Improving engagement of analytics users through gamification
Analytics as a domain continues to grow and advance, fueling the rapid growth of businesses and enterprises. But its adoption within the organization brings numerous challenges. Understanding analytics can vary depending on a person’s data literacy, comprehension, interpretation, and more — and may even be uncommon among some working populations. As a result, it’s helpful to have different ways of showcasing data to help users feel empowered and increase their overall engagement.
Product managers, data scientists, and business analysts — in addition to anyone who creates or presents artifacts related to data — have a responsibility to collect, collate, interpret, and represent data so that it is understood correctly by most stakeholders. Stakeholders may connect well with data if its visualization or representation is familiar, but if they do not connect with it and ignore the data instead, all the hard work in assembling it is wasted.
And even if the data product, report, or dashboard design is well intentioned and all relevant metrics are displayed, it’s still possible that stakeholders using it might not find value upfront and so not use it as frequently as intended.
When encountering either a low level of engagement or a high abandonment rate, what steps can be taken to encourage people to interact with and engage more with data?
As a program manager of an analytics-based product, I have often encountered this situation. As a remedy, I have found that using gamification techniques can lead to improvements in user engagement. In this article, I share several techniques and describe scenarios for effectively implementing them. I also explain when and how to establish a value system that prompts improvements in user engagement through the implementation of gamification techniques.
Throughout this article, “user” means any stakeholder who is interacting, using, or engaging with a product, report, dashboard, or model that’s based on data.
What is gamification?
Gamification is the process of applying elements often found in gameplay experience to other domains to drive or encourage engagement with a product or service. Examples include point scoring, comparing health scores with a competitor, rewards for achieving milestones, and so on.
Implementing gamification techniques encourages changes in user behavior, and some can help improve user retention and loyalty.
Why is gamification important for analytics?
Game developers incorporate many strategies to appeal to a variety of gamers. Some have proven to be effective in driving user engagement and in this way have become crucial for some games’ success.
Games can often be played over an extended time, and frequently an objective of gaming studios and developers is to keep players engaged and motivated to continue playing. The goals among players can differ: Some want to play casually, some want simply to experience the game, some may want to reach the top of the leaderboard, and so on.
In this article, I explore gamification techniques along with scenarios in the gaming world and then correlate them as applicable to business and product development scenarios.
How do you know that gamification is working? How do you define whether it’s successful?
Gamification techniques applied to a product or service may result in making it more enjoyable to use, with more exploration, more promotion to other users, improvements in stickiness or brand loyalty, and improvement in the value of a user’s relationship with the product. The following metrics are often positively affected:
- Customer engagement
- Product adoption
- Brand loyalty
- Trial-to-paid conversion rate
- Net Promoter Score advocacy
Know your user
Before implementing, it is critical to understand user personas with respect to gamification. It may be necessary to think differently about the user persona. Motivators or triggers that affect users may vary depending on the user’s personality and generation membership.
Typically, there are four character types that people inhabit when playing games. Understanding the differences among them can help you choose the right gaming elements for each user.
Aggressors typically are constantly trying to outdo everyone else.
Achievers tend to be fueled by conquest. Whether for points, trophies, or setting a new personal record, these users are often the easiest to appeal to with gamification. Features that show off user accomplishments like badges or levels often win their favor.
Explorers are often motivated by the unknown and so seek out uncharted territory.
Socializers seek to grow their network of friends through video games. To them, the tasks themselves matter less than doing them with friends.
Gamification framework and techniques
Now that we’ve reviewed typical users, we can seek to understand five gamification frameworks along with associated techniques for implementing gamification in the analytics domain: Promoting desired outcomes, using scorecards and leaderboards, being goal-focused, providing productive comparison to promote competitive spirit, and offering mentorship.
Promoting desired outcomes
This first gamification framework entails three main approaches: Focusing on rewards, personalizing offers and incentives, and being fair to all levels of users.
Focus on rewards
When: Cases in which there is a lack of desired user action even with a curated list of tasks, action items, repeated reminders, and alerts, resulting in key KPIs being red.
How: Empower users to accomplish tasks in line with your product’s vision to provide a positive user path forward. For example, introduce “quick actions” (with countdowns for urgency, such as “one day to go”) to help users take one-click actions rather than having to seek and take actions manually elsewhere. Help users block some time to take the desired actions, such as by email reminder, auto-updating the action status to indicate when the task is done, or by providing a provision for marking as complete or reminding later.
Personalize offers and incentives
When: Cases in which users feel as though they could be anyone else in the system and don’t receive adequate attention.
