Spin the wheel generator: Step-by-step prize wheel creation

Resources

In this article, we’re going into the nitty gritty, step-by-step of creating your spin the wheel game.

This article’s for you if you already know the nature of your project, what you’re trying to achieve, and you want the advanced class on prize wheel creation.

Selecting the best spin the wheel maker

Of course, the success of your spin the wheel game, whether it’s a prize wheel for marketing, or a spin the wheel for an employee experience campaign (EX), all depends on the platform you use to create it: the spin the wheel generator.

Modern spin the wheels are digital creations, and the platform or generator you use to build yours is comparable to the bricks, mortar, wiring, and even the contractors that put together a house.

Make a mistake in choosing the right generator and you’re limiting the ceiling of your campaign’s performance across the board. You want to go “enterprise-grade” – by which we mean choosing a spin the wheel generator that’s built to meet business needs.

Of course, there’s some variety in how adaptable and capable a lot of gamification platforms or prize wheel templates that adopt this label actually are.

From our experience – based on innovating and developing our spin the wheel game, as well as a comprehensive range of other instant win mechanics and other game types for businesses to use over the past decade – you should be looking out for the following things:

• Comprehensive branding options: Including white label and custom URL options to make your virtual wheel spinner entirely your own
• Extensive prize input options: Random wheels are (nearly) always about the prizes, so extensive settings to customise these are essential for adapting to different business projects
• Multiple ways to share: In addition to a direct link, you’re looking for native QR code generation, and embed codes for hosting on web pages to save time
• More than just a random picker wheel: Spin the wheel is a great instant win game, but to subscribe to a platform and learn how it works, you need more than just random prize distribution mechanisms – you want a comprehensive gamification platform with multiple game types to adapt to multiple internal and external projects

The Drimify platform handles all of these requirements and then some. So you can customise the design of your spin the wheel game, but be confident that what you learn from this project will transfer to countless other projects, and that you’ll have the digital tools you need to engage audiences ready and waiting in the catalogue to be customised to your needs.

Steps to successful prize wheel creation

Now we’ll talk you through the A to Z of spin the wheel game creation. We’ll assume that:

• You already know the aims of your project and have appropriate prizes defined
• You have approved copy, graphic assets, and a brand book to work from
• You’re using the Drimify gamification platform and its spin the wheel generator

However, even if you’re not using Drimify’s spin the wheel template, this advice is broad enough to be applicable to any platform with prize wheel building functionality.

Our spin the wheel template – and all our game mechanics – are divided into what we call creation steps. Each creation step corresponds to a different aspect of the final user experience (UX).

Pro tip: If you’ve not already, why not create a free account on the Drimify platform, and create your game step by step with us.

1. Branding: The foundation of your spin the wheel game

It might appear as the second step on the spin the wheel builder, but your game should always start with the branding. These don’t pertain to any one aspect of the user experience, but are global, so the settings will be reflected at every stage.

Here, you can define:

• Theme: Here you can set a light or dark theme, which will either make your game appear lighter with black buttons by default, or darker with white buttons by default (these can be adjusted through advanced theme customisation).
• Logo: Upload your logo and set how large it’s to appear in your random wheel spinner game.
• Background: Upload an image or set a colour for your background, or, if you want to go the extra mile, upload a purposely edited video to loop in the background for a more visually engaging end product. You can also adjust the opacity filter for a more obscured effect.
• Advanced theme customisation: This allows you complete control over button colours, button shapes, text details, and forms backgrounds.

This is the foundation of how your custom spinner game will appear, so each element set here should adhere to your brand guidelines, but also work well together.

Once all the fields here are set, it’s worth previewing your game to check the spin the wheel game’s background looks right.

Pro tip: Once this is all defined, most of the heavy lifting is done. Good graphic design on the branding side will ensure a benchmark of quality to the UX of your spin the wheel game.

2. First impressions: Defining your picker wheel start screen

There’s a difference between having approved copy, and having copy that works for the start of your spin the wheel game – or really any gamification experience.

Think about how many times you’ve seen an advert crop up when you’ve been scrolling through social media, and some uncompelling AI voice starts trying to sell you a hair cream or an alternative to aerosol deodorant made out of magic bark, and how quickly you’ve scrolled on. This is content failing to engage the audience. This is content that has quite literally failed to grab your attention.

In the same way dialogue conventions get better engagement for video social media adverts, some copy conventions work better for gamified experiences like spin the wheel games – and they’re never more important than on your start screen, where it’s make or break.

