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by politikus 5226 days ago
Hi,

I think you could market it this way :

You are in the language learning industry. In learning, pratice is key. Learning is a journey (takes a some/lot of time). (expertise is 10 000 hours of work/experience)

What is good about learning is there are levels (ie. beginner, intermediate, advanced). For the software/app maker, it means there are different needs to answer. For your potential user, it may mean, there is a potential long term gratification "I am a beginner user today, and tommorrow I can become an advanced user". "I can make progress."

- How to make your visitors sin up ? Break down the different japanese apprenticeship levels. Show your user, examples of instant gratification. Even if they are beginner, they can get something.

- How to make your users stay and use your app ? Gratification at every little step they make. ie. Every time they write a good answer.

In other words, I think adding a layer of gamification would be interesting for you. It would spark your visitors interest, grow your user's engagement.

- How to make people come ? Maybe by allowing your users to challenge their friends. Ervery time your user reach a milestone, allow him to post on Twitter/Facebook something like this : "In two weeks, I allready completed X,Y,Z levels of Japanese. What about you ?" (far from perfect, but you get the point).

Having a freemium business model is a good idea. It lowers the barrier entry for the user.

In addition to that: - Define the the user tipping point : when are they addicted. What does it means to be addicted to your app. - Define the right metrics to analyze.

Many startups in the learning industry have successfully implemented a gamification layer in their application. You may take a look at codecademy.com and veri.com

HTH and Good luck.

PS: Great ratings show you're into something.

1 comments

Thanks for the great ideas. I'll think about how to add more gamification and some social aspects as well. I think you're on to something with the levels and seeing the path towards the next level.

For the moment, I'm at least planning a web interface where you can see your how you're doing and get more details about your progress than on a small phone screen.

Codeacademy is nice, but if I were you, I'd study the ultimate Japanese site in the entire web: alljapaneseallthetime.com . Gamification is nice, but your customers already are motivated to learn Japanese. They just want something that can effectively get them up to speed, and increase their confidence. Rather than have points/badges, tell them they just learned 50% of the most popular Japanese words after 1 week.
Ok. If I were you, I would keep in mind "deep focus on core features of the app, then and only then, let's add social/gamification layers."