Growth Tactics from Video Games

Are you struggling to keep your new users engaged?

Can’t prevent them from churning?

If you need some ideas to improve your onboarding flow, here’s what you should do:

Play some video games.



By incorporating the principles of video games, you can reduce churn, improve onboarding, and get your users to value faster.

In today’s newsletter, we'll explore how video game mechanics can be applied to your products, and provide you with actionable tips to help you level up your engagement.

I recently caught up with Brian Bourque, SVP at Smartasset and writer of the brilliant newsletter, Unicorn Growth Strategies.

He kindly invited me to share my insights into Product Onboarding as a growth strategy.

In the post, I share details about my approach to onboarding and some tactical advice to drive more product growth.

Check out the post and join 8,868 who read his newsletter by subscribing below.

Video games have some of the best onboarding experiences out there.

Successful games value that first experience. 



They want to make sure you quickly how to use it so you can start having fun fast.

They focus on Fast Time to Value.

Here are 4 actionable tactics we can use from games to create stickier products:

1) Get Players to an Early Win

Aside from having fun, the aim of games is to win.

So the best games will get you to achieve success early on.

Products should be the same.

Map out your customer journey using FigJam or Miro.

Decide on what you want users to achieve in their first experience with the product.

Then help them to get there in-product.

And it’s ok to celebrate with the user when they do get that win.

Duolingo uses this principle nicely in its onboarding.

2) Teach through Doing

The best onboarding experiences help users to learn through doing.

Games are immersive and require you to do.

As both games and products involve interaction, my view is that contextual walkthroughs that get users to learn through doing are the most effective.

Tooltips and videos are good in some instances, but the act of learning is passive.

This hypothesis was proved correct when I was Head of Growth at acasa, a Fintech focused on bill-splitting and home management.

We were struggling to get users to understand the value.

So rather than just explaining how to use the product, we got them to do an action.

We did an interactive walkthrough on how to split their first bill.

This had a 45% uplift in the activation rate.

So if you’re struggling with your new users churning, try getting them to do key actions in the product that help them learn by doing.

P.S. If you run a SaaS or mobile app, are driving 500+ signups a month and want to achieve similar results, book a free strategy call here.

3) Give Indicators of Progress

In a user’s journey to find success, there are key milestones along the way.

This is usually in the form of levels or a map in games.

Games outline what these steps are so there is a target for the player.

There’s a powerful psychological principle called the Goal Gradient Effect which says our efforts increase as we move closer to a goal.

So the best games give their users a goal to work towards.

You should do the same.

The customer journey I told you to map out earlier on…

Show some of the progression steps to the user.

Let them know what they need to do to achieve long-term product success.

It’s important not to overwhelm with loads of steps but to break it down and show enough to keep a user motivated.

In Angry Birds, they show a few of the first levels.

Some like Sonic the Hedgehog, are more specific and use progress bars.

They outline what the objectives are before the level starts and then remind you again as the level is in progress.

Checklists and progress bars are great ways to get a new user to get deeper into the product.

Read how Klaviyo uses checklists to onboard users.

4) Limit Functionality to Increase Desire

Game designers understand how important psychology is.

Candy Crush famously makes you wait if you run out of lives.

They know that these are points of desire.

They leverage it to get you to use/buy in-game currency.

Or during the height of Facebook, they allowed you to play again if you invited a friend.

(You like me may have received tons of annoying messages from friends at that time. 😅)

Ultimately they understandd desire and leverage.

And they use those points to make big asks. I’m sure it accounts for a large % of upgrades.

Many freemium products give too much away. They give no reason for a user to upgrade.

Give enough for users to want and see the value. But don’t give away it all.

And understand your product’s key moments of when to make an ask.

Bumble cleverly took on this approach in their app.

Playing videos - aside from a way to cool off from the stresses of building a startup - are great ways to learn about stickiness and onboarding.

I recommend downloading a few games and taking some notes on how onboarding is done.

You will learn a lot and potentially find some good ideas to reduce churn for your product.

Let me know - have you used any game mechanics in your product that has worked well?

Any video games you’ve been inspired by?

When you’re ready, here’s I can help you grow:

Get the Startup Growth Roadmap - my playbook of 25+ templates that's helped 300+ founders and marketers to scale their startups.

Hire me to audit your onboarding flow.

Work with me 1-1 to solve your most pressing marketing challenges.

Cheers,

Theo