PlayAbly Podcast Episode 16: Stop Putting Spinners on Your Website

Ever felt personally victimized by a discount spinner? You know, those flashy wheels of disappointment promising 50% off but always landing on a measly 10%?  Seema, our UX and game design guru, is here to spill the tea on why spinners are the awkward middle child of eCommerce gimmicks.

In this episode, we unpack:
🎡 Why spinners are the digital equivalent of a rigged carnival game
💡 How brands can turn spinners into interactive, trust-building goldmines
🛑 Why losing customer trust is the ultimate no-no 
🍬 Gummy bear debates, surprise marketing wins, and why Reddit is the internet's complaint department

If you’re a brand thinking about slapping a spinner on your site—or already have one—this episode will give you ideas to make it actually fun (and fair).

🔗 Want to ditch tacky spinners and go full-on gamification pro? Check out our game arcade or visit PlayAbly.ai. 🎮✨

Want to see what PlayAbly can do for you? From cool custom games to PlayAbly Gamified Rebates, we (probably) have a solution for your ecommerce shop woes. Book a meeting with the great and powerful John here.

Transcript

PlayAbly Podcast Episode 16: Stop Putting Spinners on Your Website

Kajal: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Playably podcast. Joining me is the director of UX and game design, Seema, and we are talking about spinners today. Can you explain what you mean when you're talking about a spinner in the context of the online experience? 

Seema: I think everyone understands pop ups are broken. now we're seeing a lot of things in pop ups and the most common substitute 

Is a spinner. you say, do you want to spin for a discount? it spins and the discounts are listed 20%, 50%, 100%. you put in your email, if it's a product you go back to, you will see that same spinner. very often, the company sets it so that it always has the same thing.

Kajal: I always go back and check if I can get a bigger discount when I see one listed on the wheel and then I keep getting 10 percent or 20 percent stop trying. 

Seema: I think it's an interesting psychological thing because we ask brands when we meet with them about the spinner most spinners can be set [00:01:00] for random.

I asked the brands do you always give the highest? one of them said, no, we never set it. So they keep coming back thinking they're going to get it. if they always get 10%, they're not that dumb.

But then also the brands who do the highest. I think it's interesting because there is a positive thing, They want to give that discount, but what they don't realize is if somebody comes back and sees a 20%, they've lost. a lot of goodwill. So people won't want to use that discount as much.

They're not as motivated. They're like, oh, I can always come back for that. It's like offering something free. People know that You'll always get it free. So what's the point? 

Kajal: So it's good that brands are recognizing that it needs to be something interactive, which we are all about.

the spinner is not inherently bad, but the way that it's implemented is the problem? 

Seema: I think you're right, spinners are not inherently bad. if you think about a spinner, at a fair.

or in a classroom. The existence of it isn't the [00:02:00] problem, it's the way it's implemented. At a fair. it shows you the picture of the things you could win, we used to have an annual fair in our neighborhood. you have that chance, which in the pop up spinners is broken. But then it tells you what you're going to get next.

you get the rubber ducky. four rubber duckies, one plush, stuffed animal, and then the giant teddy bear, it's set up in a way that you understand it.

So when they set up those spinners, what you're trying to do is get the one thing you want. let's say you're a brand trying out a new product and you want to sell four kinds of lipstick.

You could put those four lipsticks in there and ask, which one do That actually is a test. You could have used that for knowledge.

As a company, the customer would have felt like they got the thing. 

Kajal: They earned it. if you're able to keep spinning, you feel like you earned it. There's the element of surprise or mystery. the company's product discovery and getting you to interact, which is very good for your bottom line.

to me, it sounds like there's a [00:03:00] disconnect when companies implement the spitter about what they're trying to do and what the customer wants and it's not connecting. 

Seema: And I think it's also because customers don't understand the motivation of the discount. people think it's this gambling mentality.

Like I'm going to roll it one more time. But actually in Vegas, you're getting money. they don't see your discount as cash because they don't need your thing. If you don't demonstrate they need your thing, they're not using that discount.

So you also have to motivate them to need a thing. they have to also understand the ecosystem today I was looking at, TikTok and there was an ad for a lip liner, it was one that was huge when I was in college, and I was like, oh my god, is that back?

my children were both like, what? I just said it out loud, right? but that's what they're doing. They're rolling the dice here. they're discovering through fun all day long. if your spinner is just giving them a 20 percent discount, every time they go to your website, you're not even competing on the same playing field as [00:04:00] other brands who are doing it through fun product discovery, in lots of different ways.

Kajal: So what is it about the spinners that really draw in the brands? They're cheap and easy to implement but they always look really tacky, right? 

Seema: They're never branded right.

