People's travel behavior is changing: a 2021 McKinsey report found micromobility trips doubled in a year and e-hailing tripled over four years. But the number of operators serving the market is rising too.
Today riders may open 5–10 apps before booking a trip. To win market share and reach profitability, you need a sound customer-loyalty strategy, and gamification can play a big part in making it work.
What is gamification?
Gamification isn't about designing a game. It's about using the elements that make games fun and motivating to shape end-user behavior: a playful experience around riding a bike or renting a scooter, with challenges, levels, and milestones, and rewards like points, virtual currency, badges, or free-riding minutes. The shared mobility model is perfect for it.
The benefits in shared mobility
1. Better rebalancing
Rebalancing is critical to offset the inevitable mismatch between vehicle supply and travel demand, and it stays an operational challenge for many. Gamification helps: users can be challenged to leave vehicles at better checkpoints along the way, and rewarded for that behavior with in-app currency or free-riding minutes.
2. More trips
Gamification is ideal for encouraging more bookings. Challenges and milestones motivate riders to use the service more often, and rewards based on distance, kilometers, or minutes driven make a lot of sense in shared mobility.
3. In-app engagement
Rather than offering random rewards on an external platform, use gamification to build a brand narrative inside your app: reward riders with an in-app currency tied to your message, let them track progress toward a challenge, and show them the impact of their choices, like traveling more sustainably.
4. Appeal to younger riders
Today's young people have different motivations. Gen Z values uniqueness, inclusivity, and fun, so gamification is a winning engagement strategy: a playful leveling system with fun names tied to miles driven, or an in-app currency that shows the impact of sustainable travel. The possibilities are endless.
How to bring gamification to your app
The benefits are clear: better balancing, more trips, improved loyalty, and a fun experience that appeals to younger riders. The way to introduce it is with the right partner. StriveCloud is the preferred gamification partner of Wunder Mobility. If you run your app through Wunder Mobility, you can use StriveCloud to add in-app loyalty and gamification features.
It works in three steps: first, identify the best solution for your business challenges and audience; second, create a gamification design plan with recommendations for extra in-app features; finally, set up the software so the new features integrate straight into the app. The experience can then be changed live from a simple control panel.
Personally, I really like the control panel of StriveCloud. It’s easy to use. I can implement changes instantly without waiting 24 hours or more to deploy.
Michael Stewart, Co-founder and CMO, Forest
Forest, a British shared mobility company, uses StriveCloud to encourage greener behavior: an in-app currency, TreeCoins, rewards riders for choosing an e-bike over more polluting transport, challenges keep them motivated, and a lottery feature offers prizes that support safe, sustainable travel.
What's really unique about StriveCloud, compared to a regular loyalty program or customer marketing, is that your user experiences it inside the app, at the moment they're using it.
Michael Stewart, Co-founder and CMO, Forest
