5 Gamification Apps for Shopify that DTC Brands Must-Have
Updated: Jul 2
9 out of 10 Indians face genetic hair fall at least once in their lifetime due to underlying health conditions, as per a 2022 study on hair fall in youth.
I saw this stat turning into a reality for me in 2022 post a heavy medication and that made me conscious. Conscious of taking hair supplements, vitamins and any more medicines.
That’s why when I noticed my flatmate performing a 3-step hair care routine using a couple of fancy-looking hair products, I got curious.
“This is a customised Ayurvedic hair care regimen from Vedix”, she answered, quenching my curiosity’s fire post which, I found myself on their website but guess what? I wasn’t scrolling.
Yes, as someone who’d been past multiple online ads about healthy hair gummies and whatnot, I was used to rejecting products within 30 sec with my ‘Scroll and Yay/Nay’ rule.
But in the case of Vedix, something caught my eye. So distinctively that I didn’t even scroll past their website banner.
‘Know Your Hair’ — there it was a button that was so smartly personalised that I wondered if I knew my hair because going by the amount of hairfall, I honestly didn’t.
This made me want to know my hair for real and what I found next only hooked me even further to Vedix — a Hair Quiz.
No shop now, no explore all products button, just know your hair quiz and that’s what got me hooked as a visitor.
This made me wonder, “Are there any other ways these Shopify brands can leverage the power of gamification and boost engagement/sales?” and thereby began a quest.
Gamification Apps for Shopify
In a quest to find ways Shopify businesses can easily gamify their websites, I came across 6 gamification apps for Shopify.
1. Flyy - Gamified Rewards
How do you feel when you get a surprise scratch card upon makin a Google Pay transaction?
You know that upon scratching, you’ll mostly get a ‘Better Luck Next Time’ or maximum of ₹3 to ₹4 cashback but you’re excited to scratch a card, regardless. Ever thought, why?
Studies have shown that the anticipation of surprise rewards activates a pleasure center of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which makes them powerful.
That’s why surprise rewards can be used as an instant engagement tool to make rewards meaningful and Flyy has incorporated this to help Shopify brands increase sales at lower CAC.
Yep, Flyy gamified rewards, a Shopify app offers a no-code referral program using which you can offer surprise scratch card rewards to both referrer and referee.
In order to launch a gamified referral program within your Shopify store, you simply need to:
Go to referral program and create rewards for Referrer and Referee
Choose from various reward types like fixed/variable, percentage/amount discount
Customise the floating icon and panel as per your brand colors
and launch!
If you’d like to learn how to create a referral program using Flyy’s gamification app, you can watch this step-by-step guide video too. Take a look at how the referral program works.
Oh wait, did I reveal the best part yet?
Flyy is also coming up with a loyalty program wherein you can offer loyalty points via gamification layers such as spin the wheel, slot machine etc.
They charge based on your number of orders starting from $59/month.
2. Falling Gift Game by Adoric Pop Ups
If you’ve watched the Season 3 of popular Netflix show Money Heist, you must remember the D-Day scene.
The team rains tons of money down on the city to create a mass chaos, distract the officers and escape.
Okay, I’m not sure if you’ve watched this scene but when I did, I felt, “How nice it’d be if this could happen in real life,” and to my surprise, I came across something similar recently.
Not money of course, ain’t getting that lucky but I found a Shopify app that showers gift boxes via parachutes and one can catch them just by clicking on them to win discounts.
Cute, right? This gamification strategy is enabled by Adoric Pop Ups where you can set up this game for your website visitors just within 5 minutes.
Yes, upon installing the Adoric app, you can select ‘Gamify User Experience’ from options like grow email list, promote special offer, stop cart abandonment etc.
Under gamify user experience, you can choose ‘Falling gifts game’ and start customizing it based on
Number of chances you want to give your users to play
Available templates and styles
Text and discount code you want to convey
Which users you want to enable the game for, on which pages and when
The app charges based on the number of monthly pageviews starting from $9/month and has been proven to increase sales by up to 70%.
3. Discount Hunt
I’ve a habit of not leaving any notification unread. I don’t know how to explain, it’s just an itch. But this time, I wanted to find out why I do what I do and realised that I’m not alone.
I discovered that it’s because of the below two out of five curiosity dimensions that I do it:
Joyous Exploration: I seek out new information and enjoy the subsequent joy of learning it. For example, I want to find out if Swiggy is offering me a new discount.
Social Curiosity: I want to know what my friends and peers are thinking and doing. For instance, I tend to read their messages and check out the reels they sent.
You see, we humans are wired to find out new things and this is a gamification strategy that Discount Hunt uses.
Discount Hunt is an app for Shopify that helps you gamify your website visitor experience in order to help you increase your customer base, pageviews, timespent and sales.
How do they do it? By making visitors hunt for discounts. Sounds simple? It’s more than just hunting. The best part is that you can customise discounts based on
Number of icons that need to be found before one can avail a discount code
Website pages
Time spent
All you need to do is create a discount session by selecting
Discount name, icon and code
Selecting page(s) that need to visited and number of discount icons that need to be found
Discount pop-up window and success email messages
Here’s how it looks within your Shopify store —
4. Engagebud: Gamified Popups
Has it ever happened to you that you’re scrolling through your Instagram feed and suddenly stop at an ad that says “Who’s the real culprit?” or “We bet you can’t match this”?
What happens next? Do you find yourself engaging with it? Well, I do because I feel challenged, intrinsically and that’s what games can do to your website visitors too.
Games are a great way to increase your user stickiness and Engagebud Shopify app knows this too well.
Their customised games like Candy Crush, Slot Machine, Fruit Ninja, Trivia etc outperform traditional pop ups in collecting user data.
Engagebud games are easy to set up wherein you simply have to create a campaign by
Picking a game of your choice and define its placement
Name your game and start building
Configure products, floating button, game appearance, rewards, texts, triggers etc
Once you do the campaign set up, this is how it looks inside your Shopify store.
The Engagebud gamification app charges based on monthly impressions and provides only 3 games as part of the 14-day free trail post which the games are unlimited starting at $10/month.
5. Leadster Gamification Popups
Say a user visits on your website and sees an icon that says ‘Free Shipping’. Is it going to grab their attention? Absolutely!
Next, the user clicks on it and sees a giant ball drop on their screen with smaller balls inside reflecting various offers and discounts.
All they’ve to do is enter their email address, click on ‘Try your luck’ and play. Doesn’t sound like a very out of the box gamification idea to grow email subscribers list and retarget them, right?
Well, it isn’t but Leadster Gamification Popups, a Shopify app makes this idea stand out via their easy to configure and implement gamified pop ups.
Theirs is a super easy to use app using which you can
Add whatever prizes you want to offer inside a ball
Set corresponding discount codes, probabilities and jackpot prize
Customise theme as per brand colors and behaviour such as trigger on exit
Set timers and get the ball rolling
Check out how it’ll look inside your Shopify store.
Leadster gamification popups app charges based on number of popuo views, starting from $9.90/month.
Add Gamification to Your Cart
I happen to hear a lot of DTC founders express concerns over attracting quality customers, engaging them and growing sales and going by everything I’ve learned about gamification, it is “the” answer to solving such issues.
Since anyone and everyone likes challenges, surprises and rewards, gamifying your Shopify store is one of the best ways to turn your visitors into customers.
Why not give gamification a shot? Maybe you’ll believe when you see the results? Give gamification a try today.
