Here, you will learn how cloud-based gamification can help you achieve tangible business results.
Everybody loves to play games. This is evident in the fact that as 80% of U.S. households own a gaming device, with the average age of gamers at 37. Wanting to play harks back to one of the most basic human instincts.
It’s hardly surprising then that 55% of Americans say that they are interested in working for a company that uses gamification to increase productivity and 90% of employees are found to be more productive when they used gamification in a study by Medium.
Even more relevant perhaps is a study by Optinmonster that found gamification software improved customers’ browsing time on websites by as much as 30%. The global gamification market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 30% between 2019-2025. By 2025, the global market is predicted to reach $32 billion.
What Is Gamification?
Gamification harnesses this innate desire to play with innovative methodologies in game design principles to influence customer behaviour in business use cases. Companies typically tend to harness gaming principles to create/ increase interest in a product or service, or to deepen customer engagement.
Specific methods vary widely as per the compatibility with business use cases. These can include creating reward schedules or achievement levels (often publicly displayed through status and badges). The idea is to inculcate an emotional connection with the product/ service/ brand beyond its actual utility in customer’s lives.
Though gamification is immensely successful in injecting a sense of fun into routine business procedures, its success often relies on the clear articulation of predefined business objectives. This can help companies in building a road map and adhering to it for targeted deployment of applications.
Successful use of gamification can be found in immensely popular ‘treasure hunts’ or ‘collect all’ games done by brands. The strategy is equally successful with younger consumers who hunt for toys or stickers in cereal boxes to adult consumers trying to win a “trusted source” or “top contributor” badge in a social forum. All of the strategies allow companies to essentially install an additional incentive for customer engagement beyond the successful delivery of their product/ service.
Why Is Gamification Crucial For Landing New Cloud Users?
Cloud computing is resource intensive and requires companies to direct most of its funds towards the development of core software, technology or infrastructure. Gamification offers a chance for cloud providers to secure new users through social media without significant marketing outlay to attract eyeballs.
This is immensely helpful for organizations looking for efficient ways to finance itself without having to overstretch. Gamification is also highly useful in making development and adaptation processes smoother and faster.
In its essence, cloud computing and gamification can be used in conjunction to optimize resource usage, especially for companies just starting out. Cloud computing can help you build highly scalable infrastructure/ products that meet any demand without overtaxing your resources.
Similarly, gamification can be employed to test out smaller concepts and build on them – all the while adding value to your users and increasing engagement. Cloud Direct Connect can be a great place to start your research on exactly how gamification can help you optimize resource usage and conversions.
Cloud-Based Gamification And Hosting (And How To Build Your Own Team)
Real world business data shows that game-based cloud hosting solutions are not just proving highly effective in improving consumer participation, but they also provide actionable data on behaviour analytics, and result in better brand engagement.
According to Gartner, cloud-based applications infused with game theory have become de jure among reputed Fortune 2000 companies. In fact, whether you are filling data forms up just to achieve 100% profile completion on a website, posting religiously on public forums like Quora or Reddit for a coveted ‘Expert’ badge, or simply addicted to checking your frequent flyer miles – today, it’s hard to escape being ‘gamified’.
A custom-made gamified application is the result of a well-planned and executed objective-setting game design concept. As outlined before, the first step is to clearly define these objectives well in advance.
If you are thinking of implementing gamification in your organization, you should look at setting up a team of Game Designers, Application Developers and last, but definitely not the least, Behavioral Psychologists. This sort of a team setup can help you to easily deploy/ tweak game mechanics and most importantly, blend it with software development and enterprise IT strategy.
All of this will be powered by innovative behavioural change-related data and insights. It’s critical for your gamification strategies to remain in step with your business operations, so you can modify your strategies as needed and execute them smoothly.
Deploying a custom-made gamified application in your organization can help your business in:
- Creating and retaining customer loyalty and engagement
- Motivating employees and improving productivity
- Spur innovation through stimulation of collaborating principles
- Enable better collaboration and communication
- A robust and configurable cloud-based gamification host can maximize your ROI
For more information on deploying a cloud-based gamification host in your business, consider reaching out to cloud migration solutions.
How Does Gamification Increase Engagement?
Gamification improves user motivation through the game dynamics of using positive feedback (level progression, points, badges, status, unlocking privileges etc.) – all of which impact the user’s emotional connection with the environment.
They also improve the user’s perception of his/ her own abilities through the game dynamics of either dividing difficult tasks / challenges into simpler and more manageable parts (and through repetition) or, by reducing the ‘activation threshold’ of the target behavior that results in the task appearing simpler. In some real world business use cases, gamification has been shown to boost conversions by as much as 7 times.
Well-designed game dynamics can result in being an effective driver of user behavior. This is achieved through placing triggers in the game journey that coincide with the perception of greatest excess in the ability of motivated users. These triggers essentially prompt users to take actions that act as the seamless point of convergence in motivation, ability, and trigger at the same time.
Note: This is a post by Ben Ferguson.
About Ben Ferguson:
Ben Ferguson is the Vice President and Senior Network Architect for Shamrock Consulting Group, an industry leader in digital transformation solutions. Since his departure from Biochemical research in 2004, Ben has built core competencies around cloud direct connects and cloud migration solutions, SD WAN providers, enterprise wide area network architecture, high density data center deployments, cybersecurity and VOIP telephony. Ben has designed hundreds of complex networks for some of the largest companies in the world and he’s helped Shamrock become a top partner of the 3 largest public cloud platforms for AWS, Azure and GCP consulting. Stay connected at LinkedIn.
