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Loyalty-Driven Gamification: Fostering Customer Engagement and Retention

Floating credit cards of three different tiers with coins of money falling around

We’ve explained before how important customer loyalty is for any business, and a returning clientele’s support is even more important for smaller businesses. Those dedicated customers help a business thrive and grow as they recommend your products or services to their friends and family. This is why loyalty programs are a key strategy for customer retention, especially in e-commerce. However, any loyalty program needs to be well designed to effectively foster customer engagement. One of the strongest methods is gamification. We’ll explain what gamification is and how you can start to gamify your loyalty program below.

What does gamification mean?

Gamification or gamifying means applying game-design elements to non-game contexts. This can refer to systems like point scoring, rankings, leaderboards, badges, competition, and other game elements. Along with loyalty programs, gamification like this has been applied widely in multiple industries and settings. Workplaces have used gamification for increased productivity. Schools and educational software have used gamification to encourage learning. Many athletic apps even use gamification to motivate physical exercise. Furthermore, government organizations and researchers have considered gamification to improve voter turnout or reduce the occurrence of traffic violations.

Why is gamification effective?

The wide use of gamification alone should suggest its effectiveness. This is because game-design elements have been shown to create more retention and interaction with a system. Gamification plays on innate desires for being rewarded, often with visual and audio indicators that add some fanfare to mark the victory. Some other game systems, such as collective goals or leaderboards, also build on human social tendencies of cooperation and competition. Altogether gamification is extremely motivating and for businesses that means fostering healthy and active customer engagement and dedication.

Gamified Loyalty Programs for Small Businesses

Many loyalty programs already use some principles of gamification. The most widely used is point collection systems, where customers gain points for all or certain transactions. These points can then be used to redeem discounts or other bonuses. This can be immediately rewarding, but there are other ways to design a strong loyalty program and drive more engagement and retention through gamification.

Ways to Create a Strong Gamified Loyalty Program

  • Simple is Effective: Sometimes a complex game can be satisfying to learn, but the most popular games are those that are easy to pick up. It’s the same for gamifying a loyalty program. When it isn’t clear how a customer gains points, badges, titles, or other rewards, the loyalty program quickly becomes confusing, unrewarding, or even frustrating. Both potential earnings and rewards should be clear. For example, make it simple how each transaction will gain a certain number of points or contribute to earning a certain rank or title. This clear communication about what can be earned helps to further motivate customer engagement.
  • Titles, Ranks, and Other Recognition: Point systems are familiar territory for most loyalty programs. However, they can quickly lose appeal if they are the only system. An effective way to start rounding out a gamified loyalty program is other rewards and recognition, such as titles or badges featured on customer profiles that are earned for certain customer engagement. These could be tied to points. For example, earning a certain amount unlocks a VIP title that offers better discounts, things like free shipping and more point collecting opportunities. However, loyalty is created and can be gamified through other engagements, which leads us to our next point.
  • Moving Gamifying Beyond Gamifying Transactions: There’s more to customer engagement and loyalty than just repeating business. Gamification is a great way to leverage and encourage true loyalty. For example, titles or badges could be given for repeated business over years. You could also offer exclusive experiences or event attendance. You can reward those who follow your social channels, where you could also then offer opportunities to get more points or create community goals. Points, discounts, and titles can also be given for referrals or recommendations, motivating customers to help your business grow.
  • Audio and Visual Recognition: The key here is recognition. Along with clear systems, the recognition of titles, and the practical rewards of discounts, a key part of gamification is visual and audio systems that reflect progress and success. It might seem silly, but seeing a bar fill shows progress. Some fanfare with animations of spark and/or confetti and a celebratory tune for earning a title or new rank provide the audio and visual feedback that motivates further engagement.

Start Gamifying Your Loyalty

With how effective gamification is, you’ll likely want to start gamifying your business loyalty program or start building one. Thankfully, this doesn’t have to be done from the start. Many loyalty program platforms help you create a loyalty program that suits your business and customers, such as smile.io. If you’re ready to start encouraging and fostering more customer engagement and retention, contact our web experts at Rosewood Marketing. They will help you determine the right system while our marketing team helps devise the game-design elements for your business.

