Gamification is a term widely known by almost anyone that has ever interacted with or heard of some of the top web design trends. Today, the video game industry has developed into an entertainment giant that always offers something new that captures the attention of gamers. These are the same gamers who are eventually the ones spending tens of hours playing games and increasing the industry’s already massive revenue. There are many aspects to game design, and the web design industry tends to borrow some of the better ones that help boost the most important metrics on a given website.

Of course, you know it if you create websites or follow web design trends. If you don’t know much about web design, the chances are you’ve never even heard of gamification. Whatever the case, if you have a business, you need to make sure it has an effective website. If a modern company doesn’t have a good site, it misses out on a huge part of its audience. The reason is quite simple: the first thing most consumers do when looking for something is check for it on the web.

Although you might consider creating a website on your own, it’s in your best interest to suck it up to hire professionals. Hiring a reputable web design company to create a site for you is the best solution for you and your business alike. The thing is that you get exclusive access to the agency’s intellectual and professional resources that you’ll never get by hiring a freelancer or by doing a site on your own. A professional and well-rounded agency will be able to provide you with far more assistance than just developing the website’s design. They will help you create a website that expands your audience, boosts conversion rates, and increases your ROI. And don’t worry, there are rather many great web design companies out there these days, so you will have no problem finding the one that meets your particular needs.

But what if your company already has a site? Why would you want to gamify it? The use of gaming aspects in web design helps make certain that your site visitors are excited, entertained, and engaged by and with your content. You might want to consider gaming your website if it wasn’t producing any valuable results over a certain period (a year or more, for example). If this is your situation, you should find and hire a reliable and reputable web design agency, whose team can update your site. This should help you start to convert customers. Often, agencies these days will incorporate aspects of gamification with quite impressive results.

Let’s take a look at website gamification and how it can improve the user experience and the overall performance of your website.

Adding the Social Aspect

Humans are social beings. This is a fact. Adding game elements to your site promotes socialization and, more so, competition among your site’s visitors. Lots of firms have rewards benefits or loyalty programs for regular clients.

People enjoy scoring points, and if you add rankings to that, this may encourage more website visitors to get more points than they would in another situation. There are even companies that tier memberships based on the points their site visitors earn.

Social media is an undoubtedly effective marketing tool nowadays, and gamification can be used to extend your company’s influence in engaging and fun ways. Make sure your content can be shared and think about providing customers with one or more ways to interact with each other.

For instance, you might add a message board to your site to spur interaction between visitors. Naturally, users want to share their experiences with others, so why not use this and encourage them to interact?

Different Types of Customers Require Different Types of Content

Most marketing specialists are acquainted with drip campaigns – also known as timed organized marketing content distribution. In essence, marketers devise content deliveries which depend on clients’ previous actions. Some marketers work out diverse campaigns hinged on different archetypes of clients that are also often referred to as “customer profiles.”

Meticulously developed profiles are priceless to marketers. It’s essential to have a solid comprehension of your target audience: what they want, what they don’t want, and their commitment level towards your brand.

Well-defined customer profiles simplify content creation that fits their preferences. The same goes for gamification. It’s impossible to create a product that will be loved by everyone. This means it must always be embedded with different elements that speak to different customer types. It, as a strategy, is very useful and successful.

Help Your Site Visitors Learn

Humans are curious by nature. People are always looking for new information. So, appealing to the inherent human desire for discovery can be an amazing way to include gaming elements into web design.

One great example is the onboarding system: state a problem for your visitors and then offer them the tools needed to solve it. Please encourage them to test and play with these tools to find the desired outcome, and give them rewards for discovering it.

This will allow you to engage with various types of clients. Some enthusiasts will certainly explore every possible option, whereas casual visitors will gladly enjoy a fun distraction.

If you provide more content, information, or control to your visitors as they progress through the website, they will naturally keep going. This can help retain visitors and hopefully aid in their conversion. Consider how you tell your brand’s story using exploration and game elements. The inherent desire to learn alone will keep users engaged and wanting to know more.

Tracking Progress Is Essential

The way you decide to address gamification will completely depend on your business model. Each company has unique concerns and, therefore, particular types of users. This makes it essential to devise an extensive gamification strategy. You should sit down and discuss all these details with your design agency.

Using visual novelties or rewards in your company’s history could be enough to entertain and engage your target audience. At the same time, some companies might want to take things further and add more gaming elements for their customers. No matter what route you take, it’s essential that you track the metrics that detail the performance of your site.

Following metrics is essential – it might turn out in the end that gamification isn’t helping, and another route is necessary. Never trust the design agency, but rather, always retain the ability to verify the progress of your site.

Conclusion

Don’t gamify your site too much. You’re not in the video game business. You are simply adding a few gaming elements to the design of your site. One of the most vital scientific ideas the website design industry references and utilizes is “embedded preference for simplicity” or “cognitive fluency of the human brain.” These concepts show the importance of a perfect balance between stimulating and incentivizing to produce better user engagement.

Encourage your website visitors’ interests, but don’t overload their senses with unnecessary stimuli. They should be able to access the most important content for free. Don’t forget that your audience wants to see a company website – not just play online games. Please make sure you discuss all these details with your design agency. And if you always remember to keep it simple and straightforward, you’ll never have a serious problem capturing the attention of your target audience.