Nudge, press and hold
How I gamified UX on Instagram Stories to pique customers’ interest in less popular products by reframing their value.
After a year of marketing it on Instagram, my mother still hasn’t been able to sell this particular design of her product. The product is a floor sofa for children which she calls Mini Majlis Sofa, adapted from the Arabic Gulf region. About 2 months ago, I thought I’d put my then 5-month knowledge of behavioural insights to the test!
A quick search on how brands can use existing Instagram Stories brought me to the creative work of Pablo Rochat’s ‘press and hold’ games. The goal of his games is to pause the video via the press and hold function at the right time to achieve a desired outcome.
Inspired, I designed a game for our Instagram followers using the ‘Create’ mode of Instagram Stories and a screen recording function. Here’s what it looks like:
Similarly, to play the game, followers had to press and hold the screen in order to pause the video at the right time to find that clear, safe and virus-free delivery path.
Within 3 hours of uploading this, we sold out the Mini Majlis Sofas!
Below, I share the three steps I took to nudge our customers successfully into buying our product.
3 Steps to Nudge Customers via Instagram Stories
1. Create the Game
Design the game from scratch in any way that would get your creative juices flowing. For example, sketch it out on paper or make a mental picture of it. Keep the design simple and game relevant. Decide on what those winning shots would look like when users press & hold. As you saw above, mine was to get a clear, safe and virus-free delivery path.
There are various ways of creating the 15-second video game. Unlike Pablo Rochat, my Photoshop skills are rusty and I have never used After Effects. Don’t fret if you find yourself in a similar situation. You can still design hi-fun “nudges” with lo-fi, as I describe below. Skip to Step 2 if you don’t need this.
- Open ‘Create’ mode on the Instagram app. The default feature it opens to is the Story feature. Explore the stickers and GIFs available at the GIPHY library and start selecting the objects you want to use. It is here when you may begin to iterate your design based on what you can find. Combine and use the stickers any way you like. The possibilities are endless.
- Turn on screen recording on your phone and bring your game to life by moving the object around the screen with your finger the way you want them to. More often than not, you would have more than one object to move. Unless you are able to move two or more objects in one screen recording, you will be screen recording for at least 15 seconds one object you are moving at any one time.
- After you are satisfied with how your first object is being animated, discard the current media you are working on and start afresh in IG Stories. Upload the trimmed screen recording and build on this for the next object you move. As you move the characters, create a few opportunities within the 15-second time frame for successful ‘press & hold’ outcomes. There were at least 3 occasions during my game when the path was absolutely clear. Repeat this step until you get all your moving objects in one video.
- Edit the final video using a video-editing software. Here, you may need to crop, trim and increase/decrease the speed of the video so that it uploads nicely on Instagram Stories.
2. Pair an Offer with Winning the Game
Instead of offering a higher discount from the beginning, offer half of it. To illustrate, we could have slashed the price from $240 to $200. With the game in our hands, I marketed the product at $220. The further $20 discount was tied to “winning” the game. They would have to take a screenshot of a successful ‘press and hold’ outcome and share it with us for the discount. This way, you create an opportunity for your followers to earn that extra $20 in savings by themselves. Our customers felt they have gained a fair advantage through their own efforts and are more likely to follow through and capitalize on it. I was leveraging the sunk cost fallacy where people continue a behaviour or endeavour as a result of previously invested resources (time, money or effort).
3. Set Clear Instructions
Ensure that your followers know how to play it and what they stand to win. Depending on your game, your instructions could be short that you can add text to the 15-second video itself. But feel free to post instructions on Instagram Stories before uploading the game so as to explain how to play it, like this for example:
Up next, Press & Hold to help us find that clear and safe path in delivering the Mini Majlis Sofa to you! Take a screenshot and share with us for a further $20 discount on our last piece of the Mini Majlis Sofa!
We later asked a customer what she thought about the game we created. This is what she has to say:
If not because of the press & hold, I won’t make a move to buy the Mini Majlis Sofa.😄 From my point of view, it somehow attract (sic) people to try the game, win the discount and then will browse for the product you are selling. It’s a good move.
I am aware it is just a small-scale experiment with way too short in sample size but I was beaming upon hearing this. I have to start small somewhere.
Ethics
My smile began to fade as I thought about whether it was ethical of me to do that. I recently learned about a type of “sludge” called “dark patterns” which you can get a quick understanding of at my Nudge by Nudge series. Did I trick my customers into playing the game? Did I give sufficient notice that they would enter a game and had a choice to skip it? If they played the game and achieved a successful ‘press & hold’ outcome, did they still have a choice whether to take a screenshot of it? If they had taken a screenshot, is the choice whether to share it with us still preserved?
While I am lucky to answer ‘Yes’ to these questions, these are what I should be asking myself earlier in the design process. Ethics should never be an after-thought. Plus, the customer also seemed happy with the purchase as she later revealed that she had actually bought it as a gift for a family member.
Many established brands have used Instagram games to uplift themselves. I hope this experiment inspires smaller businesses that they too can upgrade their marketing strategies on social media and e-commerce platforms, and make a better lasting impression of their brands. The steps I shared are meant to be more of a guide. What I have learned about nudges is that context matters so much, so do keep this in mind as you design your ‘press and hold’ games!
