Streaks for Gamification in Mobile Apps

Ever wondered how to keep users hooked on your app day in and day out? Well, ever heard of streaks? Imagine rewarding users for building good habits and enticing them to come back regularly.

And guess what? Throw in a feature to compare streaks with friends, and you've got a recipe for daily engagement. Are you curious to know more?

Keep reading!

What are streaks in gamification?

Streaks, as one form of gamification element, refer to a consecutive series of achievements or actions a user performs within a specific timeframe.

Let's break it down:

• Consistent engagement: Streaks are employed to encourage users to engage consistently with a platform or product.

Result: This regular interaction ensures that users remain actively involved, fostering a deeper connection with the platform.

• Habit building: They play a crucial role in fostering positive habits among users.

Example: Completing a specific activity every day for a week establishes a seven-day streak.

• Psychological impact: Streaks capitalize on the psychological principle of maintaining a sequence.

Result: This creates a sense of accomplishment, motivating users to continue the behavior to avoid breaking the streak.

• Motivational tool: Incorporating streaks into gamification strategies serves as a powerful motivational tool.

Effect: Users are more likely to stay engaged, driven by the desire to maintain and extend their streak.

Examples of streaks in mobile apps

Headspace

Headspace is a meditation app that provides guided meditation sessions. Habit building through gamification is the secret to Headspace's success.

One of the prominent gamified elements used in the Headspace app is streak.

This motivates users to practice daily meditation by acknowledging and rewarding their efforts with badges for maintaining an unbroken streak of daily meditation. This also brings the users back consistently to the app reducing churn.

Duolingo

Duolingo is a widely recognized case of successful gamification. Given that language acquisition is a gradual process that necessitates continuous practice and repetition, Duolingo inspires its users to use the app daily.

One such way is using streaks.

It offers users points for completing lessons and challenges, while also motivating them to maintain a continuous streak of daily activity.

Calm

Calm is a meditation and sleep app designed to cultivate mindfulness habits.

It tracks your meditation "high score," representing your longest streak of using the app, and monitors your overall progress.

CoinDCX

CoinDCX is an Indian crypto investment app that uses streaks to show users at which level of the trading journey have they reached and unlocked.

With streaks, it motivates users to unlock subsequent levels with added privileges. This encourages users to keep using the app, even if briefly, even during busy or vacation days.

Challenges faced while creating streaks in-house

Developers need to build the core mobile app. They don't really have the time to keep adding and monitoring streaks(designs, content, etc).

On top of that, every new gamification experiment with a story takes 2 weeks to build, another 2 weeks to make the app release, and another month or so to understand whether your streaks have achieved the desired engagement.

Build your unique streak adventure in a no-code manner with Plotline

Plotline's in-app engagement platform is designed to integrate streaks and other interactive gamification features like badges, spin-the-wheel, scratch cards, and quizzes. Additionally, you can use other UI elements like tooltips, spotlights, stories, PiP videos, etc., to educate, retain, and motivate your users effectively.

If this sounds interesting, start your free trial with Plotline and we can explore how we can boost engagement and retention for your mobile app.