Defining your Business Objectives & Target Behavior
Sooo during last week’s course we learned 6 steps of implementing a gamified system. In the following posts we will explore these 6 steps in more detail. Beginning with step 1 & 2: Defining your Business Objectives and Target Behavior.
Business Objectives (From here on I shall refer to Business Objectives as BO) are the goals you want your gamified system to achieve. Nothing more, nothing less, (simply) goals. I want to improve the environment, therefore my BO (and goal of the gamified system) is, encouraging people to recycle. BOs are not about collecting points and badges, because those are the mechanics to get people to do what your gamified system is designed to get people to do. Makes sense, right? But this is actually where a lot of gamified systems fail, simply because (not so smart) marketers don’t understand the concept of gamification and think by simply slapping on some points people will go for it.
Ok wonderful, so BOs are goals and now let’s see how we best define them:
1) Start with a list: Write down all BOs your product potentially wants to achieve. Be as concrete as possible. The more the better.
2) Ranking: What’s on top, what’s down below? Think about the hierarchy and maybe even possible trade-offs. Maybe you have conflicting goals, which need to be eliminated.
3) Slimify your list: Some goals won’t be actual goals, but perhaps just means to a goal, which can be achieved through game elements. Again, “collecting points” is not a goal, it’s a game element to help your player achieve a benefit, to motivate your player to fulfil an objective.
4) Just cause: Justify the remaining goals. Go through your goal list and write down short explanations about why your goals are your BOs. Why is that something you want your product to achieve?
By creating a detailed list, you will start seeing how your goals and game elements are dependent and connected to each other.
Once you have narrowed down your BOs, it’s time to define your Target Behavior (TaBe from here on). Basically in this step you figure out what you want your users to actually do. So if my BO is to motivate people to recycle, my TaBe is the action I want my users to take, as in I want my users to use a specified trash can for paper disposal.
1) Precision: Whatever TaBe you are trying to define, be as specific as possible and always ask yourself WHY are you trying to gamify something.
2) Much data: Figure out how you can best monitor success of your gamified product. So what actually makes your product successful? What factors let you decide that you have achieved your goal? What are your winning stats? Relate this to your behaviors and determine what metrics you can use to measure your success.
3) Analyze your success: How are you gonna measure your path to success?
Here are three standard measurement types commonly used in gamification within a marketing context:
DAU & MAU: Daily Average Users vs. Monthly Average Users. DAU is mostly used within a game context where it’s important that users come back on a daily basis. MAU on the other hand is important when your gamified system is not based on daily visits. The magic lays in the balance of DAU & MAU. The higher the better, meaning you’ve made it, you’ve created a wonderful gamified system. Daily users come back on a regular base and congratulations you have not created a one hit wonder J
VIRALITY: Long story short, this metric basically stands for, how often do users recommend your gamified system to other users. Word of mouth.
VIRTUAL ECONOMY: How much action is your gamified system getting. This can be anything from looking at your game mechanics, how many points are being achieved, how many stickers collected, how many levels climbed. How often are mechanics being used and interacted with. What’s the pattern of usage? What’s the interaction and engagement with your gamified system.
