Gamification, or the application of game design elements in non-game contexts, has become an increasingly popular way for companies and organizations to engage users and drive desired behaviors. From education to fitness to workplaces, adding elements of fun and friendly competition has been shown to increase motivation, productivity, and retention in many settings. One company that is pioneering gamification software is Smartico. Their suite of tools allows companies to quickly and easily add gamified elements to their digital experiences. In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at Smartico, the benefits and use cases of their software, and the future potential for gamification.
Overview of Smartico
Smartico.ai was founded in 2018 by a team of gamification experts who saw the need for accessible, scalable solutions to add gamification to businesses’ digital experiences. Their software aims to make gamification simple for companies of any size or industry to increase user engagement on their platforms. Here are some key facts about Smartico:
Smartico’s main offering is their gamification platform that integrates with companies’ existing apps, sites, and software. It provides tools to quickly add common gamification elements such as points, badges, leaderboards, and more. These incentivize users to take desired actions like making purchases, engaging with content, or completing tasks. Smartico also offers tailored loyalty and rewards programs, allowing companies to incentivize their users and keep them engaged over the long-term.
Key Benefits of Smartico
There are several reasons why companies are turning to platforms like Smartico to gamify their digital experiences:
Increases User Engagement
Gamification utilizes people’s natural desires for competition, achievement, status, self-expression, and altruism to motivate desired behaviors. Smartico’s tools make it easy to tap into these motivations with points, badges, leaderboards, social features, virtual goods, etc. This incentivizes users to take actions like making repeat purchases, frequently visiting and spending time on a site/app, submitting reviews, and more.
For example, language learning app Duolingo uses Smartico to gamify their user experience. Learners earn points and advance levels for completing lessons, which motivates them to stick with learning.
Drives Business Objectives
Smartico’s platform allows companies to align gamification mechanics with clear business goals. For example, an e-commerce site could reward users with badges for their first purchase, leaving product reviews, or referring friends. This drives business objectives like generating more sales, building up user-generated content, and capitalizing on word-of-mouth marketing.
Companies can even run A/B tests with Smartico’s tools to optimize which game elements best drive specific KPIs. The software provides data and analytics on engagement and conversion rates, enabling businesses to refine their gamification strategy.
Fits Seamlessly Into Existing Platforms
Smartico is designed to easily integrate with companies’ existing digital platforms and apps through open APIs. There is no need for companies to overhaul or rebuild their site or software from scratch. The gamification elements slide seamlessly into the user experience.
For example, working with Stanford University, Smartico added gamified learning paths, points and badges to the school’s online learning platform without requiring Stanford to totally redesign its platform.
Highly Flexible and Customizable
While Smartico provides many out-of-the-box gamification features, their platform is also highly flexible and customizable. Companies can modify the look and feel of game elements to match their brand aesthetic. For example, points can take the form of stars, gems, hearts, or any image. Badges and leaderboards are also customizable in terms of colors, names, and metrics.
Companies can even build their own custom features using Smartico’s Software Development Kit. This allows for gamification tailored to any use case or industry. For example, HubSpot used this flexibility to build a unique gamified sales training curriculum on their platform.
Accessible to Companies of All Sizes
From enterprise companies to small businesses, Smartico is designed to be accessible for gamifying platforms no matter a company’s size. Their pricing model scales from a free basic plan to premium plans for larger companies or those with complex needs. Smartico also provides guidance on gamification strategy and design tailored to each customer’s specific goals and use cases.
This makes the power of gamification available to small companies with limited budgets and design resources. For example, Smartico customer and fitness startup PUSH has used their tools to engage users and stand out in the fitness app market.
Gamification concept. Integrating game mechanics into website or app design. Customer engagement. Idea of competition. Isolated flat vector illustration
Use Cases and Industries
Smartico’s gamification software provides value across a diverse array of industries and use cases. Here are some of the top applications of their tools:
Employee Training
Gamifying employee training with points, badges, competitions between teams, and leaderboards helps make learning in the workplace more engaging and effective. Companies using Smartico for this include SAP, Uber, and Lowe’s.
Education
Many educational institutions have started adding gamified elements to their online learning platforms, course assignments, and curriculum to boost student motivation and retention. Smartico customers like Stanford University, Deakin University, and Rice University have used gamification for education.
Fitness
Health and fitness apps and wearables, like Fitbit and MyFitnessPal, were early adopters of gamification to drive fitness activities. Using Smartico, apps like PUSH and Soasy incorporate game elements like challenges, virtual goods and achievements to engage users.
Market Research
Companies can use Smartico to make their market research and surveys more interactive and game-like. Features like points, progress bars and real-time feedback incentivize higher survey response rates. Customers like Deloitte, Nielsen Norman Group and Fuel Cycle drive better research responses with Smartico.
Sales Training
Turning sales training into a game makes achieving sales skills and quotas more compelling. Smartico allows companies like HubSpot to set up sales competitions, rewarding top performers, and tracking skill points.
Loyalty Programs
The loyalty and rewards tools provided in Smartico are perfect for e-commerce companies to engage customers and encourage repeat purchases. Retailers can set up customized incentives, VIP statuses, and referral programs.
