Website Design

If you have never played Farmville before, congratulations – you’re smarter than 90% of Facebook users you may not understand what the hype is all about. However, if you are a committed Farmville player, you’re all to familiar with the addictive nature of the game, and likely find yourself constantly feeding chickens and building barns. Whether it is the altruistic impulse of helping your friends, or the fact that you just can’t bare to see your crops (your fake, digitize crops) dying, there’s just something about Farmville that keeps you coming back for more. And while Farmville is, for all intensive purposes, a complete waste of time, the game does have a few kernels of marketing genius mixed in. When creating the strategy for you own website, remember your cute pixelated chickens and use the following Farmville marketing methods.

1. Time Sensitivity

Most people have become addicted to Farmville due to the fact that it is time sensitive – if you stop playing your crops may die and you’ll lose the game. By mimicking this characteristic in your marketing strategy, businesses can utilize time incentives in order to keep people coming back to their site. By offering time incentives, you can encourage people to keep coming back and checking in so that they do not miss out.

2. Collection Method

On Farmville, users love being able to collect things, such as gold, ribbons, farm animals, neighbours, and so on. You can use this tactic in creating your marketing strategy for your website by offering your visitors the ability to collect points every time they visit your website, which can build up to offer an incentive or discount at your business.

3. User Progressions

Users are able to become more experienced in the game of Farmville as they move up levels. The more time they spend immersed in the game, the more levels they are able to complete, and thus the more access they have to different elements of the game. Businesses may use this tactic to allow website visitors to earn a reward for the time spent visiting the website. Consider building your site that it monitors the amount of time that a user spends on browsing, or how often a visitor returns over a certain period of time, then offer a reward or incentives to loyal shoppers.

4. Make it Personable!

Users have become so addicted to Farmville due to the fact that the game allows users to personalize their experience. Farmville allows users to design their farm their own way, as well as the ability to see how different users have designed their spaces differently according to their personal interests. Businesses may mimic this characteristic by allowing each user to design their own account and place their favourite items on their personal page, or offering products that they may be interested in based on their previous purchases. By customizing your website to be directed at each user’s personal interests, they are more likely to become a loyal member and visit the website more frequently.

5. Social Aspect

Farmville users become successful by being social with other users. Farmville rewards you for adding your neighbours (Facebook friends) or helping neighbours out. As well, users are given free gifts that they can share with fellow farmers. Businesses may use this tactic for their website by rewarding users when they refer the website to a friend or family member. You’d be surprised how many people will opt to forward a message to their friends when there’s the possibility of winning a prize or the promise of a discount involved.

Farmville has become a favourite game among Facebook users, and the tactics that Farmville uses in order to captivate game participants has proven to be extremely effective. And while I don’t condone spending hours planting pretend fields, I can certainly see the method behind Farmville madness.

What are some of the other way’s that businesses can market using the Farmville model? Please share your thoughts below!