In response to a growing number of current and future partner’s inquiries and suggestions, we are very excited to announce BigDoor’s newest platform feature: Internationalization.

Working with brands that achieve global reach, we acknowledge the need for rewards and loyalty programs that engage customers internationally and across languages. Unlike other vendors in the space, touting their “global” or “world leading” platforms with English-only language support, BigDoor has always prided ourselves in making our platform available in any language, but we weren’t satisfied with the complex translation progress that slowed down our typical implementation process. We decided to launch internationalization to enable brands around the world to easily implement a BigDoor Gamified Loyalty Program in any language (or combination of languages).

With internationalization the BigDoor user interface will reflect browser-specified  languages allowing visitors to seamlessly interact with a brand’s loyalty program, no matter what language version of the site they are on. Badges, quests, rewards and achievements will display in the browser-specified language throughout a customer’s session. The feature will also cover BigDoor powered redemption emails, ensuring that the entire BigDoor experience is available to customers, no matter what language they are using.

BigDoor publishers will be able to add language configurations to current loyalty programs, without affecting the existing experience. The internationalization feature will also allow publishers to break down existing analytics by language, giving even deeper access to valuable customer data and insights.

To learn more about BigDoor’s internationalization feature, or to talk with a BigDoor Loyalty Expert, please contact us at: Info@BigDoor.com.

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Improvements, Loyalty, Technology, UI, Uncategorized

If you are a frequent reader of mygamification.com you might have noticed that a few weeks ago we quietly updated the look of the BigDoor platform here on the site. Today, we want to proudly announce the newest version of BigDoor featuring a new look, better customization and updated user notifications. With both publishers and the end-user in mind, we’ve updated the BigDoor platform with more publisher features for easier and faster implementation as well as a simple interface to improve user experience.

A few highlights on the update:

Design: With the new update comes a new slick and minimalistic module. Keeping in mind that users come to a site to engage with content, we wanted to compliment a publisher’s site, without visually over-whelming it. The persistent form factor will sit on the bottom right of the page, and won’t interfere with content or the users browsing experience. Interaction happens only when users engage or perform a rewarded action.

Customization: Gamification should be flexible enough to work for a variety of publishers and their sites. With the newest version of BigDoor, publishers can choose what features to implement (be it quests, leaderboards, rewards, etc) without the worrying about user interface. The customizable dock allows publishers to pick and choose which BigDoor powered gamification apps are visible to users, which ensures that every BigDoor gamification solution is unique.

Notifications: Included with our new design, we’ve updated our user feedback to provide users a clear notification when they have made a rewarded action. We believe that a gamification solution needs to clearly communicate to users what actions are valued. Notifications are a great way to draw the users attention to these actions and let them know that they are moving in the right direction. No longer will users be unaware when or why they have received points. This not only improves the feedback loop for the user, but increases the likelihood that users will onboard and join in.

We’re working on loading more quests, adding features and content all the time, so make sure to check back frequently and see this new version at work! If you have any questions about the new look, or would like to talk to one of our gamification experts about a BigDoor solution for your site, you can email us at info@bigdoor.com or check out our website for information about specific BigDoor features.

We’d love to hear what you think!

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Improvements, Technology, UI

We are proud to announce that BigDoor has been recognized as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Last Thursday night Seattle Magazine awarded BigDoor 6^th place in the Midsize company category.  It’s exciting for us to be recognized as one of the best among such a successful and competitive group of organizations.

Since BigDoor was founded in 2009, we have seen our product, industry and team grow.  Despite all the changes, we have kept a focus on creating a great place to work where everyone has a voice.  This award is not just a win for BigDoor, but for all of our team members that have put the time in to help grow the company. We are so thankful for their hard work and determination that this award is dedicated to all of them.

To provide a little background, Seattle Business Magazine’s annual ranking of “100 Best Companies to Work For” recognizes companies based on size (or non-profit status) in Washington State. The award program analyzes company characteristics such as culture, employee benefits, programs and an online survey where employees provide feedback on the company. Each year Seattle Business Magazine partners with research firm Ipsos Worldwide to survey thousands of employees from across the state on what makes their companies the best.

This year alone, BigDoor has also been named as WTIA’s Best Early Stage Company of the Year as part of its Industry Achievement Awards and a TiE50 Awards winner in the Internet/Social Networking Category. We are very proud to be recognized and truly thankful for our awesome team that makes it happen!

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Startups

Happy Monday! There was a lot of great gamification news last week, from JetBlue’s new game show to getting everyone excited for Gamification Summit 2012. Catch up on everything you missed below.

