Key Takeaways
- Increase your conversion rates by using game mechanics to hold customer attention longer.
- Map your customer journey to identify exactly where interactive elements will have the most effect.
- Build genuine brand loyalty by making the shopping experience more enjoyable and rewarding.
- Discover how interactive quizzes can guide new visitors to their perfect product.
Playfulness triggers our brains’ reward centers, releasing feel-good chemicals like dopamine.
That’s why gamification works so well: it taps into our natural desire for entertainment, challenge, and accomplishments. And when you layer that onto your marketing strategy? You’ve got a recipe for engagement, increased conversions, and loyalty.Here’s a quick definition to keep things simple:
Gamification is the process of applying game principles to non-game activities to encourage engagement, participation, and loyalty — think challenges, rewards, and a sprinkle of friendly competition. Plus, it makes tasks that naturally contain zero excitement — enjoyable.
Quick stats
Gamified marketing campaigns often outperform traditional approaches by a significant margin. According to Shopify, the average conversion rate for their stores is 1.4%, and the top 20% benchmarks go over 3.2%. By gamifying your users’ experiences, you can multiply that number by seven times. This is especially true for actions like email signups or completing purchases. In fact, businesses using Shopify email pop-ups for email capture see conversion rates as high as 3.09% on average with top-performing pop-ups reaching up to 9.28%, according to Sumo.
Gamification can be of great help as among other things, it can support your marketing efforts by providing:
- instant gratification and rewards
- clear goal orientation
- surprise and delight
- earnest reasons to feel curious
And that will all work well if you truly know your customers. However, there’s no point in introducing gamification if you don’t know when and where it will have the most impact. Because if you don’t understand the journey, you can’t gamify it.
The customer journey — where engagement falls short
Before you can figure out where to insert gamification, you need to know where your current engagement strategy is falling flat. Is it during the discovery phase when users first encounter your brand? Or maybe they’re losing interest during the decision-making process, bouncing right before purchase. Users may drop half the way through (or even sooner) and have multiple JTBDs that will not culminate in at least one purchase.
There are several approaches to map these complex sets of activities. Generally used is the one that reflects the ideal journey as a linear progression of motivated steps a customer takes towards conversions. It usually looks like this:
Awareness → Consideration → Decision → Purchase → Post-Purchase → Advocacy/Loyalty
It’s common knowledge, but we’ll say it: apart from analyzing your own data by means of analytical tools, consult with the benchmarks of your niche to detect the stage(s) where you need reinforcement. Here is what their numbers — actual and aspired — have looked like for ecommerce in the past couple of years.
For the first four stages, benchmarks suggest that a little short of 50% of customers move towards viewing the product (i.e., dwindle around the decision stage), almost 15% add products to a cart, and the decision-to-purchase conversion is 2-4%.
Post-purchase or repeat customer rate of 20-40% is considered good, whereas 50% and above — excellent. One real-market example for this stage is the data Metrilo collected from their customers in 2023-2024: on average, 28.2% returned to make at least one more purchase.
Advocacy/Loyalty benchmarks are harder to track and thus measure, but there are several indirect ways to infer them. For example:
- See the percentage of customers that are only loyal to one brand to benchmark your numbers
- 12-15% of customers are loyal to a single retailer, yet they represent 55-70% of total sales.
- Check the percentage of customers from referrals; surely, you will not be able to verify every customer stream, but affiliate links and promo codes will give you enough to draw baseline conclusions
- online businesses receive 60% of sales from referrals by brand advocates and superfans.
Depending on when your user became authenticated and thus trackable for your analytics, you can choose a different approach to mapping their journey. Keeping in mind all the “ideal” steps they should take and smaller JTBDs that usually escape our eye, start with the first confirmed step and map 3-5 steps before and after. This approach can support you when you feel lost for ideas on how to detect where you are losing engagement.
Discovery with gamification — creating a first impression that sticks
You never get a second chance to make a first impression — that’s why welcome experience is so important. It’s when new visitors decide if your brand is worth their time. If the experience is dull or overwhelming, you’ll lose them fast. Gamification during discovery can be a game-changer — literally.
Discovery corresponds with the consideration stage, meaning your potential customers are at least willing to hear you out. On top of that, an effective guided introduction to your product can:
- Reduce friction by helping users navigate the site and find what they’re looking for
- Build trust by presenting your brand’s value proposition and credibility
- Increase engagement by encouraging users to explore more products and features
- Drive conversions by leading users toward making a purchase.