I think it goes back. you and I come from such different worlds. We come from gaming and I come from education and gaming. I've used spinners, but always put in an idea for the thing rather than monies because I wanted them to find the thing, what actually happens is the person who does the spinner wants to increase their email capture, they have a job, right? So they're like, okay, I need to get more emails. I might as well do this. they're busy, everyone is busy with their jobs. brand awareness and learning is nobody's job in a business. It's funny because it's everybody's job, but when something is everybody's job It's nobody's job the brand manager is really thinking about design The person thinking about product is focused on product The person thinking about ecom is just thinking about ecom And so that it slips through the cracks.

And what happens is they [00:05:00] think this is a solution They don't realize it's not a good solution because they don't know what a good solution could look like 

Kajal: I always sign up for the email, for the discount, if I think I want the product, but as soon as I get the discount emailed to me, I unsubscribe.

I just want to make sure I have the discount in case, I end up purchasing the product. Most of the time I don't. 

Seema: That's something when we do our UX interviews, people tell me all the time, that it's transactional.

we've seen in our games that people stay. Part of the thing is you could get another discount by email later. So we give you something, spinners. are a drop in the bucket of what you could do to grow your customer base, because it costs a whole lot of money to give people discounts and find a new person.

It actually would cost you less in the long run. If you invest in that one person and Your ecosystem retargeting your own customers by using play is much cheaper, than coming up with a new spinner 

Kajal: spinners, don't tell you anything about the customer. any marketing I get after I give them my email address is [00:06:00] just going to be very standard, very generic, and is not going to help me or know anything about me. I love personalized marketing. I fall for Instagram ads all the time. most of the time I end up buying them. I just got these sour gummy worms. from a company called Rotten they're lower sugar and actually good I've had these before from other companies that weren't good, but these were good with something like the quiz where you're gathering more information, you are able to do that remarketing, that personalized marketing. 

Seema: a fun game we could do about gummy bears or gummies. I think that's the other thing that these companies don't have, our team knows games really well and knows lots of mechanisms. I think a fun game for that would be weighing two against each other for sugar. you could do a balance game where, you find out that you get so many more gummies I don't think people are eating them to save sugar.

I think they're buying them so they can eat as many gummies. 

Kajal: I eat the whole bag in a sitting and I don't feel bad about it. it rips at my tongue a little bit because of the citric acid. But it's really [00:07:00] good. I like the visualization of that because I don't know what 35 grams of sugar is, but when you show like, oh, this is how much sugar.

I'm that person that's never drinking soda 

Seema: No, same. that's where I think for us, the reason that these partners like having us better than a spinner is because we're also solving a different problem. They like that it comes up with email, right?

Email capture is what usually spinners are. Then we're like, yeah, but email capture and what do they want from you? That becomes a much better deal for them in the long run. I have a friend we've been working with because she's a diabetic and I've been learning a lot about sugar and soda.

often what we do is you tell me a problem and I'm like, here's how I see it. we're like your sounding board. And then we give you a different perspective. if you're working in a company like Candy, sugar, you understand it. I don't have a sweet tooth, but I could play a game about gummies, pile the gummies, pyramid of gummies. 

Kajal: don't know if you remember the amazing fruit Gummy bears, they used to dance and do this. Oh my God. [00:08:00] I forgot about those. I was obsessed with those. I love those. Those were delicious. I am a gummy connoisseur.

Seema: . my daughters are really gummy connoisseurs. another thing that could be a fun game for a lot of brands, is the opposite of the spinner. You could have people try to match, like you have an inner circle, and an outer circle.

The inner circle is the picture of the gummy, the outer circle is the flavor, my favorite is the clear. And I think that must be fruit punch, right? but we've always had this big debate, or is it pineapple? I don't know what flavor it is, but I've always loved that one.

it'd be funny to do something where there's no right answer, Because there's a lot that are like, is red cherry or raspberry? why is blue raspberry? 

Kajal: I was amazed when I found out that all Fruit Loops are the same flavor. 

Seema: isn't that crazy? 

Kajal: Yeah, I forget what brand, I think Black Forest right now, their green gummy bear is strawberry.

And I was like, okay, the stem is green, but that's really throwing me off, guys. 

Seema: Somebody was telling me that maybe in some country, it is green. [00:09:00] I've heard of green strawberries 

Kajal: before. 

Seema: what do you think it is?

What we're talking about is different ways to sample audience engagement what color did you think it is? How much sugar did you have you're actually making them give you info in a much more fun way.

But you don't even notice 

Kajal: what you're doing. 

Seema: exactly. people are competitive, right? I have a social media account where I talk about arts and culture.

I've been doing this game, which is just tell me which one is the oldest, or which one is ancient Greek, I give them the answers in the video because it's like a minute the number of people who tell me their answers always astonishes me.

