Re-introducing Gamification to Plenty of Fish (POF)
Hi there peeps! How y’all doing?
In my previous article, I’ve explained a different take on dating industry, with special focus on Plenty of Fish (POF) and why it could be in the danger zone, if no significant changes are implemented.
You can have a glimpse of it here:
In this post, I’d be explaining minor tweaks that POF could focus on to get back on its wheels at a faster pace within a minimal production time. As stated before, key focus would be around their existing feature “Meet Me”.
Before I go on, a brief snapshot on what this “Meet Me” is all about:
- This is a tap & swipe based profile match feature, probably inspired from its sister org Tinder
- A gamified functionality which lets users to see “potential” matches and instantly express their thoughts in the form of Like/Super-Like with add-on for profile “Boosting”
- If mutual like happens, they get presented to each other and open up avenues for future conversations & others…
- Also provides an opportunity to see who liked user’s profile first (initiative from other side) for a “price” (goes by the concept of Tokens)#
The last point is the cash-cow generating element for this feature. A simple flowchart explaining the same would be:
Now that we understand about how “Meet Me” functions, there are N number of ways POF can improvise this feature to increase its monetization opportunities uplifting users’ engagement (perhaps stickiness is the right term here) with this feature.
Now, if you’re thinking from a product/business case study perspective, you’d like to go ahead with some assumptions in order to quantify the impact. Before we come to that, I’d like to highlight some of the intrinsic factors/reasons for choosing this feature instead of others (more from a psychological rather than business perspective):
POF is a dating app with free messaging service where users can (almost) literally reach out to anyone (without any criteria or caveats to be fulfilled) you can find on this application, which you probably don’t find in any other counterparts (Ex: In Tinder, one can’t initiate conversation unless there’s a mutual like).
In view of the above, POF should have been more popular, with little or no need for “Meet Me” kind of feature, right?
Wrong! Unfortunately, consumer needs have been changing quite a lot these past few years and out of which one of the key behaviors that demand such “needs/wants” is “convenience”. Users are looking for products/services which are way more convenient than before, serving them better and better over a period of time.
One of the side effects with this is, people’s expectations start to sky-rocket once you start to deliver keeping in view of the above expectations. I’m not saying its bad, it’s how the human nature is.
As you look for more convenience, eventually, we’d develop a bit of “laziness” in unwanted scenarios, with this laziness spreading out even while scouting for a potential match.
Hence the need for a quicker, faster, efficient “match-service” popped, eventually perfected in a simple gamified interface by Tinder (I won’t go in to the details of what/why behind this but you get the point!)
Now, I believe the introduction of “Meet Me” in POF is to suit such User personas (Wow, UX terminology to sound really cool here!) by diversifying its feature expansion, catering to users of all segments with different preferences.
This is where POF did right, not at implementation but by distilling down to the right area to serve different user segments (No one size fits all, right!)
So, they’ve brought some MVP version of this feature. So far so good. What’s wrong with it? It’s not about what’s wrong, it’s about what’s right and what should be more right (from a feature success perspective).
Before I go further, I’d like to state a couple of things vehemently regarding the success of a feature (probably with a corny analogy to keep it fun!)
Measuring “Meet Me”
While we won’t get all the metrics we need to know exactly how its working, we can get reasonable guesstimates of the feature:
Say, around 20% of ~3 Mil DAU engages with this feature daily, which makes around 600K users daily. Looking at POF’s annual earnings over the years, it is safe to assume that they make around $100K per day. Assuming each spender makes an average purchase of $5, spender conversion roughly boils down to 0.67%.
Presuming proportional allocation, we’re looking around 6.7K spenders out of 600K users who engage with Meet Me (not necessarily spending in it).
For the sake of convenience, say these 6.7K are spending on “Meet Me” to meet those potential matches.
So what does that tell us? I don’t know about you but I’d say there’s a lot-lot-lot more you can actually make from this feature alone, viewing this in isolation.
You may say “That’s a lot of assumptions! What if the reality is something different, like almost all the revenue comes from Meet Me only? or More than 60–70% of
DAU engages with this feature instead of your 20%?”
Well, I’m tempted to say “Yes, there’s a possibility that could happen” but there’s a high chance it isn’t the case. Let me tell you why!
- First of all, if Meet Me is the sole money maker for POF, their (supposed) business model would be heavily inclined towards Token purchases but it’s a widely known fact that subscription-based In-app-purchases still dominate this industry, applicable here as well
- Their UX would be significantly changed, focused on Meet Me rather than other components, like Chemistry-Test, Spark, Ultra Matches etc (a close look at POF’s native automated PNs would make it more clear)
plus some other things but like I said before, this particular area has a decent potential to deliver more to POF’s business than it currently does (whatever could be the case of its current stature).