Make discovery interactive and rewarding
Your audience doesn’t know you yet, so make that first interaction count. Think interactive quizzes with mystery rewards that help them discover their perfect product match and reveal a welcome surprise offer when they reach the end. Playful first-touch experiences turn passive scrollers into engaged visitors. In addition, let your shoppers’ voice guide your marketing. Pull winning phrases straight from reviews and weave them into your gamified campaigns.
Gamifying the decision-making stage — turning browsers into buyers
Your visitors are interested. They’re browsing product pages and comparing options, but they’re not fully committed. You need to give them a little push in the right direction. However, before that, you should look into why they are still hesitant. Knowing common reasons will help you find the appropriate means to address and leverage them.
Apart from decision fatigue and lack of urgency, there are two more whales of indecisiveness:
- Price concerns are an umbrella term for wanting to turn the tables on destiny: your visitors look for a better deal, be it on your or your competitors’ website
- For both cases, timing is crucial, and you need to introduce your singular or better manifold value either after a certain number of pages viewed or at the exit-intent — in our experience, these triggers work best
- Offer an interactive discount or gift through a gift box or spin the wheel
- Uncertainty about product fit, especially with items like clothing, tech gadgets, or subscription services. Even if your user added something to the cart, they may well abandon it
- Naturally, hesitation occurs due to the lack of information or inner confidence. Persuasion by authority conveying a perceived value increase can mitigate both kinds. If a business were to say it as a phrase to their indecisive customers, it would sound like this: “We know what will suit you, and so will you in just a bit.”
- Use product recommendation games
By addressing these hesitations with well-timed gamified elements, you not only guide visitors toward making confident decisions but also enhance their overall shopping experience. The more enjoyable and engaging the process, the more likely they are to complete their purchase and return for future interactions.
Make a buying experience feel experiential
The moment of decision is where hesitation steps in, so make commitment exciting. You know what’s trending? We at Claspo know and it’s special gift editions! Try a limited-time challenge that lets them do specific actions for a special gift and reward them instantly. Little surprises = big dopamine. To take it further, implement gamified price drop surveys, where customers vote on which item gets a flash sale next, making them come back again.
Post-purchase engagement — Using gamification to build loyalty
The customer journey doesn’t end when they click “Buy.” Post-purchase engagement is crucial to building long-term relationships, especially in ecommerce, and gamification can help you nurture them in a way that feels rewarding and fun.
Yes, big news: customers still exist after purchase, and, as we learned, the likelihood of them coming back is quite high. Apart from encouraging repeat purchases, you can gather valuable insights while keeping post-purchase communication engaging through interactive experiences, deepen brand connection, and promote product usage, say, through challenges.
If you are a fan of looking at things differently, think of a post-purchase stage as the start of a new interactive relationship with your customer rather than a continuation of the old kinda transactional one.
Keep the excitement going
Limited editions can be as simple as refreshing your best-sellers or collaborating with like-minded brands. Try scratch cards or gift boxes to reward your subscribers, first-time customers, repeat buyers, top reviewers, and VIP members with early access to exclusive discounts or limited gift editions. Remember: it is not about pushing giveaways on your customers but creating emotionally charged and memorable experiences that will play into a stronger brand ties in the long run.
Retargeting and re-engagement — bringing back lost customers
Fact: you will always lose customers. How many — depends on you. You can strike a chord with your drop-off wanderers by combining traditional retargeting efforts with gamification strategies.
While planning your campaign, remember these retargeting basics:
- Monitor engagement metrics to adjust timing and frequency
- Avoid over-messaging to prevent customer fatigue
- Use personalization and gamification to make outreach more appealing and less intrusive
We recommend diversifying the incentives so that the principles of increasing perceived value and dopamine anticipation work together. Plus, you rarely know why exactly the silent lot stops doing business with you. Therefore, when some of them interact with your re-engagement campaigns, you can build hypotheses as to what they might have lacked in the first place.
Reward engagement, not just spending
Personalize campaigns to each customer segment’s preferences. Create dedicated segments based on past purchases to spotlight products they’ll love most and offer bundles or gifts tied to their profiles to drive engagement. In addition, you can tempt them with an exclusive program. The catch is that it doesn’t have to be something costly — just a bit different from the rest of your offers.
