Gamification

GAMIFICATION on Yummly:

Does it work?

GAMIFICATION on Yummly:

Does it work?

• Bell Media: incorporated "social loyalty" rewards
  • 33% increased retention
• SessionM: adds game mechanics to mobile sites/apps
  • 25% reduced bounce rate
  • 35% increased retention
  • 400% increased traffic from social media
• ​Muchmusic.com: gamified various user actions
  • ​59% increased RUs
• ​USA TV: "Club Psych" for TV show Psych
  • ​130% increased pageviews, 40% increased retention
• ​Deloitte Leadership Academy
  • ​46.6% increased DAUs

GAMIFICATION on Yummly:

Does it work?

GAMIFICATION on Yummly:

Why does it work?

GAMIFICATION on Yummly:

Why does it work?

Types of Players:

• Explorer: traditionally our "power user"
  • Reward them for feature discovery (Filters, Shopping List, Guided Search, "Made It")
• Socializer / Philanthropist: wants to help others, may want to be seen as an authority in the site community
  • Reward them leaving meaningful reviews, comments, thumbing/flagging other user content
• Achiever / Completionist: gotta catch 'em all
  • The more badges, the merrier.
• And other types of players. BUT...

Text

Text

Text

... here's the thing

GAMIFICATION on Yummly:

What can go wrong?

GAMIFICATION on Yummly:

What can go wrong?

• Need to keep our goals and metrics noise-free.
• If we give ongoing badges for 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000 Yums, some users may Yum whole pages of results regardless of their actual taste preferences. This doesn't help us, and it doesn't help the user.
• We don't just want to encourage "earning badges", we want to encourage meaningful behavior.

GAMIFICATION on Yummly:

What can go wrong?

• Reward discovery, not grinding: "First Yum", "First Collection", "First Review"
• Validate activity:
  • "# Reviews" is bad, UNLESS we require a number of Thumbs Up or other verification of quality.
  • "# URB submissions" is bad, UNLESS we verify they are not duplicates or invalid recipe pages.
• Cap activity per day, week, month:
  • "Yummed a recipe this month"
  • "Visited Yummly this week" (while registered)
  • "Wrote a Review this week"