Pleasing Consumers with Gamification

Gamification is now a common thing for technology companies in order to improve engagement with users. Almost all e-commerce platforms in Indonesia implement it.

Shopee is the most aggressive platform in releasing a series of gamifications into its marketing strategy. This strategy takes the form of in-app games and was first initiated in 2018. Gamification complements the different set of experiences that the company wants to offer users.

The first game released was Goyang Shopee which was claimed to have been played 500 million times until the middle of last year. This strategy was then followed by Shopee Tanam, Shopee Capture, and Shopee Throw. Currently the latest series of games include Shopee Candy, Shopee Poly, Shopee Joget, and Shopee Capit.

Gameplay and the instructions for each game tend to be easy to follow. For example, Shopee Candy has a concept similar to the popular game Candy Crush.

Another game that is quite popular is Shopee Tanam. Users must diligently water the plants with water until harvest to get the desired reward. They have to patiently wait until the water container is full for three and a half hours or help each other's plants so that the goal can be quickly achieved.

The prizes vary, ranging from coins for shopping at Shopee, free shipping, shopping vouchers, and so on. This strategy is considered successful in making consumers diligently visit the application just to continue game which he left behind.

“With these various innovations, the Shopee application has been proven achieved first place for e-commerce applications with the most active users, the number of download and total time spent in-app on Android based on App Annie,” said the Director Shopee Indonesia Handhika Jahja during a virtual press conference some time ago.

Separately, in a joint interview DailySocial, Shopee Indonesia PR Lead Aditya Maulana added that partners are also taking advantage of this initiative brand and sales partners as one strategy that can improve online presence and attract user interest by providing entertainment while shopping.

In releasing these games, Aditya said, the company listened to user responses and requests. One of them is by innovating the best services that suit each user's shopping preferences.

“Starting from this understanding, every in-app games "What Shopee presents aims to provide users with a pleasant experience, and can provide benefits when shopping such as Shopee coins or direct shopping discounts on your next purchase."

He continued, “Like one in-app games The favorite of users is Shopee Tanam. "This initiative is a reflection of Shopee's creative and innovative side which also accommodates users' free time while they are at home."

Shopee did not provide statistics on the impact of attendance in-app games this.

Bukalapak also see gamification as a way to improve engagement with users. “This feature is a means for the company to stay close to users. Of course, through game, we want our users to have fun while shopping on the Bukalapak application, as well as a means of making Bukalapak a everyday platform," said Head of New Customers and O2O Growth Bukalapak Hans Calvin.

Hans claims that the presence of gamification is effective in supporting the increase in GMV. It is said that 80% of Bukalapak users are used to playing in-app games automatically becomes a monthly active user. Of this figure, 30% of users are active and regularly make transactions on the application.

“This encourages us to give lots of prizes of great value as an attraction games in our app, so we can continue with our determination, close to the user.”

Suite in-app games released by the company include Pencetmania, Roda Rejeki, Rub-Gosok, Snapper Pieces, TTM Cheat, Serbu Seru, Invitation to Prizes, Fortune Tree, Streak Bonus and Fun Prizes. In creating game Accordingly, the team he leads sees each game as having a proper life cycle online games in general.

“Its appearance at the beginning usually attracts a lot of our users, but then it slowly gets better trafficis decreasing. Therefore, to maintain user enthusiasm, we release and update various game every three months."

Grab and Gojek

These two competitors are overtaking each other in providing features in their applications. Gojek first enriching the GoGames game features through collaboration with third party local online game platform MainGame was inaugurated last May. Previously, the company had collaborated with Area 120 (Google's experimental division) called GameSnacks.

In an official statement, Head of Third Party Platform Gojek Sony Radhityo hopes that the availability of this light game can fill customers' free time amidst the self-quarantine that has been carried out by the community during the pandemic.

Both MainGame and Gamesnacks are based on HTML 5 and Progressive Web App which can reach all groups because it is relatively more efficient and friendly for all types of devices. Users can play various games without having to bother downloading applications one by one.

According to internal data Gojek, in the March-May 2020 period, the GoGames feature experienced an increase in the number of game sessions up to 64 times compared to the January-February 2020 period. The types of games most accessed were Bubble Woods (Gamesnacks) and Cake Slider (MainGame).

While Grab started testing a similar feature called First Games. This feature has only been rolled out to some users and is only available on the Android platform. The company is not yet prepared to provide further statements regarding this.

"We regularly test new services in our application to continue to strive to provide added value to our customers," said a spokesperson Grab Indonesia when contacted DailySocial.

Grab put First Games as a way to improve engagement with users because it provides point prizes that can be exchanged for vouchers, such as Iflix, Grab, and credit. There are two game modes to choose from, casual games and arena games to fight against many players (multiplayer) which has two subcategories: player vs. player (PVP) and tournaments for points or vouchers.

