Gamification Strategy: When To Use Leaderboards
Points, Badges, and Leaderboards make up the core of what most people consider gamification. If you read my articles regularly, you know there is much more to it than that, but in many cases these features can be effective it building engagement and retention.
Of the three, leaderboards are the touchiest. This is because there are some circumstances in which they’re extremely motivating, and others where they’re totally undesirable.
In the wrong case, leaderboards can drive users off like garlic drives off vampires.
Here are the circumstances in which a leaderboard is probably a good idea. And obviously, the opposite is true, too: If these don’t describe your app, do not use a leaderboard!
TL;DR:
Use leaderboards if your users are highly competitive, if your app tests skill specifically, there are many opportunities to increase score, you do not measure anything your users think of as private, and your marketing strategy relies on social sharing.
More on each of these follows.
1. Your users are highly competitive
Certain user profiles are more competitive than others. College students at top-ranked universities and medical schools, athletes, hardcore gamers, and sports fans are good examples of this user type.
These are the users that Bartle called “achievers” in his taxonomy of players. Mark Rosewater called them “Spike” in his famous psychographic triangle for Magic The Gathering.
Winning is important to them because they see themselves as winners and want to be the best. And when you want to be the best, you can’t just make a personal best. You have to beat other people.
Apps like Peloton, Steam, Nike Run, and DraftKings fit this description, and use leaderboards well for their audience.
Compare to other highly engaging apps like Calm and Headspace. Like Peloton, these apps are about wellness. But these users are approaching their health from a different angle. Although some competitive athletes and gamers are probably also on mental wellness apps, you would not think of their over all user base as “competitive.”
2. Your App Tests Skills, Not Innate Qualities
Generally speaking, the best use of a leaderboard is to record progress toward mastery. People who want to be a winner want to win at something they worked hard at.
This means, if you want to use a leaderboard, your app had better test (and perhaps teach) a skill. Not just measure how much a given user wants to win, or how well positioned they are to do so.
For instance, a finance app that encourages savings would not be a good choice for a leaderboard for various reasons. Chief among them, the people who earn the most are the most likely to save the most, so the app mostly measures how rich your users are, not how skilled they are.
If you did a great job of matching people only against those with the exact same income, you might be able to mitigate this, but so many other circumstances weigh in: Where do they live? Do they have children? Did they take loans to go to school? And so on.
Other apps do not test skill at all, but only how much time users are willing to spend. Not everyone has the luxury of free time to spend on your app, so a leaderboard that essentially measures minutes spent would be nonsensical.
Likewise, if you can purchase resources (sometimes called pay-to-win) your app might not be a good fit for a leaderboard. That is, unless you have no scruples.
Games are an obvious fit here, because they can be highly skill-testing. Fitness apps and educational apps can also fit this well.
3. There Are Many Opportunities To Boost Score
How do your users increase their rank on your leaderboard? Are there a lot of ways to rack up points? Many opportunities to find matches? Ways for users to creatively deploy their resources? Or gain advantages through power-ups?
If so, a leaderboard is probably a good fit.
DuoLingo is a perfect example here. XP is earned based on performance in lessons, and there are practically infinite lessons to take. Users can drastically increase their XP by earning doubling power ups and taking the most rewarding lessons on a given day. And because DuoLingo doesn’t care about when you use it, it’s easy to squeeze in a few extra lessons at the end of the day.
Other self-help apps are devoted to simple discrete actions like sleep, reducing screen time, or taking your medication on time. These are not a good fit for a leaderboard, because no matter how motivated you are, you can’t sleep more than once per night or take your prescribed medicine an extra time at the end of the day.
These apps are about consistency, not extraordinary effort, so a leaderboard makes no sense.
4. You Don’t Measure Anything Private
When I was lead game designer at Sidekick Health, I had the opportunity to do some extremely enlightening UX research with users with chronic illnesses.
They were highly motivated to improve their health, and wanted to see their progress. But they shrunk away from anything that touched on social sharing.
This is because they considered their health a private matter, and did not want to expose themselves in any way.
If your app deals with sensitive information such as health, finances, or love and sex, a leaderboard would be about the worst thing you could add to your user experience.
Tinder and Wealthfront are examples of apps with extremely powerful engagement and retention features (criminally powerful?), but neither would benefit from a leaderboard.
A good rule of thumb is: would a user brag about this at work? If the answer is no, skip the leaderboard.
5. Your Marketing Strategy Relies On Social Sharing
But what if they would brag about acing your app at work?
In that case, you should do everything you can to make that happen!
Many apps thrive based on social sharing. Wordle is a great example. Candy Crush is another.
With apps like this, you want to give your users every opportunity to share their achievements. Rising up the leaderboard is a perfect example of this.
OK. Pop quiz. Since Wordle and Candy Crush both rely on social sharing for their marketing strategy, why is it that Candy Crush has one and Wordle doesn’t? Think about the answer. I’ll reveal it after the picture of the Candy Crush leaderboard.
That’s right! Wordle can only be played once per day, so a leaderboard would be pointless. There’s no opportunity to increase your score. It’s more like the medication reminder app than DuoLingo.
Final Thoughts: When Leaderboards Discourage
Even if your app meets all of these stipulations, you can still mess up a leaderboard implementation.
In a competitive field, the user who just isn’t that good will see themselves at the bottom of the leaderboard. Being in last place is highly discouraging, especially day after day, or week after week.
Successful leaderbords match players against people who are close in skill an ability. DuoLingo’s leagues is a good example of this. The most popular e-sports do the same.
Also, try to keep the leaderboards small. Seeing you are 5/10 is not too bad, but seeing you are ranked 1005/1010 could be devastating. It turns out anyone would rather be the best of the worse than the worst of the best.
This is also why bronze medalists feel better than silver medalists at the Olympics.
Sam Liberty is a gamification consultant, serious game designer, and professor of game design at Northeastern University. He is the former lead game designer at Sidekick Health.