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AI and SEO: How Artificial Intelligence Impacts Search Rankings

Glowing AI Button on top of a slate brick background

AI is increasingly everywhere these days. Considering AI seems to be doing so many different things, the term AI has become a bit of a confusing catchall and buzzword. Nevertheless, you now find most apps and programs are now including and loudly featuring some kind of AI tool or functionality. You’ll also find AI write-ups from Google’s new search AI, Gemini, at the top of many searches. It shouldn’t be a surprise that AI is now having a significant role and impact on SEO. Since search rankings are critical for any small business to expand its discovery on these platforms, we explain some of the ways to consider how AI impacts SEO.

How AI Has Changed SEO

AI and learning algorithms have drastically changed how internet searches work over the past decade. You will want to consider these when creating web pages that are optimized for search engines.

Moving Beyond Keywords

Search engines like Google have been using learning algorithms (i.e. AI) to move beyond simple keyword searches. These algorithms help identify word associations and larger concepts to create semantic based searches. Semantic search considers phrases and the associations between specific words. More advanced semantic searches will also consider previous searches, location, and the user’s profile for a more complex meaning. These are the same kind of semantics we use to understand language and meaning. Google began using these semantic searches in 2015 with RankBrain. They grew in sophistication when they launched BERT, and last year they launched an even more advanced semantic model with the AI MUM.

Understanding Pages

Search engines like Google have also begun to use the same AI tools on the web pages they crawl. Rather than searching for certain words that indicate a topic, Google’s algorithms now try to more fully understand the information and/or content on pages. The information and meaning they gleam from the page is then used to rank the site according to the semantic meaning in a search. This is to try and provide more relevant results for searches rather than just targeting what most fits those individual keywords.

Together, this semantic shift means that small businesses need to move beyond considering individual keywords to target certain phrases and start considering more complex connections. For example, you could consider, what is the kind of information or resources people might be searching to want this page? Is there a certain question or need that the page or your website answers? What related phrases are people searching that you could connect to your business’ website?

AI’s Getting to Know Us

Another way search engines are using AI that has a direct impact on search engines is understanding users rather than individual pages and searches. Along with monitoring search semantics, Google’s AI tools monitor how and what users search to personalize their results. These AI profiles are designed to help predict and re-rank sites according to that user’s calculated interests. However, these AI profiles are also beneficial for smaller businesses as they allow them to consider target audiences and profiles for their SEO. With these in mind, businesses can start to tailor their webpage’s content and SEO to users in whose searches they would prefer to rank higher.

How Gemini is Changing Search

One of the most recent developments of AI in search engines is Google’s Gemini. MUM, and BERT before it, who were already trying to extract immediate answers or quick summaries from high-ranking search results. However, Gemini is a generative AI, which uses language model functionality to produce a written-up summary and answer. Rather than quoting from a single page, Gemini consults multiple high-ranking sites and tries to combine these for a single ultra response.

While Google does link to the source pages Gemini used, there are drawbacks for websites. Ultimately, this result is not designed to motivate users to visit the actual page. Google has given the answer and users are expected to be satisfied. However, Gemini is often wrong. Most generative AI tools still suffer for any specific topic and tend to provide inaccurate or false information. In turn, this means users may still be motivated to visit specific pages for more accurate information from a human.

The other important thing to consider is that Gemini results like these are still more tuned to general research searches like “where do salmon migrate.” Gemini cannot put together products or services. Instead, if searching for products or services with Gemini, it will direct users to local businesses. Users will still be visiting and browsing the specific pages of small businesses.

Keeping an Eye on AI and SEO

As we mentioned, Google and other search engines have already been using more advanced algorithms for nearly a decade. However, we also can’t deny that the recent surge of generative and other AI tools has led to a rapid shift in SEO with significant impacts on search rankings. Small businesses will need to keep monitoring this active landscape to ensure their websites continue to rank high. Of course, that’s also the benefit of a dedicated marketing team, like Rosewood Marketing. We continue to actively monitor how AI and SEO are actively changing. If you’re interested in revising your SEO strategy or ensuring a new website will rank high in this new AI frontier, be sure to contact us.

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The Impact of Typography on Website Readability and Branding

A pile of various keys used in typography, showing how hard it can be to pick the right font for your branding.

