Gamification programs offer a ton of benefits when properly implemented. But you won’t know how successful your efforts are until you measure their effectiveness.
Properly analyzing and quantifying your success can help you know whether you’re reaching your goals and realizing the return on your investment. Also, keeping a close eye on these results allows you to optimize your gamification projects for more success.
This means measuring and tracking significant metrics and KPIs. But these, of course, differ depending on the project. So how do you measure gamification? Here are the essential metrics you should track, plus actionable tips to ensure success.
The most important gamification metrics to track
As mentioned above, the metrics you need to measure will vary with the project. And because you’re the one who knows what you want to achieve with your gamification program, only you can set and determine which KPIs are relevant.
So it’s up to you to decide which metrics to evaluate and how to measure each. You might be tempted to track as many metrics as possible, but don’t. Instead, focus on a few essential data points you can easily capture to make reporting easy and concise.
Here are four key metrics to track.
Engagement
One of the main reasons for implementing a gamification program is to improve engagement – so to measure gamification success, you need to measure engagement. Tracking this metric helps you answer the basic questions: Who is using your gamification system? How are they using it, and how much?
Possible engagement measurements can include the average number of actions performed per user, the number of users performing those actions, the number of return players, and the number of levels achieved.
For instance, suppose your gamification program rewards users with points that raise their name up the leaderboard every time they comment, share, or like a piece of content. In such a case, you can measure engagement by the number of shares, comments, likes, and levels attained on the leaderboard. You can also measure how often users pursue challenges to completion, where they’re getting stuck, and abandonment rates.
Adoption
Measuring the adoption rate helps you know how many employees use the program. The most basic way to measure adoption is by dividing the total number of employees currently logged into the gamification program by the total number of users with access permissions to the program.
Remember that employees may be logged in but not actually tackling challenges or moving up levels, so take your metrics a notch higher by tracking how many tasks or challenges your logged-in users have started and how many they’ve completed.
Create weekly or monthly measurements showing percentages of employees that have started one challenge, two challenges, and so on. Add the number of completed challenges so you can have a clearer picture of how your team is following through on the challenges they started.
Also, track which challenges most users are starting, which ones they’re abandoning, and which ones they’re completing. This gives you a clear picture of where users are succeeding and where they’re getting stuck, which can significantly help you improve your program.
Productivity
This metric measures how the program impacts employee productivity and business performance. To measure productivity, you need to measure the key activities that users perform relative to the business goals you want to achieve.
Because productivity measures the effect on the employees and the business, you can divide the metric into two parts.
- Measuring the program’s effect on employees’ behavior, such as improved motivation, job satisfaction, and retention
- Measure the effects of the modified employee behavior on business performance relative to your business goals, such as reduced customer churn, increased sales, and shortened service calls
For instance, if you’re measuring the productivity of a program for customer support agents, measuring the quality of service, the number of tickets closed in a specific time, and the number of first fixes can be excellent indicators of success.
Return on investment
The return on investment metric measures what the program is worth to your business and considers other metrics that represent the value of your work. What is the value of your gamification program versus its cost?
You can measure cost reductions as well as increases in sales, performance, customer retention, and revenue. The higher the figures, the more successful the program. If the figures are low, consider reviewing your program to find out where you can improve.
Tips for ensuring success
Even before you start measuring the metrics, there are some basic steps you can take to make sure that your gamification program is a success:
- Support your gamification strategy with measurable goals. Gamification will improve your employees’ motivation and engagement, but well-defined objectives and goals give them purpose.
- Track the relevant metrics and report. You will know whether the exercise is effective and where to improve.
- Determine the worth of your employees’ achievements and match rewards to their efforts.
- Come up with creative, aesthetically pleasing rewards, such as colorful badges. You can even let employees customize their own rewards.
- Boost friendly competition using leaderboards.
- Keep your game mechanics simple, from challenges, rules, and guidelines to reward criteria.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it’s a great place for further creative development to keep employees engaged. You can even include them in the entire development process, so you know they’re invested in their own gamification program!
Gamify your metrics with Crewhu
Gamification doesn’t end at implementation; you need to track your metrics and relevant KPIs to measure its success. The metrics to track vary with the company and the goals you want to achieve. But you have to use the right engagement platform to gamify your metrics.
Crewhu is an employee recognition and engagement platform that helps you focus on the metrics that matter. We will help you recognize and reward your workers, create goal-based contests, and collect feedback to boost engagement. You can efficiently track and measure important metrics and business KPIs to reach your goals.
Just integrate Crewhu with your software platforms to track important KPIs, set your goals, choose your metrics, and launch contests to keep your employees focused. Schedule a Crewhu demo today, and let us show you how we can help you measure your gamification success.