How: Many of us love to be treated as individuals with specific needs and desires. Analytics makes it possible to curate personalized offers based on usage or behavioral traits. Machine Learning models can be used to help understand user behavior and suggest when to intervene.
For example, consider having a section for users named “Special offers for you” or “Special insights for you” for showing personalized and helpful offers or insights.
Be fair to all levels of users
When: Situations in which additional effort is being requested of some users, such as requiring training.
How: While encouraging and incentivizing the top users, it’s important not to forget new or inactivated users. Have an incentive for users to stay current or on track, completing actions.
Using scorecards and leaderboards
When: There is a principle in business that says, “What you can measure you can grow.” The reverse is also true — if it is difficult to measure it is difficult to grow. Scoring is a very important parameter to measure and is essential to any growth story.
How: Scorecards and leaderboards are the most important elements of gamification techniques. They are also among the most difficult to implement, too, as the scoring logic must be:
- Consistent and relatively comparable, with the best estimate of performance based on effort versus result.
- Meaningful and trustworthy so that users can assign value to their scores and feel motivated to increase their scores.
You can apply the following gamification techniques for scorecard implementation:
- Progress bar for actions, compliance, and readiness
- Milestones map for competencies qualification
- Countdown to window closure (monthly evaluation/fiscal year closure)
The scoring logic can be based on elements such as:
- Completed items
- Recommendations acted upon
- Actions taken
- Page views
- Customer satisfaction score
- Other business metrics
- Streak length (in other words, recurring actions)
- Frequency of visits
- Frequency of actions taken (including particular types of action)
Being goal-focused
It is crucial for product managers to keep in mind user profiles to target. Even if every user interacts with the same product, their expectations and interactions — and hence the outcomes — can differ significantly.
Capturing intent is a critical step for executing the gamification techniques outlined in this section. For this, you can use a mini-survey or behavioral analytics to identify the type of user profile match.
Goal- or objective-based milestones and prompting
When: Cases in which users may lose objectivity while executing a large project and take random actions as a result.
How: Curate milestones based on user profiles, as users typically have specific objectives or goals that are distinct from those of the product or service. Then, showcase the milestones relevant to the user so that the user is motivated to continue the engagement until reaching the next milestone.
Include milestones that cover the entire user journey. Avoid gaps so that the user does not feel lost. If the product or service has limited user activity, be sure to include usage frequency as a milestone parameter. An example would be asking a user to do 15 transactions within a month to retain a gold badge.
Prompt partners to collect items
When: Some users desire instant gratification or want the end goal to be clear before they start any kind of action.
How: Reward users who reach milestones so that they have something to share with the community, as well as status similar to others who reached the milestone earlier. This provides a sense of achievement and a sense of belonging. It also improves stickiness and product or service loyalty.
Showcase achievements and badges
When: Cases in which the product provides a badge or certificate to honor the partnership or relationship and carries more value when showcased publicly. For example, some folks value being published in a news source more than winning the prize that merits them being mentioned in the first place.
How: Many people enjoy displaying artifacts that showcase talent, capabilities, and potential. As a result, having something for users to showcase publicly increases the social value of collecting badges and being associated with a product or service.
Providing productive comparison to promote competitive spirit
Two ways of promoting competitive spirit include comparison with peers and comparison with a personal best.
You versus a shadow who’s like you
When: Some people are motivated only by challenge or competition.
How: We are often influenced by our peers. Hence, to promote a competitive spirit, consider highlighting areas where users can see that peers are doing better and the steps to take to join them. Be creative about how, when, and where to highlight. For example, consider a weekly or monthly performance report that shows a user’s performance, with areas highlighted where peers are doing better, or a focused performance report that provides insights on the user’s area of interest such as product category, customer type or location, and so on.
You versus your best version
When: Cases where a user has achieved the highest level possible, or the first set of users who are performing well and in alignment with expectations.
How: For the top or best users, consider showing the user’s best version or key highlights of where they have performed exceptionally well. This can also be used to help drive desired business outcomes. For example, consider a message that says “You previously reached a new maximum for revenue in July. By generating $100,000 more in revenue this month, you can reach the July level, which you can achieve by acquiring five new customers given that your average billing amount is $22,000 per customer.”
Offering mentorship: Help by guidance
Analytics requires users to have a certain degree of data literacy and interpretation skills. Some users may be familiar with a specific type of data visualization, for example, and anything apart from it might be difficult for them to comprehend. But not all users are equal, varying in the help they need to interpret data.
Road ahead (next step recommendations)
When: Cases in which users are unclear about the next step to take.
