Playground Perspective: Gamification and Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Building whole neighborhoods from scratch; bringing to life an entire family; managing them through all of their stages of life; help them reach their dreams, and get them through life’s unbearable moments. Religiously-inclined reasoning would attribute this to the workings of the All Mighty. A more earthly explanation is that it’s the basis for one of the world’s most successful video games: The Sims.

This was my personal gaming addiction when I was young(er). Earning rewards based on my actions. Watching the bars fill after each action. Visually seeing my progress on the game. Feeling satisfied after many hours of hard work (which of course it felt like!) advancing via progressive steps. These gaming elements can be highly compelling due to their aesthetic smoothness and simple progressivity.

It’s no wonder that ecommerce has targeted these gaming traits and embedded them into their companies, whether it’s for their workers, their customers, or community forums. Retailers have been scrambling to introduce gamification, with 87% expecting to use it in their operations, and with half of startups integrating gamification into their strategy. 

To incorporate a sense of reward and achievement encourages user engagement and makes louder the calls to action. And with the comprehensive strength of Salesforce Commerce Cloud (f.k.a Demandware) you can inject some gamification into your ecommerce operations, too. Here’s what it can do.

Cart abandonment

It seems that most of us, at one time or another, stock our ecommerce carts before suddenly disappearing from the site, leaving it to wheel away down the aisle. The average rate of cart abandonment is 69%. Any potential barriers that are placed in the way of customer purchases is another opportunity to lose them. Hurdles can be cleared. But a short and flat journey is seamless. So how to improve abandonment rates?

One way is to make the path to payment as short as possible. Cut out the hurdles and steps and compress the path. Another useful way is to signpost the customer that leads clearly to capturing payment, which is more likely to work if the course is clearly defined.

Customer loyalty

In general, 65% of a company’s business is done with existing customers, while the overwhelming majority of customers favor companies that provide rewards. Which is exactly what gamification enables. Yes you can create coupons, reveal rewards, and promote points. But Salesforce Commerce Cloud can expand the gameboard on your website. Create participatory activities and aesthetic roadmaps to better engage your customers.

In addition, referrals are huge and very common among commerce companies. If a customer sends a friend towards the store then they get rewarded. It could be a buy-one-get-one-free deal when the friend signs up, or it could be a juicy discount after 5 friends have been converted.

Social media engagement

An extension of your website is your social media environment. And getting gamified via these networks pays dividends. One major credit card company created a Twitter campaign in which if customers connect their account with the website, they’re able to tweet special hashtags as well as specific phrases, and they receive coupons and discounts for third-party businesses such as restaurants.

Spins and puzzles

Another exciting function that Salesforce enables is the user-friendly and visually pleasing spinning wheel, which can be implemented to great effect. Allow the customer to click the wheel to begin spinning, each section can be customized to signify different discounts and offers. Where will it land? Nobody knows!

Alternatively, lead your customers through quizzes to discover their ideal product among a collection. For example, if someone is looking for a hat, they can discover via questions based on their head shape, prefered color, and size of their budget. The result would show the most accurate product based on their answers.

Whatever fun and games you aim to integrate onto your website, spend enough time and energy on user-testing the experiences before making them live. There can be a lot of tiny details involved in gamification to ensure a smooth and functioning experience.

PS: UV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware) development & strategy teams. Contact us to see how we can work together.