UX Gamification on
Loyalty Program
Remember the feeling when you spent most of your time for your favourite game. Satisfaction of win, ambition to collect rewards, competition with other players, obstinacy to complete level... These feelings are not because of playing something, it is gamifying. In the consideration of using the gamification tools on loyalty program means implementing these feeling on the user experience of product.
Loyalty is a result of a well designed user experience with gamification according to business goals.
Let's list some of the gamification mechanics first to understand what we have in our hands to use for designing.
Status
Different levels and hierarchies are some kind of trigger for competition to reach the next level and eventually have a privilege.
Targets
Especially the targets in a variety of difficulties provides a reason for customer to use the product and achieve the goal.
Rewards
As a main inventory of gamification, rewards are the most efficient motivation of customers especially when it is matched with the business goals. Besides the great prize, some small rewards come from effortless and repeated actions of users help to build a new habit and behaviour on users.
Surprised Gift
Unexpected small rewards motivate users to do something again like a lottery.
Personalisation
Flexibility on personal choices provides a familiarity for users and create an addiction.
Limitation
Usually, time limitations are very useful tools to push users to take an active action quickly to reach goals. (This can be used as an effective mechanic to protect an app from being a zombie app.)
Status
Different levels and hierarchies are some kind of trigger for competition to reach the next level and eventually have a privilege.
Targets
Especially the targets in a variety of difficulties provides a reason for customer to use the product and achieve the goal.
Rewards
As a main inventory of gamification, rewards are the most efficient motivation of customers especially when it is matched with the business goals. Besides the great prize, some small rewards come from effortless and repeated actions of users help to build a new habit and behaviour on users.
Surprised Gift
Unexpected small rewards motivate users to do something again like a lottery.
Personalisation
Flexibility on personal choices provides a familiarity for users and create an addiction.
Limitation
Usually, time limitations are very useful tools to push users to take an active action quickly to reach goals. (This can be used as an effective mechanic to protect an app from being a zombie app.)
If we need to get back to the subject, the loyalty program of any business also needs these gamification tools for a long term success. And the success is mostly related with how to match between business goals and user targets within reward balance.
As an example, the loyalty program of DP Russia, Domino's Бонус, is also built for sustainable user behaviour according to different KPIs like increasing Average Ticket Price. In order to motivate the customers to give order more times with higher price, the loyalty program offers them to earn a slice from each order with min. 500₽ price, and win a free pizza with 5 slices. In this business case, here are the gamification tools and the design solutions of Domino's Бонус.
Let's list down the tools of this project as a sample:
- Targets : Slice collection
- Small reward : 1 slice for each order
- Big reward : 1 free pizza
- Time limitation : 90 days expiration time for slices
- Amount limitation : Maximum 3 free pizza collection before spending one of them
- Surprised gift : Free welcome slice when the user join the program or on the birthday
Even though some limitations look like bothering customer, amount limitation Domino's Бонус is a good example for seamless customer experience. Because, customers should be made to spend free pizza to continue to earn slices. This loyalty rule canalises customers to feel benefits of the program, and doesn't allow them to postpone the happy moment. Hence, they become more motivated to keep on to give an order more, earn slices, spend free pizzas, and eventually repeat it as a habit.
As an example, the loyalty program of DP Russia, Domino's Бонус, is also built for sustainable user behaviour according to different KPIs like increasing Average Ticket Price. In order to motivate the customers to give order more times with higher price, the loyalty program offers them to earn a slice from each order with min. 500₽ price, and win a free pizza with 5 slices. In this business case, here are the gamification tools and the design solutions of Domino's Бонус.
Let's list down the tools of this project as a sample:
- Targets : Slice collection
- Small reward : 1 slice for each order
- Big reward : 1 free pizza
- Time limitation : 90 days expiration time for slices
- Amount limitation : Maximum 3 free pizza collection before spending one of them
- Surprised gift : Free welcome slice when the user join the program or on the birthday
Even though some limitations look like bothering customer, amount limitation Domino's Бонус is a good example for seamless customer experience. Because, customers should be made to spend free pizza to continue to earn slices. This loyalty rule canalises customers to feel benefits of the program, and doesn't allow them to postpone the happy moment. Hence, they become more motivated to keep on to give an order more, earn slices, spend free pizzas, and eventually repeat it as a habit.
These gamification mechanics can be applied to any kind of product to improve UX, and the loyalty program circuitously. From the UI perspective, Visibility Of System Status and Recognition Rather Than Recall are highly significant topics to be considered by designers wisely. These 2 principles are necessary for communicating with users about not only for self-explained rules, but also displaying how they are close to the target. "Multiples times, I gave order just because of I saw that one more order was required to win the free pizza." (user comment from a UX Research study)
The second UI tip from Usability Heuristics is for a better onboarding process on the loyalty program: Help Users Recognise, Diagnose and Recover From Errors and Help and Documentation. Considering to the new member of the program, decreasing the effort of learning for the rules is essential for customer engagement on time. The interaction should be designed to increase the learnability level of the program, and guide the user with animations for a frictionless experience.
If you would like to see UX research process and UX/UI design results of Domino's Бонус, you can access the project here.
The second UI tip from Usability Heuristics is for a better onboarding process on the loyalty program: Help Users Recognise, Diagnose and Recover From Errors and Help and Documentation. Considering to the new member of the program, decreasing the effort of learning for the rules is essential for customer engagement on time. The interaction should be designed to increase the learnability level of the program, and guide the user with animations for a frictionless experience.
If you would like to see UX research process and UX/UI design results of Domino's Бонус, you can access the project here.
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