I find it so interesting. It's such an interesting psychological thing. They want you to be proud of them, 

I always say good job I am happy but I think That is so human to want to get the right answer.

Kajal: It is 

Seema: I'm 

Kajal: ... the importance of this is because the more time they spend on your site, the more they learn about your product, the more likely they are going to buy it because they're building trust, they learn more about it.

They're like, Oh, I could actually use that. so that's what we're always driving towards 

Seema: [00:10:00] brands need to understand that Losing trust is the worst thing you can do. there's been an internet drama about somebody's pajamas this week. this poor brand, doesn't even realize how much they've broken trust.

you can't rebuild it. Once you buy any brand let's say a food brand, it used to be good and it's not anymore. That's loss of trust and people will just not come back ever.

Kajal: Yeah, or buy things because Taylor Swift had her holiday drop. Things sell out all the time, especially the ornaments. there's special clothing. one of the items was the cowboy, like me work jacket. Originally it was said to be embroidered. then it switched the next day to just printed some people ordered it thinking it was embroidered and it wasn't so they're sharing it on Reddit communities that's why I don't buy from her merch store anymore because I've gotten burned like that before these are avid Swifties, but who don't want to spend the money she sells millions in merch every year and to have your biggest drop of the year turning people off because of quality or consistency [00:11:00] really speaks to it.

Seema: I'm glad my item by it. that's actually something I think also brands don't realize. Now that we have so much information, people will look at that and we have outside sources that will remind you of that. 

Reddit is extraordinary. I'm, not a huge redditor, but I do look at books I'm a big reader, and I'd read anything. I read a book that was really weird 

It was supposed to be time travel, but then it ended up a romance, and I felt like I'd wasted my time. what you're talking about is a company, They feel like they've wasted something, right?

It's not time in that case, it's money. But when people have that feeling of waste, I notice they always go to Reddit. 

Kajal: Reddit. If you have a complaint. Or you want to search for similar complaints. You go to Reddit.

And I've seen it before where people are like, why are there seem like there's any happy parents in here? It's cause happy parents aren't on Reddit, happy parents are not complaining about their child on the internet, asking advice 

Seema: That's right. companies need to [00:12:00] understand that.

This is also why we always say to companies, do not filter your reviews on your website. Because it's not like when I was younger. you did go to the site first. That was where you got the info, 

Kajal: now it's the 

Seema: trusted 

Kajal: truth. 

Seema: Now there's not, and that's why, to the spinners, every signal that you're gaming the system makes them less want to be with you, they want an honest shake we have a game art, solution to spinners like Plinko and pinball, it's one ball and you can play a second if you don't get the points but there's a chance you won't win.

we have other games where it's really hard to win. We have one that's Tetris. our dev who already makes our games hard. was like, Seema, this one is so hard. And I was like, I know. 

I can do that. 

Seema: can get things 

that. 

Seema: The puzzle, that game, that brand also has easy games, but if you think about it, that's because in real life, there are games that are hard and games that are easy. And games that are easy for one [00:13:00] person, like we have the thing, there's that candy crush that we have that I draw the lines and then Sean is always what are you doing?

How did you do that? How did you get a 15? He's like, how did you get those all? I was like, I don't know. Maybe I work in visuals.

Kajal: if somebody is a brand and they have a spinner or are thinking about implementing a spinner, they could call us and hire us and we could make it great. But what are the things that they could do themselves 

Seema: most of them make it so that you could actually have it random.

if you're not going to hire us, at least make it random. At least make it fair, if, the discount's on there, you're not really willing to give the highest one, Then think about that and make choices you can set up your Shopify to give them a free deal put them in an email list get a monthly prize Find a way to make that fair. You can also decrease the number of things in there, So you can make it work to make it fair.

So that's the first thing I would recommend. The second thing I would recommend is if it allows you to match the brand colors. Because if it looks like it's from A completely different [00:14:00] company. 

Kajal: They're always brightly colored. 

Seema: Yes, it does look like a circus. if you have the money, this is something we could easily fix for you. We have a set of games we could trick out for you.

that could actually be brand responsive. You could put it into the launch plan of a product. 

Cause I bet you would see that I'm thinking about one that we're doing right now and it's just jewelry, but it's so much more fun to see their actual jewelry than a spinner that just has numbers on it, 

Kajal: And then you're like, 

Seema: you have a captive audience and you're like, look at the jewelry.

Kajal: This is 

Seema: what we have. why wouldn't you want your products to sell your products? It doesn't even make any sense. those are the big things, I would say. 

Kajal: thank you, Seema, for joining us. I know that you always get excited about thinking about new ideas for games and what we could do for brands, depending on their products their audiences 

It's the UX part of you, and we love that. thank you for being Sage Advice. We'll see you next time on the Playably Podcast.