sMiles helps people earn Bitcoin by doing ordinary things

With so many apps on the market and new apps being developed every day, it’s hard to create an app that will stand out and attract the long-term engagement you want. Nevertheless, app developers have discovered a new way of turning their apps into user favourites – gamification. By building challenges and games into an app, you can keep users engaged and give them incentive to come back over and over again.

What exactly is gamification and why does it work so well?

This refers to the addition of game components and contexts to a mobile app in order to make the user experience more enjoyable. The app’s entertaining features contribute to the app’s increased traffic. Furthermore, a fun-filled experience encourages users to return to the app.

Remember how when you were little your parents would motivate you to do things you found boring or unrewarding by offering you rewards? For example, some of our parents would pay us for doing chores, and some parents would reward us for good grades with a new toy that we had wanted for a while. While it’s true that we’re adults now, we still need motivation to do mundane tasks. Think about how much of a drag it can be to achieve your fitness goals, file your taxes or set a monthly budget. Now imagine if we could turn all of these tasks into games by turning them into challenges with rewards. Wouldn’t you be more motivated to reach your step goal for the day, file your taxes on time and set a budget every month? I know I would. The truth is that deep down we’re still those little kids who yearn for recognition and found motivation in winning different prizes for achieving our goals. And app developers are catching on to this.

What kind of gamification strategies do app developers use?

Rewards is one of the most common gamification strategies. Brands can provide users with rewards for frequency of use, purchasing goods, accomplishing personal goals, participating in quizzes and competitions, sharing posts with their friends, and inviting other people to join the app. This not only helps to retain user interest but also increases brand loyalty. The types of rewards can include cash rewards, digital goods that can be exchanged for real goods, and in-app currency that can be spent inside the app. In other words, you can offer anything that provides value to target audiences.

Progress display is also an element of gamification. We like to see how far we have moved towards achieving our goals and what improvements have been made. This inspires us to keep going and even increase our efforts. As much as we might not like to admit it, we like to be recognized for our accomplishments. Similarly, seeing ourselves improve is definitely a huge motivation. Even so, tracking our progress is not big enough of a motivation for us to stick to our goals when used on its own. On the other hand, when we can compare our achievements with other people, it becomes a lot more interesting and tempting to participate to prove who is the winner. For this reason, many apps will include a leaderboard to rank the efforts of different users.

What are the benefits of gamification?

Increased engagement

When you make it fun for people to use your app, they will come back again and again. Regardless of what you’ve built your app to do, you can encourage the app users to explore all the features simply by using gamification. In other words, your app users won’t just engage with the gamification elements of your app – they will also use your app to do exactly what you built it for. As your app becomes more popular among your current users, they will recommend it to their friends and family, which leads to the next benefit.

More users

Once your current app users decide that they enjoy using your app and start telling other people about it, you will draw more users to the app. Using gamification strategies effectively is actually one of the best ways to generate word-of-mouth advertising. After all, when people are having fun, they can’t help but share this fun experience with their family and friends.

More sales

As people get hooked to the gamification elements of your app, it’ll become easier to sell the actual services that you built your app to provide. By encouraging the app users to dip their toes in and check out different features your app while they’re having fun, you can help them to discover the utility that the app offers. After they realize that your app is not only good at what it does, but they can also have fun, they’ll be more willing to spend money on it.

How to use app gamification effectively

Set clear goals and track your progress

While helping your users to have fun is a noble goal, it shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of your gamification strategy. You need to set internal goals of your own because that will also help you structure the gamification elements in your app to help you meet those goals. If you’re hoping to increase the use of a specific feature in your app, then you can add specific gamification elements to encourage your target audience to use that feature more.

Understand your target audience’s needs

It’s important to understand what gamification elements make your target audience tick. After all, you can’t motivate them if you don’t know what they enjoy, just as parents can’t motivate a child if they offer a reward the child isn’t interested in. When you first set up gamification in your app, it’s important to track how users are engaging with different elements. Once you know what elements are more popular, then you can capitalize on those elements by implementing more of the same.

Keep it simple and entertaining

Some app developers make the mistake of assuming they have to redesign the whole app from scratch to include some elements of gamification. That simply isn’t true. If your app is already done, find the easiest ways to build simple games into what you already have. You can improve these as you go along and as the users start to give you an idea of what they enjoy.

How sMiles is using gamification

The team at sMiles understands how rewarding the gamification of mobile apps can be, both for app developers and the users themselves. This team is helping users to experience gamification securely and earn Bitcoin by engaging in everyday activities. sMiles has launched a platform that gamifies Bitcoin rewards. With sMiles, users can earn free Bitcoin from things they do on a daily basis whether it is walking, shopping, gaming, and more. Since pretty much everyone wants to own Bitcoin these days, but not everyone has the means to do so, sMiles is on a mission to make people healthier, wealthier, and happier. All a sMiles user needs to do is engage in their daily routine and they can earn free Bitcoin. sMiles is currently the only mobile platform that enables users to earn Bitcoin from everyday activities.

For more information about sMiles’s platform, click here.