The game genres available, ranging from strategy, action, sports, puzzle and arcade, can be played directly without requiring a login. Users can compete with each other in a tournament to win prizes.

Grab currently developing the Play with Friends feature to play with friends, while it is only available for the Ludo game.

Still in early stages

In industry, the implementation of gamification is actually not only for marketing needs, especially increasing engagement. This strategy can also be used for needs related to employee training or HR. In Europe, for example, gamification is starting to be applied to the manufacturing industry because it is still far from the digitalization process.

a webinar topical in-app games which was organized by the British Council Indonesia invited Windo Hutabarat, an academic who works as a Research Associate in Digitalization of Manufactoring Process at the University of Sheffield, England. One of the cases he handled was helping Airbus with the process training engineer new ones need medium jig for his learning.

The problem at that time was numbers jig limited, but training still needs to be carried out because it is an important component. Besides that, Airbus also has a language barrier because jig it is made in China.

"From point bread The challenge is how to reduce training time jig without reducing the quality of training. "There we utilize gamification without meaning that the training process is eliminated," explained Windo.

From a series of gamification processes carried out for Airbus, there were interesting findings during the evaluation among employees who carried out manual training using gamification. In terms of memorization, there is no difference between the two. But for knowledge interpretation, people trained with games had much higher scores

“At its core in the world aerospace, digitalization plays an important role in increasing work productivity in the future. "But the transition process is very challenging, therefore gamification and the gaming industry can be used to smooth the transition."

He also emphasized that basically the gamification component must be adjusted to the objectives to be achieved and relate it to the human desire to stimulate and be challenged. “It has to be challenging so that people are interested, it has elements reward, and have clear rules for all players to follow.”

Agate's B2B gamification business

The implementation of gamification in Indonesia itself, according to Co-Founder and Head Consultant Agate Vincentius Hening W. Ismawan, is only entering its initial stages and in terms of utilization it is not as massive as abroad. In other words, space for gamification businesses in the realm enterprise still wide open.

He gave an example, there are loyalty programs overseas that have utilized gamification. As is known, generally the points collected from this program have a validity period. However, with gamification, users can be more willing to accept defeat and feel the excitement of playing games.

“People will less offended when you lose play the game to get points because that is part of the fun. In the United States [the United States] also uses serious games for the military simulation part. "In Indonesia it hasn't gone that far," he explained.

He continued, “Indonesians' understanding of gamification is still vague. They think they have that game something new the one that can solve everything. Even though you can just do it solve everything if it is balanced with good content because gamification has KPIs to measure learning journey somebody."

Agate's work This gamification has been taken seriously 10 years ago by establishing its own division called Agate Level Up to handle B2B clients. Nearly half of Agate's total team of 250 people is assigned to handle this business.

The company is quite confident in the collection of gamification solutions they provide, of course thanks to their experience. The solution is in the form of an employee learning management, training, assessment and simulation platform. Also, marketing needs for consumers, such as the need for gamification to acquire new consumers, on-ground engagementand retention & loyalty games.

The ranks of users come from various industries, such as FMCG, telecommunications, finance, technology, pharmaceuticals, automotive, F&B, cosmetics, and property. Not only Indonesia, users also come from countries in the Asia Pacific region and the United States. Bukalapak and Tokopedia are listed as Agate users to develop gamification features in their applications.

Vincentius explained that the gamification implementation that is most widely used by users is in-app enhancement which utilizes Agate's extensive library of HTML5 versions of games and can be adapted to applications without changing the appearance at all. This solution is aimed at companies that already have platformhis own.

"That's why it's natural in-app games This is widely used by e-commerce players because it is proven that it can not only improve time spent users because it is closely related to retention. In general, our clients say this method can increase retention by up to 30%. Retention for e-commerce is important because it is close to MAU and GMV. So the game has a contribution to that."

Another example that Agate has handled is employee training needs for the financial industry. In banking, there is a rule that each company must allocate 5% of funds to hold training programs. Now many banks are taking advantage of this budget to create e-learning. The solution is microlearning & game based content.

“There are even more complex solutions, such as standalone game based learning for SOP training, VR simulation, and game based assessment lots of collaboration with psychometric expert for recruitment needs.”

Vincentius continued, in each of these solutions the company usually needs a team expertise from non engineers to the application of gamification outside the world of entertainment. For solutions game based assessment, for example, Agate requires expert in the field psychometric expert to translate analytical data that each person has collected during recruitment.

“The game must have an addictive element, make people curious. Therefore, gamification content is given great attention. Usually we have a lot of discussions with best practicehis, that is platform ownerthose, industry observers, and so on," he concluded.