JetBlue to Launch Live Online Game Show Mashable 6/11/2012 JetBlue announced the launch of it’s live online game show, designed to engage consumers and promote their vacation packages. The game show will have 15 minute episodes that will quiz contestants on travel related questions. The site will also hook into social media sites to engage non-contestants as well. This is another great example of a company that sees the value in making engagement fun and we hope to see JetBlue continue with this in the future!

In Defense of Gamification The Escapist 6/12/2012 Gamification is often accused of manipulating users. In this defense of the use of gamification, Shamus Young focuses on that criticism and highlights why marketers are turning to the use of game mechanics over other marketing techniques.

The 100 Best Companies to Work For 2012 Seattle Business Mag July 2012 We are very proud to have been named the #6 best mid-size company to work for in Seattle. The results were decided by a panel of judges after all company employees were anonymously surveyed. If you are interested in working for us, check out our jobs listing here.

Gamification Summit: What’s New and Who’s Speaking? Fora.tv 6/12/2012 We are very excited to have our business development team heading down to Gamification Summit this week. Gabe Zichermann, the mastermind behind the conference highlighted some of the exciting speakers attending the 2012 conference. Among them, we are most excited for our CEO Keith Smith as well as Chamillionaire.

Why Badges can be Bad – Really Bad Business2Community 6/13/2012 With a title like that, it might be surprising that we included this article, but the message is important to us. Gamification can get a bad reputation due to a lot of the sloppy solutions out there. While we agree that badges (and just badges) can be a sign of a really bad gamification solution, we also agree that badges done right can show real status and achievement that benefit loyal users.

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Startups

Yesterday our Co-Founder and CEO, Keith Smith was featured on NPR’s “Morning Edition” discussing finding great talent. The story, by national correspondent Wendy Kaufman, focused on computer scientists and the very small number of Bachelor’s degrees that Seattle’s University of Washington awards each year.  According to Kaufman, the number of degrees UW has rewarded has “remained unchanged for the past decade.”  With so many technology companies in the Seattle area looking for great talent it’s increasingly more competitive to find people,

“Really it just comes down to, I think, simple supply and demand. There are too many companies that are looking for great talent, and there’s just not enough developers and engineers to go around.” – Keith Smith 

At BigDoor we’re currently looking for a Black Box Tester to join our team. If you have what it takes please send an email to HR@bigdoor.com.

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Employment

The April 2012 launch of BigDoor’s Gamified Rewards Program arrived with the recognition that both our product design and the marketplace we serve have evolved substantially. With this evolution, we sensed an opportunity to update our identity to better reflect how we value simplicity, reliability, and versatility for a widening range of partners.

The company has been in business since 2009, so the current logo has had a solid timeframe within which to establish itself on the website, in our admin tools, business cards, social media accounts, printed collateral, and various and sundry expected places. Because of this legacy, we did not want to radically reshape, or even re-color, what we’re using today (we love that big, bold red-and-black combo), but several qualities to strive for came to mind: sleek, approachable, trustworthy, versatile, and strong. Added complexity is an unwanted item for any startup, so we also wanted to keep this redesign process fast-paced (but not rushed).

The red “door” in the mark visually suggests potential, possibilities and still appeals to us.

Even though quite a few variants of open/ajar doors came to mind, our conclusion was to illustrate a literally more straightforward perspective on this shape.

We also wanted to ensure the logo mark (graphic) can be displayed independently. This is an important requirement for social media account avatars, web favicons, and optimal flexibility in printed usage, too. But we also wanted that shape to have a more distinctive silhouette.

And with that, we arrive here:

It represents a progression from our original position (much like our business itself), conveys growth and depth, and provides easy visual association with the company name. We hope it conveys to you those qualities we wanted to communicate about us and the work we do with partners like these.

We hope you dig it – we’re pretty stoked  to make this change and start using this new identity to represent our new way of looking at gamified loyalty.

(Also, for font fans: yep, you nailed it. That’s modernist workhorse Futura Medium in there.)

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog

Today we’re so excited to officially unveil the next generation of gamification: BigDoor’s Gamified Rewards Program!

Three things everyone should know about our new product:

1). It’s Easy to Implement - no matter what size publisher you are BigDoor is simple to integrate on your site. Our proprietary tools offer an easy-to-use web-based command center that manages publisher’s implementations.

2). We Provide Actionable Analytics and Performance Measurement - BigDoor provides the tools that site publishers need to take action on their implementation and measure success.

3). Get Real Results - Sites participating in our private beta saw real results including 153% lift in User Loyalty; 672% lift in User Engagement and 355X in Social Sharing.

Online publishers today are constantly challenged with trying to attract more visitors to their site and keeping those visitors engaged. Our new Gamified Rewards Program takes aim at both problems and creates a real solution. Any size website can now integrate a Gamified Rewards Program seamlessly.

