Is Gamified Ecommerce The Next Trend?

I don’t usually play games on my phone. I usually consume content, either on Twitter, various news sources, or social media networks. However, for the literal heck of it, I perused the ole’ Google Play game store the other week.

I saw this game called Penguin Isle - It looked pretty cute, so I downloaded it.

In the game - your penguins work to give you money. You use money to expand the isle, create more avenues for revenue, and hatch more penguins. As you play, the time it takes to get enough money to build takes more and more time. In fact, to make any progress - you need to log into the game multiple times a day (lots of micro-commitments) - or start forking out real money to get ahead. The end goal is to get you to spend REAL dollars.

This got me thinking. What if there were mini-games like this on your favorite online stores? For example, what if you played mini-games on Amazon to gain points toward purchases?

I think we’re eventually going to see some kind of gamification come to the Ecommerce world in the Western Market (USA + Europe). It’s already happening in Asia. Blake Robbins linked to this really awesome Whitepaper about the rise of Interactive E-commerce in Asia, particularly China.

Read it here.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dkkv5b3ru06ty4v/Interactive Ecommerce Whitepaper 2020.08.10.pdf

Here’s their definition of Interactive E-commerce.

"Interactive e-commerce can be understood as a philosophy toward online shopping that humanizes the online shopping experience, applying insights and design approaches that have been more traditionally associated with gaming, social media or entertainment platforms."

Mini-games! Livestream shopping! Product recommendations based on friends! Pinduoduo has been using a lot of these types of interactive tools to build app loyalty. I’ll be honest with you - I want to write a deep dive on this topic. There are so many strategies that western e-commerce can learn from! I’ll leave you with one app feature.

A popular feature of this is its DuoDuoOrchard minigame, in which users nurture a virtual “tree,”for which they can earn “water droplets” byparticipating in other functions on theplatform. To sweeten the deal for the users, once the “tree” reaches maturity, a real box of fruit will be shipped to the user’s address for them to enjoy.

Isn’t that so cool? 😃😃😃Real fruit from a virtual tree. I’d be raving about that on every social media app like a mad man. Talk about a Viral Loop. Eh?

So - I hopped on over to the good ole Shopify App store to see what I could find . . . . There are apps for this sort of thing - but they don't seem to be very popular yet. https://apps.shopify.com/search?q=games

• There's a virtual Claw Crane Game
• A Game Maker with what appears to be "Gem Match"

There's really not a whole lot going on in this category other than the boring old "Spin the Wheel" and "Scratch to Win." I believe that there's a lot more room in this category for innovation. "Spin To Win" is a poor shadow of what could be.

What do you think? Do you believe Gamified Ecommerce is the next big trend? Could Indie Hackers use this as an opportunity to create some really fun SaaS? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

If you're interested in following along in my musings, I run a fun and informative newsletter every week with topics like this - at http://thelandofrandom.substack.com