Onboarding
Gamifying the onboarding experience for new employees or users creates more engagement as they learn a new system. Smartico enables setting up tutorials, checklists, points for learning milestones, and certificates for completing training.
The flexibility of Smartico’s tools allows for innovative applications in many other industries from banking to media to nonprofits and more.
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Key Features and Tools
Smartico provides a robust set of gamification tools and features that enable easy implementation across websites, apps, LMS platforms, and more:
- Points – Give users points for desired actions like purchases, content creation, referrals. Points can level up and unlock rewards.
- Badges – Badges provide status and recognition for user achievements like first purchase, high score, or friend referrals.
- Leaderboards – Leaderboards allow users to see ranked standings based on points earned compared to others. They tap into competitiveness.
- Avatars – Users can create custom avatars to represent themselves, which enhances engagement and status.
- Virtual Goods – Exclusive virtual goods like character accessories or digital rewards motivate users to take actions to earn them.
- Social Sharing – Users can share achievements like badges or high scores on social media, driving viral marketing.
- Surveys & Quizzes – Smartico can gamify surveys and quizzes with things like real-time feedback, points, and sharing results.
- Quests – Set up quests with multiple stages and milestones for an extended gamified experience.
- Analytics – Detailed analytics provide insight into engagement with specific game mechanics and their impact on desired results.
These features are flexible and customizable to match any brand and drive any business goal. Some additional capabilities include:
- Customizable design of points, badges, leaderboards to match brand aesthetic
- Ability to create customized game elements with SDK
- Role-based access and permissions for admins
- Flexible rule creation and scheduling for points and rewards
- Real-time push notifications to users
- Integration with loyalty program management
- Mobile compatibility and offline synchronization
Driving Results for Customers
Smartico provides a number of strong case studies from customers showing measurable results and ROI from implementing gamification:
Samsung
- Increased user engagement in Samsung Brazil app by 88%
- Badges led to triple the number of user-generated reviews
Fuel Cycle
- Increased survey response rates by 40%
- Cut survey drop-off rates by half
- Yielded 30% longer survey responses
MyFitnessPal
- Boosted user activity by 70%
- Added 2.5 million new users in one year after adding gamification
Deloitte
- Leadership training game saw 80% increase in engagement
- 67% of employees said games made learning stickier
The quantifiable improvements Smartico customers have seen in engagement, motivation, and behaviors highlight the power of effective gamification.
Implementing Smartico at Your Company
Here is an overview of what’s involved in getting started with Smartico for your business:
Planning and Strategy
First, Smartico helps you identify business objectives you want to drive with gamification. You define the target metrics and KPIs to improve. Smartico advises on gamification strategy to motivate specific user behaviors.
Design and Development
Next you can start designing the look and feel of game elements like point systems, badges, leaderboards that align to your brand. Configure the rules and flows for how users will earn points and status. Smartico handles implementing the features you want into your platform.
Launch and Iteration
Once gamification features are built in, you launch to users while Smartico provides real-time analytics. With continuous data insights, you can refine your gamification approach to optimize engagement and business results. New features can be added easily at any stage.
Throughout the process Smartico provides support with gamification expertise, best practices, and guidance tailored to your use case. Their own research shows companies can typically achieve full launch of gamification features in 8-12 weeks.
The Future of Gamification
While gamification has already gained widespread adoption, there remain significant opportunities for growth in untapped use cases and industries in coming years. As more companies recognize gamification’s business impact, Smartico predicts several trends will shape the future:
- Wider use of advanced game elements like virtual goods, 3D environments, and augmented reality
- Integration with data science for more adaptive, personalized gaming experiences
- Applications in unconventional areas like finance, data entry, supply chain, and manufacturing
- Increasing need for enterprise gamification platforms over one-off efforts
- More hybrid models blending gamification with behavioral science and AI
- Leveraging gamification for corporate training and eLearning at scale
- Tighter integration of gamification data with core business analytics
As the foremost enable of gamification strategies for companies, Smartico is poised to support these innovations. Their flexible platform, extensive customer insights, and R&D efforts into emerging game techniques position them well for the next generation of enterprise gamification.
Conclusion & Key Takeaways
In summary, Smartico provides a powerful gamification platform enabling any company to easily boost engagement, motivation, and desired behaviors in digital experiences:
- Gamification applies game elements like points and badges to drive participation, retention, and action in non-game contexts.
- Smartico’s tools integrate seamlessly with existing platforms to add gamification without overhauling systems.
- Implementing Smartico typically sees strong ROI through metrics like higher user activity, conversions, retention and referrals.
- Leading companies like Samsung, Stanford, and Deloitte have used Smartico successfully for use cases ranging from training to research and loyalty programs.
- Smartico’s experts provide strategic guidance and support tailored to companies’ specific business objectives and KPIs.
- The platform is flexible and customizable enabling creation of unique game experiences on any brand and platform.
- Smartico is accessible to organizations of all sizes with adaptable pricing plans and easy onboarding.
With gamification continuing to evolve, Smartico is positioned as an innovation leader empowering businesses to reap the benefits across HR, marketing, customer engagement and more. Their platform turns core business processes into engaging game experiences that drive real results.