We offer three solutions: Lite, Plus and Premium. Lite is a free offering for websites with fewer than 25,000 monthly visitors. Plus is a white-label and highly customized solution built for medium sized websites with up to one million monthly visitors. For enterprise customers, BigDoor creates a fully customizable Rewards Program as part of the Premium package.

Now publishers can reward their users within a gamified experience; think of it as a fun and engaging frequent flyer program that integrates seamlessly with your brand. Rewards, such as exclusive content, unlocked powers, exclusive virtual items, community status and even tangible rewards create deeper engagement with a site and rewards users for their loyalty and engagement. Implementing a rewards program is now a simple process and can be managed entirely through BigDoor. Publishers can also take advantage of many advanced services provided by BigDoor, including paid sponsorship and management of high value rewards through sweepstakes.

Today we’re also very excited to announce our next round of funding from Foundry Group and Brad Feld. We’re incredibly lucky to have an investor who has such a great history with game and technology companies continue to be a part of what we’re building at BigDoor!

Over the next few weeks we’ll be detailing some of the proprietary features available so stay tuned for more and please share your feedback!

Posted in: Announcements, BigDoor news, Blog, Development, Financing, Gamification, Press, Publishers, Technology

Happy Monday and belated St. Patty’s Day! If you are still recovering from a very lucky weekend and fell behind on your news, you can catch up on some gamification highlights below.

You’re hired, now let’s kill Onyxia The Verge 3/12/2012 We mentioned Bing Gordon’s talk on gamification at SXSW last week, but this article focuses in depth on his talk and his theory about gamification as cooperation over competition. Using MMO games, including WoW, Gordon says, “that the most powerful part of gaming isn’t the competition, it’s cooperation. So you develop a structure where cooperation is rewarding. In MMO parties, it turns out with a party of five, even if it’s strangers in what’s called a ‘pick-up group,’ what you come to expect is that each individual is around 20 percent more productive, using overlapping skills.”

McCain’s looks to gamification with ‘Lucky Spuds’ competition The Drum  3/16/2012 McCain’s Foods known for producing nearly 1/3 of the French fried potatoes in the world, is launching a gamification campaign March 19^th in the UK. The campaign will use online game concepts, social media and on-pack promotions to engage potato fans to win a potential grand prize of £ 100,000 as well as daily prizes of £1,000.

Concur’s Steve Singh, DocuSign, Founder’s Co-op Among WTIA Winners Xconomy 3/16/2012 We posted about this last week, but had to include it again. We are very thankful and excited to have won the WTIA’s IAA “Best Early Stage Company” 2012. Other winners included DocuSign, Founder’s Co-op, Zipline Games and Concur CEO Steve Singh. We are really excited that the work we are doing with gamification was recognized by such an influential organization in the tech community!

FanCake Gamify’s Sports Co-Viewing with iPhone App PC Mag 3/14/2012 FanCake is launching an app that will hopefully change the ways users watch sports. The app allows users to chat about games with others as well as compete against other fans during live games. Linking social aspects with game mechanics for TV viewers has been a trend lately, and it’s great to see it swing over to sports as well.

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gaming, Loyalty

As a gamification company we are all about loyalty, which is why we put our heads together to come up with a special way to reward our most loyal visitors here at the BigDoor office. Just like we provide a platform that encourages users to return to your website, we wanted to encourage visitors to return to our office (because we love meeting new friends).

We are very excited to announce our first ever BigDoor Loyalty Special on Foursquare. Visitors who check-in at the BigDoor office 5 times, will unlock a $10.00 Amazon.com gift card (limited to the first 30 people). Stop by, say a quick ‘hello,’ grab a copy of our our popular “Gamification Goes Mainstream” infographic and check-in on Foursquare! Bonus points for sharing your check-in on Facebook or Twitter.

If you aren’t local, we hope we have a chance to meet you during one of the many events we attend throughout the year, or  set up some time to talk with us next time you are in Seattle.

Happy Check-ins!

 If you don’t know where we are located, you can find us in South Lake Union neighborhood on the first floor of the TechStars Seattle HQ:

511 Boren Ave. N.

Suite 100

Seattle, WA 98109

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Gamification, Offers

Over the past year we have watched gamification grow in popularity. With each company that implements gamification, the term seems to gain ground in becoming recognized as a successful solution to engagement and loyalty problems online. Gamification was even short listed for word of the year in Oxford’s Dictionary 2011. We decided to recognize the growing popularity and success of gamification and its implementations in this infographic below (because let’s face it, everything is better as an infographic).You can read more about it’s success on Forbes or ReadWrite Enterprise. A HUGE thanks to Matt Shobe and Chad Jacobson for their work on this!

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Gamification