What is Gamification?
It is THE buzzword for every modern marketing guru right now. But what does it mean? Gamification is a human-focused design idea that optimizes every element of the design process around humans’ feelings, insecurities, and motivations. Gamification is a new thought in the school of design and it is growing rapidly in popularity. The principles of Gamification have proven to be of universal applications and they have generated great results in the past.
This brings us to the topic of this blog. In today’s blog, we will take a look at one Gamification technique, namely Beginner’s Luck, and how you can use this concept to create engaging and meaningful interactions for your customers.
Beginner’s Luck in Gamification
When we are talking about beginner’s luck we mean something crazy or completely absurd that happens to someone new to a given situation. It is the absurd nature of the event that draws the maximum attention. This can be a programmed element in computer and video games to make the new player feel more confident.
Gamification takes this exact approach and brings it to the real world, using Gamification you can program your product to reward a few players, on a random basis, to encourage them further. Imagine that just by completing the registration process on your app, the user gets a substantial reward! Sounds pretty awesome, does it not?
Google, in 2004, used the concept of Beginner’s Luck and turned a plain ol’ billboard into a gamified system. The crazy reward here was the opportunity to work at Google, you can read about how they did it here.
If used correctly, the idea of Beginner’s Luck can create an extremely loyal audience base, one that actively spends long hours on your app, in the pursuit of completing more quests, which brings the promise of more rewards.
(this is the best hand you can get in a lot of card games including poker. It perfectly demonstrates the concept of Beginner’s Luck)
But how does scarcity come into play?
Scarcity is a slight modification of the core concept of beginner’s luck. Here the developer adds another layer of Gamification on top of Beginner’s luck.
When combining scarcity and beginner’s luck, you are essentially rewarding your users but with a caveat!
Your users must complete a set of goals and reach certain levels before they can unlock their rewards. As you must have understood by now when we add scarcity to beginner’s luck, we create a user experience that is now obsessive, the players will spend countless hours in a frantic struggle to complete the challenges and unlock their rewards.
Woot is an e-commerce platform but with a gamified twist. The company has mastered the core concept of scarcity and uses it to drive people to buy stuff that they otherwise might not need, read more about their model and how they are using Gamification here.
The perfect mix of Rewarding Beginner’s Luck and Scarcity will unlock all the secrets to improving customer retention and product engagements.
If this article piques your interest, then you must be excited to get started with Gamification!
At CustomerGlu we use a drag and drop builder to ease your work of creating engaging game-like experiences. A low-code gamification tool, CustomerGlu, with its hundreds of unique templates and personalized workflows, is the perfect place to start the Gamification process of your app. Book a free demo with us to learn the basics of Gamification and how to build game-like experiences for your products. Watch not only your users but even you, fall in love with the gamified experience.
You can also check out this blog to learn more about the top Gamification strategies to boost sales in 2021.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
Q. What is beginner’s luck in gamification?
A. With Beginner’s Luck, people feel like they are one of the few chosen to take action - which makes them much more likely to take it. Adding randomized rewards for new users will make them instantly fall in love with your app.
Q. How can we implement beginner’s luck in our app or web platforms?
A. You can give bug rewards to new customers simply because they joined your app and completed the signup process. This way those users will feel they are part of something special which will then motivate them to keep coming back.
Q. How to find the perfect balance between beginner’s luck and scarcity?
A. When designing the perfect gamified system you must ensure that the customer journey curve is not too steep. The scarcity component should lowly build over time as your users get more and more addicted to the game-like engagements that you have created.