I’d like to quote one of Mad Men’s dialogues here, which is pretty self-explanatory to my underlying intention of why this discussion is happening:
“You’re happy because you’re successful — for now. But what is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness.
I won’t settle for 50 percent of anything. I want 100 percent.” — Don Draper
So how can we improve Meet Me?
I’ll emphasize again: There are several to many ways one can do this to achieve the target. I’ll state one such popular route which has a relatively stronger chance of hitting the home run owing to the fundamental concepts on which Meet Me has been built! Please tend to take these with a healthy grain of salt and note that there could always be a scope for improvements and this is one such start!
“Gamification: To uplift Meet Me’s Engagement (stickiness)”
So what are the quick wins here?
- Ability to leverage Meet Me by improving the user traction towards this feature, with a special focus on “They said yes” functionality/flow
- Introduce a habit-inducing retention mechanic to attract users for increased Meet Me usage
Before you see the proposed flowchart, have a look at the current flow, again:
This is what’s being proposed:
- Encourage & Reward users to login & engage daily (notice the AND condition here) with Meet Me
- Rewards can be gated by introducing checkpoints at 3rd, 7th & 15th day (placeholder)
- Users have to login daily, without skipping in between, to be eligible for the rewards
- Rewards to be in the form of “Free Chance(s)” to be utilized to know “Who said yes”
- Gamification to be wrapped around “Free Chance(s)” to present a subtle challenge to users to find their matches who said yes to them first
- This gamification can be offered in several forms:
- Success results in users finding their matches while failure resumes the existing monetization pinch the system already provides
A sample “Daily Login Bonus” model can look like:
Some common forms of such offered gamification includes but not limited to:
- Swipe-pattern making
- Puzzle based games
- Mystery boxes
We shall look at #1 for the sake of this discussion. Note that each offered form is equally powerful in delivering the necessary experience & results, if done right!
Well, how does this work (Broad UX)?
- User gets a nudge prompt in to check out “Who said yes”
- User is presented with 3 letter strings P, <O>, F in a triangulated position encapsulated inside a transparent “Love” shaped background
- Finger & Arrow animation fades in/out pointing to swipe-match the letters to guess the right combination user’s match has made
- Number of plays/swipes left are visible on top stating how many chances are left for User to make the right match
- Visual Feedback: User is presented with a celebratory “Winning” screen once the correct match is entered revealing the match name; Incorrect combination to result in a minor app-vibrato along with corresponding error message prompt
- Out of chances, User is taken to next game if any left; Otherwise prompted to go for Token purchase (monetization pinch)
Major Assumption(s):
- Matches who said yes first are genuine (not bots or others)
- User in focus gets one or more matches in general
Broad Use Cases:
- Users are asked to login daily in order to get FREE plays at finding which matches said “yes” first
- Users get 1 free play on Day 3, 2 on Day 7 & 3 on Day 15; Gets reset from Day 16 onward
- This means each User can get 6 free plays by logging everyday for 15 days straight
- Each free play can be triggered with “Fair Play” gamification or can be used “Gacha” (fixed prize odds) in favor of system
Assuming “Fair Play” with the letter-matching combination shown above in wireframes:
- User has to match the letter patterns made by “potential” match (other user) in order to reveal the match’s identity
- 3 letters -> 6 different ways to arrange!
- User gets 3 free tries to guess the right pattern, which means 50% chance of winning!
- Continuing the 15 day streak, one can get 6 free plays with Expected win rate: 3 matches (1 match for every 3 days!!!)
Other gamification concepts that can be explored
Oh gosh! This got longer than what I’ve anticipated but that’s more or less like it! I’d emphasize again, the above stated concept should not be considered to the specifics as there were many product requirement nitty-gritties that have been left out (intentionally) to keep this relatively simple, in the interest of reader’s time.
A simple, fair play implemented system could potentially change the face of
the feature’s service and hugely impact the users engaging with it, in a much more positive way.
For ex: POF can market about it (ATL & BTL activities) to claim first-mover advantage, tie this up with “Boost” functionality and several more.
I’ve tried my best to tone down the product take/approach in digging this and keep it as generic as possible as I believe enabling the right amount of experience for users should always come first followed by the revenue generating avenues. That’s what make businesses get perceived as “loyal” to its users, which is second
to None!
If you’re with me so far, thanks for reading and I’m happy to receive your inputs. Keep watching my profile for much more diversified content. And I plan to be back with one more post on “Current Match-making algorithm issues dating industry has!”
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