Focus on these ideas:

• Only say just enough to get them to hit the play button and go to the next screen, like the prize or the hook (too much information that isn’t 100% necessary will hurt your KPIs), you still have intermediate screens and your end screen to sell your product or make your call to action (CTA)
• Strong title that’s one or two lines long at the most
• Short copy, ideally no more than a line or two, broken up in a way that’s easy to read

Be sure to test this on the type of device your spin the wheel will end up being played on. Because digital wheel spinners made on enterprise-grade platforms are built mobile first, they’re dynamic, and will adapt to different screen sizes.

Spin the wheel start screen visual

You can (and should) also include a start screen image or video, that will appear just below your title and just above your description.

There is in-platform guidance for the size and specs of this visual, but the content of it should not only be attention-grabbing and relevant, but also complementary to your background.

Other spin the wheel start screen considerations

From the start screen, at least on Drimify, you can also choose to disable your start screen and send participants straight to the wheel, define the social media sharing settings, set up age gating (if for example, your business is in iGaming, where a spin the wheel is an ideal promotional tool as it’s similar to the games and wheels on your site, this could help you deter people under the legal gambling age in your audience from participating), and enable and input your terms and conditions around your prize wheel.

3. Main event time: Designing your wheel and prize end screens

The game configuration creation step is where we set your random wheel’s prizes’ segment designs and end screens, and attach promo codes (generic or unique) to them.

Because the image a player lands on determines if their spin of the wheel is a win or a loss, we also define the related end screen here too – one is conditional on the other.

Pro tip: Separate the game visuals from reality. If you have 10 different prizes to load up on your prize wheel, but the real life visuals look weird and inconsistent together, use icons or illustrations of the same style for the wheel, and use your photograph for the related end screen.

Visually, you can also define:

• The button design and frame colour: This is a small detail but can accent the visuals of your wheel to make it your own. Think about the red, white, and black of Youtube, the blue, red, and white of Pepsi, or even the claret and blue of West Ham United for examples. Using a brand’s primary colour for the background is given huge visual weight by being able to include those secondary colours to fill in the prize wheel infrastructure.
• Segment background colours: You can define alternating colours for your prize wheel segments. This way, you could upload your in-game prize images on transparent backgrounds, and then have the wheel automatically colour in the backgrounds the way you define here.

Prize management on your spin the wheel game

Your digital spin the wheel’s prize distribution is done at random through the algorithm, but you can exercise some control over it in the game configuration setting.

You could:

• Opt to have everyone spinning the wheel win until all prizes have been distributed
• Limit the prizes a participant wins according to various parameters

Additionally, in the field for each prize, you can set a start and end date and time, which will determine the availability of that prize within the overall dates of your spin the wheel.

4. Tell your branded story: Intermediate screens around your prize wheel

This is the mark of truly being an enterprise-grade spin the wheel generator, as it makes it more than just a prize delivery system. It makes it a customisable user journey you can use to engage and influence users and tackle legitimate business goals.

You can have intermediate screens before and/ or after players play the picker wheel.

You have options for:

• Data collection: With extensive customizability so you can get essential contact and demographic info from your wheel, as well as user preferences and even opt-ins
• Content: Be it in video or audio format, or through text and images, you can include screens purely dedicated to your messaging.
• Social media: Choose from the popular sites and invite participants of your digital spin the wheel game to follow you on them.

For intermediate screens placed after your picker wheel, you can set their appearance to be conditional based on the result.

5. Test and optimise: Make sure your spin the wheel is campaign ready

Once you spin the wheel game has been built, it’s time to put it through a battery of tests so it can be optimised.

Much like with the branding, you now need to run through the whole prize wheel with your most critical approach.

You should be looking to optimise things like:

• Scroll length: Are you having to scroll up and down through any screens of the game? If you are, it might be because there’s too much text, or because your data collection form is too long. In addition to copy editing for brevity, you may also find yourself having two data collection forms, one at the start for the basics, and one at the end, conditional if players win a prize, if for example, you need their postal address or a preference to deliver the prize.
• Actual game play experience: Are there too many screens? Are they in the right order? Are they all necessary? You may decide to rejig them as you play through the game with your target audience persona in mind.

Start creating your spin the wheel games today

The advice in this article can be taken and applied now matter what platform you use to build your prize wheel, but we’ve built the Drimify platform while working businesses around the world, and we really do think it’s the best in class.

It’s free to set up a Drimify account, and you can start experimenting with the spin the wheel generator right now.

When you think your picker wheel is ready, you can even test it for free using the free trial.

Want to know more?