchases on your website exceed, say, $100. $150 earns them 15 points, $200, 25 points, and so on.
Once their accumulated points get to, maybe, 100, they’d win a gift voucher, which they can use to buy whatever they want from your store.
To make the game more interesting, you can take a step further and reward them with badges for referring other people to your store.
Sounds interesting? You should read our complete guide on eCommerce loyalty programs to ensure it is effective and worth your investments in the right tools and strategies.
Wrapping Up
Gamifying your visitors’ experience can help boost your website’s conversion rate, reduce cart abandonment, and uplift your sales.
Thankfully, adding gamification to your website is anything but expensive. Plus it’s quite easy, and there are lots of ideas you can try.
Lucky for you, we’ve shared the 5 best eCommerce gamification ideas you can try; we hope you found them useful.
