PlayAbly Episode 23: Better Customer Journeys and Better SEO with Easy On-site Engagement

Gamification isn’t just a buzzword—it’s the future of e-commerce engagement and SEO strategy. In this episode of the Playably Podcast, we explore how incorporating interactive experiences can transform your online store into a high-performing powerhouse.

Our Account Director, Gabi, joins us to break down how gamification enhances user engagement, reduces bounce rates, and increases dwell time—key factors that search engines like Google reward. We discuss real-world examples, including a fashion retailer leveraging interactive games to understand customer preferences and an eco-friendly brand using quizzes to boost repeat purchases and social sharing.

Tune in to learn:

• Why engagement is crucial for SEO performance
• How gamification strategies like ecommerce quizzes, rewards, and interactive challenges impact search rankings
• Real-world case studies on how brands are successfully using shoppable games
• How to get started with gamification on your e-commerce site

Want to see gamification in action? Check out PlayAbly and explore how shoppable games can elevate your e-commerce experience.

Join us as we dive into why gamification is not just a trend but the direction of 2025! Don’t forget to catch us at ShopTalk and stay ahead of the game.

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 Episode 23: Better Customer Journeys and Better SEO with Easy On-site Engagement

Kajal: [00:00:00] We're back with another episode of the Playably Podcast. Today, we are diving into a topic that blends strategy, creativity, and a touch of fun. How gamification can boost SEO and transform your e commerce site into a high performing powerhouse. Think about the last time you played a game.

Whether it was a mobile app, a video game, or even a loyalty rewards program. How did it make you feel? Chances are it kept you engaged, motivated, and coming back What if you could harness the same power to improve your website search rankings and drive meaningful engagement? Today, we're breaking it down step by step.

Our account director, Gabby. Gabby, welcome. 

Gabi: Happy to be back here. 

Kajal: So let's start with the big question. Why does engagement matter for SEO? 

Gabi: Great way to start. Search engines like Google thrive on one thing, which is relevance. Their algorithms are designed to surface [00:01:00] content on your website that meet users needs.

Metrics like dwell time, click through rate, and bounce rate are critical indicators to Google that your content is valuable for whatever the user is searching for. But we know how hard it is to keep people engaged. That's a common problem across e commerce websites.

What happens is visitors land on your page, browse a little, and they leave without engaging. So your bounce rate is to the roof, dwell time is very low, and click through rate is also low, Your SEO performance is not going to grow

and that's where gamification comes in. imagine a fashion retailer, instead of using the usual pop up window where they're asking a user to subscribe, enter the email to subscribe, they're now offering a game where users. [00:02:00] Can play in scores for discounts or free shipping or early access to a new collection.

This type of engagement if you're giving an option for your user to engage. On your website, instead of just exiting the pop up sign up now for updates window they will automatically engage more they're going to be more interested in your brand and this will directly boost dwell time, which will then improve your SEO performance.

Kajal: I've definitely seen, the high bounce rates come in, especially now it's such high competition in e commerce. And I think everyone would like to know what they can do to get people to stay on their page longer and get that email address and learn a little bit about the customer.

But I think when people think about gamification, they think about, something that is fun and not really purposeful. What exactly is gamification when it comes to SEO tools? 

Gabi: Gamification involves [00:03:00] incorporating game like elements into a known game environment to really drive.

So this could mean an interactive quiz that could help users find the right product. If you're helping your users find exactly what their need Google sees your content is relevant. So it gives you higher scores.

Another example that could improve SEO. It's a reward system where you encourage repeat visits by offering points or additional discounts. And we did something, I know we talked about this before, but we did this mostly during the holidays and we're getting ready to do that again.

We use the advent calendar where we had different games throughout the week. And we created dedicated email campaigns, paid media campaigns to bring users back every day to play a different game and to gain a different incentive. [00:04:00] So that was a very successful strategy when it relates to a reward type of system. 

Each of the strategies not only are helping you engage more with your users but they're impacting some of the most critical SEO metrics. people are spending more time on your website. 

Gabi: People see it as a valuable content bounce rate because they're spending more time and they're browsing around more. Your bounce rate is decreasing. And That also sends a good sign to Google and then backlinks, which we all know how important backlinks are for SEO because again, it's a much more unique experience than just visiting a site users are much more likely to share your website.

Or share the results of their game on their social media, which will generate backlinks to your site and then boost your site's authority. , we work with a [00:05:00] sustainable home goods store where we introduce a game that helps users discover, A bunch of different products their main goal was to increase average order value, but people were on their and they didn't know what to get, where to even start, they want it to be more sustainable, but they know, like, how do I even start my journey?

Kajal: So we created a eco friendly personality game that would recommend products tailored to their preferences. We increase engagement, but we also were able to increase repeated purchases and increasing average order value. And a lot of people were sharing their results on social media, which brought a lot more traffic back to the website. 

I too would like to be more eco friendly and use less disposables, but I never know what I should start with. I think we just bought some of the beeswax wraps.

Kajal: So hopefully that'll work out for us and [00:06:00] then we'll see where we can go on from there. But that would be great if I could get, a reminder or here's the next product. And I can see that how that would drive people to come back. But also just, really build that brand affinity because it's like, Oh, they know me, they care about me.

