My official points system vision thread

[Cyboman]

Dear community, I've already written many posts about the creation of creative points systems.

In this thread I will write down my ideas and visions from time to time about points systems in general to document them for all interested developers!

As an introduction lecture, and if you don't know it already, you can read one of my very famous points posts here:

I discussed with a lot points system developers, but all the current tools lack from essential points-to-paid-feature functionality at this point of time. There is no usable IP.Commerce support without heavy restrictions in all of them. Moreover the current points systems look more like a secondary reputation system substitution and a playground for youngsters, as there is no way to really let your members exchange their points into real community value, others would pay for! Yeah, points only become precious if you can exchange them for features, others must pay bucks for!

Today, as teased above, I will write about points exchange systems and how to achieve a higher value of points. A point system, in which you can only earn fame, won't inspire a lot new members. But if they recognize worthy exchange possibilities, they will start chasing for points. Points should be a way to gain other really worthy features. This way you really award your highest engaged members.

Again: Having a high points counter which only expresses a fame indicator isn't enough. But if there is no commerce integration possible due to IPS suite limitations, we require workarounds as alternatives.

I could imagine the following options as alternatives:

• VIP member group promotions for a specified duration: If you allow this, it's the same as buying via commerce but without using it. With a points interface, where members can exchange points for a daily/weekly/monthly group promotion to a specified VIP group. At the duration end members should be demoted to their former group again. This way you avoid commerce integration, but other members still can buy VIP memberships in IP.Commerce. Members will realize the money-value.
• Automatic creation of IP.Commerce discount codes: If you or IPS will implement a discount system in IP.commerce one day, let members exchange points to discount codes, that can only be used once by the member who exchanged them. This way, you avoid showing a points price in commerce widgets or for paid downloads (showing and operating with virtual currencies is currently impossible, read about it in my other thread).
• Show custom awards in member profiles: Like stickers in fun apps. Let members "buy" artificial fun awards to design their profile. You could "sell" sports trophies or anything else. This is an individualisation enhancement.
• Allow the well known "ghost mode": Anonymous logins don't help to engage your members very good. Hence it could be better to disallow them in the login mask at all, but you could "sell" such an option to be able to switch to anonymous browsing during member sessions in exchange for points.
• Have a link via automation rules to participate in raffles: It's your chance to win, but it requires points!
• Have a daily member featuring widget or a featured member bar: If you work with your members, they will be keen to promote themselves. So have a point exchange rate for this action and let members feature themselves to the community. It's like a special advertisement.
• And many more options I will write about next time.

If you like my ideas, say thank you as this engages me to publish more ideas about creative points marketing. Thanks 

[Joel R]

Did you check with @Anatik and his new points system? 

 

[Cyboman]

Just now, Joel R said:

Did you check with @Anatik and his new points system? 

Yes of course, and it's highly promising  

[Fosters]

1 hour ago, Cyboman said:

Show custom awards in member profiles: Like stickers in fun apps. Let members "buy" artificial fun awards to design their profile. You could "sell" sports trophies or anything else. This is an individualisation enhancement.

This is going to be included in our trophies and medals app.

[Anatik]

I'm going to be making an add-on which will allow users to purchase from Commerce using points they earned via my application. I considered allowing users convert points to Commerce Credits but that's very prone to abuse if Payouts to PayPal are enabled, so I think a gateway is better.

The rest of your ideas are interesting, though - I'll consider them.

I start my applications off basic to allow for room for growth, so I think 1.1 can take a lot of my own ideas, as well as ones people have already sent me.

[Cyboman]

Dear community, today I want to write about a core concept or a new way of thinking what to reward with points. Obviously all points systems reward members with points as soon as they create contents, as new contents lead to engagement of your frequenters. But is the number of contents a good indicator for a member that should be rewarded frequently? In many cases: NO! What we as community admins really want mostly to be rewarded is HIGH QUALITY CONTENT! Just rewarding any content leads to misusage and content-spam. This won't be rewarded by google ranking nor by your members drooling for high quality informations.

So what can we do in concerns of rewarding high quality content creators with points and how to finetune such a system with better algorithmics?

• REWARD POSITIVE REACTIONS: The more positive feedback any content is given, the more reading or information quality it should have assumedly. For specific positive reactions: Give +5 points for receiver AND +1 for giver. This will reward members, that help engage other users and lift up your site traffic. This way, you encourage members to react more often as ALL members will also be rewarded for giving a positive reaction, too. BOTH SIDES WILL BE REWARDED at the same time! The more reactions and points members receive the more loyal and engaged they will become.
• ALLOW BUT PUNISH NEGATIVE REACTIONS: If somebody reacts negative, checkout this setup: Remove -2 points from receiver AND -1 from giver. This would really prevent "haters" from wreaking havoc, because they would have to "pay with points" for reacting negative or neutral, too. It means, that if I give a negative reaction, the receiver will lose f.e. -2 points, but processing a negative reaction will "cost" me (= my points account) as the negative reaction-giver -1 point at the same time. BOTH SIDES LOSE POINTS! This way, members will think twice about reacting negative. I think this is a very smart concept, if "haters" can't afford reacting negative continuously. The whole community would become a better place.
• REWARD HIGH STAR RATINGS: Every time a high star rating is given (set a trigger limit, f.e. 4 of 5 stars at least), it proves quality. If somebody creates a 4 star review, reward the reviewer with 4 points for communicating his satisfaction, AND reward the event / product / downloads author with 10 points as he made the purchaser happy and writing a great review. For a 5 star review give reviewer 5 points and author 15. If anybody presses the "review is helpful" button, give 1 point to reviewer every time. Rest: do nothing.
• REWARD MASSIVE FOLLOWER COUNTS: Member profile followers as well as content followers. Always when a member follows something, this is a sign, that he wants to be informed with hit news. Each follow should result in points, for followed member and follower. Give f.e. 1 point, but repeat giving this point every month.
• REWARD "ENDLESS THREADS" OF HIGH INTEREST: Calculate the average thread length (in post counts) of your community. If average is f.e. 6 posts, reward the thread author for every 6, 12, 18... posts with an additional point for a very long and beloved discussion history.
• REWARD MEMBERS RECEIVING AWARDS, TROPHIES & MEDALS: If you have any awards application implemented, evaluate them and give them a points value/score. This way, you honor more milestones than single events. It requires a combination of actions to be rewarded, which means: There has been a lot of effort in achieving such a goal or milestone.
• there are hundreds more ideas which are better than just rewarding any content count.

These are just examples how to measure and reward content quality. Of course, each community is different and you have to adjust each points value so it suits your wishes best, but I wanted to show you, where you can tweak your style of saying thank you to high performance members that produce quality. Earlier or later, the good ones will love you for this.

[Cyboman]

WOW SCORE MEASUREMENT

Another interesting idea - but probably a "quite demanding coding job" for a developer - could be the so called "WOW Score"

The WOW Score is a different approach towards rating the quality of content, not only content (with reputation or other points).

If you don't know it yet, YOU SHOULD READ IT:

 

Direct link: https://www.semrush.com/blog/wow-score/about/

 

POINTS APPS STATUS APRIL 2018

I was asked several times about available points apps in the marketplace and their evolution status, that fulfill different requirements.

You're unsure about what points app to purchase for your individual requirements?

Have a quick look here to gather more informations concerning a purchase decision.