Fonts can easily be overlooked when it comes to web and branding. No one bats an eye at a suitable font, but the wrong font can get a lot of unwanted stares. As a result, the right typography is an important decision for a business’ website and branding. We’ll explain the impacts of typography, why font choice is important, and how you can start to pick the right font for your business.

Typography and Communication

Typography is an art dedicated to communication that is nearly a millennium old. In fact, some of the major fonts used today are age-old standards. Garamond dates to the 15th century, Baskerville is about 250 years old, Times New Roman was designed in 1931, and Helvetica (which you’re reading this in) at 67 is enjoying a surge in popularity. Some other standard fonts are more recent and date to the digital age such as Arial and Georgia, but the reason all of these fonts have become standard is because of their legibility and accessibility.

Why Pick a Font

While there are certainly a set of well-established favourites in typography, there’s still the task of choosing which is suitable for your business. This is an important decision because it guides the appearance and design of its website and all other forms of communication including social media, emails, ads, etc. Picking a single font for all of these is essential for building your brand’s consistency. That visual consistency in the same typography naturally increases a sense of trust for your business.

Furthermore, certain fonts also have associations and tones. It might seem odd that some text on a page or screen can cause certain emotional reactions, but some people respond negatively when they see something written in Comic Sans or Papyrus. You not only want to pick a font that allows your website and business to effectively and accessibly communicate, but also accurately reflects the character of your brand.

Font Readability Comes First

Of course, communication is a primary factor in all typography. You will want to pick a highly legible font for your branding. There are certain aspects that will help you consider the right typography for your website and branding.

Weight

A font’s weight refers to the thickness of its outlines. For example, a bold version of a font has a greater weight than the thin version. Most fonts offer multiple weights. This is beneficial because you can use the same typeface to visually organize information. For example, the Rosewood website is using bold weight for each heading along with a larger size for visual distinction from the medium regular text. Your website design should set out these typgraphy styles and your branding should outline which weight is appropriate where. Remember that thinner weights can be much harder to read.

Serif vs Slab Serif vs Sans-Serif

Serifs are the small lines attached to a letters’ large strokes in some fonts. Times New Roman and Georgia are two fonts with serifs. Slab serifs also have these strokes, but are thicker, such as Rockwell or Courier. Helvetica is an example of a sans-serif font, i.e. one without any extra strokes. These are also sometimes called grotesque fonts (referring to the time of their origin rather than an aesthetic judgment).

The argument about whether serif or sans fonts are more legible is still a matter of debate. However, the general rule is that those with full vision can read serif fonts faster, but sans-serif fonts are more legible for those with visual difficulties. As a result, sans-serif fonts are typically considered the more direct and accessible choice, slab-serifs are recognized for their modernity, while serif fonts have an air of sophistication or elegance.

Script and Decorative Fonts

Script fonts are those that imitate handwriting. Some of these are cursive, where the letters in a single word connect. While these might seem elegant or sophisticated, they are also less legible than typical fonts. Casual script fonts (e.g. Comic Sans) are a more recent development, imitating non-cursive handwriting. As a result, these typography have a non-serious tone and are rarely used by businesses in their official branding.

There are also famous decorative fonts such as Arnold Böcklin or Curlz. These are more often found in logos and titles. Decorative fonts have an impact, but they prize form over function. Keep in mind that highly decorative typography can be harder to read and undermine clarity. Therefore, use these sparingly for only a few words in a large size. They should never be your brand’s font for its usual typography.

Picking the Right Colour

Along with font, colour is a critical element of your brand’s typography and web design. While you will likely pick a primary colour that connects to your logo or other branding, you will want to pick a set of secondary colours. This ensures that you will have suitable colour contrast in all instances. For example, your business may have a blue logo and regularly use materials with white and purple backgrounds. While the same colour of blue will work for type on a white background, it will have much less contrast on the purple, especially those with colour deficiency. Pick a suitable set of colours that matches your branding while ensuring legibility.

Find Your Business’ Type

You should now have a sense of why picking the right font and typography for your website and branding is important. It’s a big decision now, but like the rest of your branding, picking that suitable font is something that should last for a long time and even multiple iterations of your website’s design for that trusted consistency. If you’re looking for further assistance in finding legible typography or finding a font that matches your branding’s character, be sure to contact Rosewood’s marketing team. Our web team will also be happy to help you update your website’s design with a new font or improve its accessibility.

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