They want to help me rather than, Oh, they're trying to just sell me this. 

Gabi: Rather than just like offering you a discount, at the end of the day, the incentive is the same, but the way you engage changes the perspective or of the visitor or your customer towards your brand

Kajal: absolutely. And you mentioned backlinks, which again, we all know it's very important and I would be amiss if I did not. Have a little plug for our friends our YC, Y Combinator friends, karmalinks. io. This is not a paid advertisement but you can sign up your domain and you get points for including backlinks for sites on your page and it recommends.

Once for you to reach out to you and you can ask them, Hey can you, we'll give you some of my [00:07:00] points if you do a backlink for my page. And it's a great little, it's brand new. It just launched after they had some trial and error at the end of last year. And we always like to support our friends over other YC companies.

So just wanted to give that plug, but back to the topic at hand. How can someone get started with gamification on their e commerce site? 

Gabi: If you haven't experienced with gamification, I would say start small. What we do is we implement a simple game to test user engagement.

We want to understand what's driving your visitors to convert, what is driving them away from conversions. not just User engagement, but we also want to understand what are your best sellers? What are people looking for the most when they visit your site the first time they land versus the second time they come back to your site?

are they shopping for different products? So starting with a simple game where you can [00:08:00] really test user engagement and understand behavior always focusing on value. That's Number one rule for anything you're going to do on e commerce. Make sure that your game aligns with your brand and it provides real value to the user.

you can't just use a spin the wheel, like one size fits all game. That is not a game Just some other tool that you can use your website, but it's not really a gamification experience. So make sure, even though it's a simple game, it is tailored to your website and it makes sense to your visitors and customers.

And then, really important, measure impact from day one. We have our own dashboard but we also use and we encourage our clients to use. Tools such as Google analytics their own e commerce dashboards to track dwell times, bounce rates and conversions. And when you work with us, we do all of that.

[00:09:00] And iterate and expand. Based on your data that we're monitoring, from day one, we refine the experience and consider adding either more advanced features. Or a different game or placing the game in a different page so that it makes more sense to the user an example for SEO blog pages, for example, a lot of brands have like their most visited page could be.

The homepage, but second could be a blog post. So adding a game to that blog page could really benefit not just SEO metrics, but conversions. And at the end of the day, that's all we care about conversions. 

Kajal: So for this. customer journey for starting small and then building up from there.

Can you just give us an example and walk us through what that would look like? 

Gabi: So for example, we have a fashion retailer. And we tested five different games with [00:10:00] them. In the period of five weeks, we started with a swipe game, like a tender match relationship match game.

But we were showing users a different type of outfits. We ran that game for a week. The reason we wanted to run that game was. We want them to understand what most users are coming to their website for. Is it cocktail outfits? Is it business casual? It's a simple quick game, three to five seconds that gives you a lot of data on your user.

From that, we then. Evolved to a memory game but instead of just doing a memory game, we used that for a product launch prints. It was a product they were launching and we wanted to see the prints that people loved the most. So we use a memory game. And at the end of the game, they would choose which print they liked the most.

Then from [00:11:00] there a trivia game, asking questions about fashion. And that's, that was for a more niche type of audience. We sent that game for their VAP customers. Asking them about questions about fashion preferences, fashion trends.

 Was a more complex game and it allowed us to create. So start simple and then iterate until you really understand who your customers are. Having a very well defined persona to then. Give them what they're looking for the most, right? Cause then you can develop more games and we like to implement the game development with the marketing calendar for the year.

So it's not just the standalone game, but it's part of your campaigns 

Kajal: plus the added bonus of having the data and being able to remarket on email [00:12:00] campaigns, or even do some targeted ads to try and find like people. I can see how this would spread to the rest of the marketing.

Gabi: Oh, exactly. We work very closely with the agencies of our brand, especially paid media agencies, and like you said, email agencies, because there's so much valuable data that comes from the games that you can create really targeted campaigns that will not only improve your performance on your website, but on other channels like email and paid media as well. 

Kajal: Gamification. I think we've heard a lot at the different conferences. It's been spoken about a lot of the big ticket brands are, doing some sort of gamification. I think even at shop talk. There's about coming up in March, which we will be at. There is a Two or three sessions on gamification.

And then we are involved in the shark tank competition type thing going on there. So definitely if you're going to be at shop talk, look us up. So gamification, [00:13:00] it is probably, I'd say not even the buzzword of 2025. I think it's the direction of 2025 and where we're going, it's going to be more personalized and.

It's a powerful strategy to really engage the users and then also boost your SEO performance, which everybody always needs. I don't think anybody thinks about SEO besides our wonderful SEO person, Colin. But incorporating these interactive and fun and rewarding elements into the site, you can really create a memorable experience.

It keeps the customers coming back for more and search engines definitely take notice. So thank you, Gabby. I really appreciate your insights and expertise here. 

Gabi: Of course. Thanks, Kajo. Gamification, it's definitely the direction word for 2025. 

Kajal: And we'll catch you next time on the Playably podcast.