How: Along with seeing data in tables and visualizations to improve comprehension, users are typically helped by being told the exact takeaway to understand and share within their organization. Contextual insights in text and next step recommendations can simplify the presentation and make analytics more accessible and actionable.
For example, consider showing users product recommendations alongside items added to their cart to enhance the overall experience. For an internal sales system, in addition to showing a revenue forecast for a given customer, consider showing a concise list of all products or services for up-sell, cross-sell, and so on.
Bridge the gap — help users overcome anxiety
When: Cases where some users may become frustrated with time spent waiting for results.
How: Sometimes tasks such as waiting for an application to be installed or waiting for a page to be loaded may seem mundane, but they may be crucial for the user to do them to experience the full benefit of the product or application — and it is common for users to drop off if there is too much delay.
To help users overcome anxiety created by these delays and not drop off, consider the following techniques to reduce the perceived load time (because when it’s not possible to reduce the time taken, it’s necessary to reduce the perception of the time taken):
- Add skeleton pages while loading the page so that the page has animated shimmers to show users that similar types of data will soon be available.
- Share trivia about the product or its features to drive engagement.
- Automate processes by combining multiple logical steps to reduce user intervention, because when a user has minimal things to do, the process may seem to work more like magic. For example, for large reports, ask users to mail the report download link when it’s ready so that they don’t have to wait to download it.
Implementing and monitoring the effectiveness of gamification
The implementation aspect entails the implementation process itself, influence on metrics, and risks and challenges, leading to a key takeaway.
Implementation process
Even with the availability of the gamification framework as a method to improve engagement, it’s still necessary to approach it strategically and plan for seamless integration into the product or service. Consider the following steps to maximize the impact of gamification:
- Understand the fundamental distinctions among motivational triggers and use them in the right environment to achieve the intended results.
- Start with the end goal for the user in mind.
- Consider the timeline relative to the user journey: When it should start, how long should it last, and how to keep users focused.
- Maintain consistent communication: Clearly outline the rules, what users are seeing, and what they can do to change or influence it. Explain why participation matters for them and how it can empower them.
- Strive for functionality first and then add gamification: All the badges and leaderboards in the world can’t save a product that lags in functionality. Yes, gamification can entertain users but it’s important to accomplish the goal of moving them through the product rather than being fun for the sake of being fun.
- Understand performance metrics by benchmarking against the engagement levels prior to the implementation of any gamification techniques.
- Monitor progress by focusing on meaningful engagement by users and continuously delivering incremental value that results in increased user engagement, preventing users from spending unproductive time in the product or service.
Metrics influenced by gamification
Some metrics that you can track and expect to be influenced with the implementation of gamification techniques include the following:
- User retention
- High engagement rate/time
- Low abandonment/drop rates
- Higher user actions (in cases where interaction is rewarded)
- More shares (If leaderboard or scorecard is available to be shared)
- Improvement in net promoter score
Risks and challenges
Implementing a gamification framework and techniques brings not only advantages but also some associated risks and challenges, too. Some of the common ones include the following:
- Influencing user behavior is difficult and is not a trivial problem to solve.
- With the introduction of something new, some users might have a steeper learning curve and drop off.
- Adding scores can motivate some users, while low scores can frustrate some users, making it something of a two-way street.
- Low scores on scorecards can also lead to a drop-off due to performance anxiety.
- The overall process and gaining scores should not be difficult for users. Consider introducing milestones and levels along with the scores to sustain engagement to meet the needs of all types of users.
- If users reach the end maximum of the gamification process, it’s necessary to sustain their behavior by providing incentives for repetitive actions so they can retain the level achieved.
- Users may find gamification to be gimmicky and not meaningful.
- Changes to the interface might result in more clutter, which might slow down user activation instead of accelerating it.
Key takeaway
In the application of any gamification technique intended for any kind of user persona, it’s important to empower users so that they are in control and regularly rewarded for contributing to, using, or spending time with the product or service. Progress indicators, badges, and score updates help users feel connected and engaged while completing tasks or achieving business goals. Some ways to help drive this engagement include the following:
- Provide incentives
- Maintain real-time leaderboards and scorecards
- Help users focus on their goals
- Help users maintain a competitive spirit
- Provide mentorship to users by guiding them
Conclusion
I hope this article has helped provide an understanding and recognition of the importance of the gamification framework and techniques that are available to improve user engagement and its application in the analytics space. Additionally, I hope that this article can help you identify and appreciate the use of the gamification framework in various products and services that you may encounter.
Kshitish Sahoo is on LinkedIn.
