Random wheel for awarding prizes: all you need to know

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Looking for a digital tool to distribute prizes and generate brand engagement but unsure how they work? Seen a few digital spin the wheel games and think they could be just the ticket?

This is the article for you. We’re going to explain everything you could need to know about random prize wheels, and how you can start using them to achieve your business goals.

This is going to be practical advice for you to create your own spin the wheel game.

What is a random prize wheel and how do they work?

A random prize wheel – sometimes called a picker wheel – is a segmented wheel, filled with prizes, names, or something else pertinent to the wheel’s makers, which spins, and depending on which segment it lands on, delivers a result.

It could be a list of names, a list of chores, a list of activities, or a list of prizes – all visually displayed on the wheel.

Old school physical random wheels work much like a game of spin the bottle. They’re governed by the velocity of the spin, the aerodynamics and mechanics of the mechanism, and the segments’ starting positions.

Digital spin the wheel games, by contrast, deliver a completely random result. Whatever the visual actuation method, you’re starting the wheel the same way every time, and an algorithm is determining the result.

As the architect of a digital spin the wheel – a possibility for businesses of all sizes through prize wheel builders on gamification platforms like Drimify – you can exercise some control over prize dates and winning conditions, but we’ll go into the specifics later.

The popularity and power of gamified prize wheels

Gamified wheels that can distribute winnings and prizes have been popular in the form of roulette variations since the 1700s. The concept of a random wheel deciding our fates – for fortune or disaster – is all tied up in religion and philosophy, but the idea really started cooking on American game shows in the mid to late 20th century.

It’s almost hypnotic – a spinning visualisation of what could be. A well designed, eye-catching random wheel with a list of possible prizes draws the eye and compels people to participate.

Why businesses use prize wheels for engagement and loyalty

Every business is trying to get a target audience’s attention and convince said audience that what they’re offering is what they want to purchase. Even on an internal level, they’re trying to engage their employees and their stakeholders to do X, Y and Z, or think or feel a certain way. They also enjoy collecting data on these subjects to quantify their efforts.

They need something that not only cuts through, but provides the numbers that proves that it cuts through and for all the reasons mentioned, online random wheels can carry a lot of weight.

The prize and the spinning mechanism or display captivates and engages the participant, and through the digital user journey, players are exposed to branded messaging and calls to action (CTAs), influencing them to think a certain way, feel a certain way, or take a desired action.

The CTA could be an invitation to connect on LinkedIn in a B2B setting, or it could be a hyperlink to download a loyalty app in a B2C setting. A good random wheel generator gives businesses a lot of variation in how they can customise premium user journeys around this simple and intuitive game mechanic.

Which industries benefit most from prize wheels?

Historically, random prize wheels and gamification in a larger sense has been more utilised in customer-facing situations, and was favoured by businesses unconstrained by legacies of conservatism. They were also initially favoured by bigger businesses who could afford to custom develop their own digital spin the wheels or hire third party experts.

As mobile technology has come on, and customised digital prize wheel apps have become more accessible, and as a lot of industries such as finance and telecoms with reputations for being “serious” have modernised, there’s almost no setting where they can’t make a huge difference.

For examples of use cases:

• Business using email marketing can hyperlink to digital random wheels in a button
• Any business with a physical premises like a shop or a gym can link a spin the wheel game in a QR code on posters and other premium signage
• Restaurants and cafes can include QR codes to spin the wheels on their menus
• Businesses exhibiting at events can use custom screens and/ or QR codes to have visitors access spin the wheels through their phones

So trick question: the answer is all of them. More than 1,500 businesses are using Drimify’s random prize wheel builder across industries and business functions, from finance, to agriculture, to luxury retail, and much, much more.

How to use a random wheel to achieve your business goals

Here’s where we go through the broad strokes of how to make your random wheel for your business goals.

It all occurs across three phases.

1. Decide your goals and how they relate to your spin the wheel

Here’s the thing about random prize wheels, and gamification in general: we’re not entertaining people and rewarding them for the sake of it. It’s got to tangibly contribute to a business goal.

If you’re looking to promote a new product and you can swing an introductory special price, through Drimify’s spin the wheel builder, you could make it exclusively available through unique, single use promo codes you can attach to the game.

You can then set it to 100% winner and ensure everyone who participates is educated about the product, and is given that extra special incentive to buy.

If you have any need to randomly allocate information or prizes, and want a highly visual solution, a customised spin the wheel is one of the most effective digital tools you can use.

2. Load your wheel with prizes and set the conditions of your campaign

With a digital random prize wheel, how you set and manage your prizes is virtually unlimited, albeit, still randomised by the algorithm.

You can load up an unlimited number of prizes, and define their quantities, and the wheel will display as many of them as it can for each play.

If you wish, you can also:

• Limit the number of prizes per participant so one player doesn’t win multiple prizes by playing the most
• Set the time and date of each prize individually, so you can ensure grand prizes don’t go on the first play, and have variety with what can be won over the course of a campaign
• Set it so every player wins so long as there is a remaining quantity of prizes to be won

3. Put in place a winning design and user journey that helps your brand shine

The Drimify spin the wheel maker gives you all sorts of design options for your game, to really tailor a premium user experience that corresponds to your brand guidelines.

In addition to all the branding options like logo, font, button design, and colour details, you can also use intermediate screens – either before or after the wheel spinner – to get across key information.

Here you can include a video, or an image, and text.

You can also put your data collection form before or after the wheel spin, and if it goes after, you could even make it conditional on participants winning a specific prize. For example, if you only needed a postal address for a prize that needs to be posted, you could set it so that only participants who win that prize are asked for it, optimising the user journey no matter what prize a player wins.

How long will this take? With Drimify’s spin the wheel template, this could take less than a morning’s work. The game is built, you just need to input your graphics, your copy, and tweak the configuration settings to get your desired user journey.

4. Test your random wheel thrice, launch once

This bit is of huge importance.

Once you’ve built your prize wheel game, test it! Check it works. Check the text isn’t too long. Test your online spin the wheel game on mobile phones if you’re expecting your target audience to play it on mobile phones. Test your prize wheel on a tablet if it’s going to be played on a tablet at an event or physical premises.

When you’ve finished testing, clear all the data to restore the prize volumes and clear up your data export for your campaign.

5. Assess your spin the wheel campaign’s performance, optimise and repeat

Gamification through spin the wheel games works best when used regularly.

Why?

Because every user action on a Drimify game like spin the wheel generates data for you to analyse. See how many people viewed the game, how many engaged with the game, and how many people actually completed your game.

Then you can optimise the prizes, the design of your wheel, and the copy before your next campaign. You could also compare the stats from your spin the wheel games against slot machine games and scratch card games – Drimify gives you options for instant wins and other game types. Over time, you can see what works well for your audience, and what elements could use improvement.

Additionally, repeated gamification through spin the wheel and instant win games also conditions your audience to the format, and helps you build loyalty over time.

Choosing the right prize wheel generator or platform

Of course, overall success depends on choosing the right spin the wheel generator or platform.

We built the Drimify platform based on real business needs, so it’s what we’d refer to as “enterprise grade,” with a high performing random wheel template, as well as a range of other instant win options, and a comprehensive library of other game mechanic types too.

Create a free account and start building to see just what’s possible.

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