Nitro.

How Nitro Works

At its core, Nitro is about measuring and driving revenue-generating activity on your website. The list of possible activities is limited only by your imagination. For some ideas, check out the list on our wiki.

The key thing to remember is that Nitro isn't about overall site traffic and page views, it's about tracking all the specific activities that each individual user to your website engages in. If you're only listening to the crowd, how can you hope to understand, motivate and incent your individual users?

People have fundamental needs and desires - for reward, status, achievement, self-expression, competition, and altruism among others. These needs are universal, and cross generations, demographics, cultures and genders. Is your website doing anything to address these needs? Most aren't.

There's a secret, and game designers have known it for years. There are mechanics that you can use to address these needs, and in the process incent, motivate and engage your users. Nitro gives you the power to leverage these mechanics for your brands and online properties:

Points	People love points - they love to earn them and to achieve them. This makes them incredible motivators, as this New York Times article points out. Points can be used as a virtual currency, as an indicator of status and seniority, and even to enable users to unlock content or privileges. Points are primarily a Reward mechanism, but also leverage Status, Achievement and Competition.
Levels	Whether it's belts in karate, gold/silver/bronze in a frequent flyer program, or levels in World of Warcraft, levels are a way of indicating to a user that they've reached a stage of accomplishment, and should be afforded a certain amount of respect in a community. Levels give your users a ladder of goals that they can work their way up. Levels are primarily a Status mechanism, but also leverage Achievement and Competition.
Challenges	People love having goals, they love feeling like they're working toward something. Through the use of Challenges (also known as Achievements, Badges, Trophies), you can give your users missions to accomplish (e.g. "Make 20 forum posts and Review 40 videos") and then reward them for doing so. Challenges are also an extremely powerful way to drive traffic to new and underperforming properties or sections of your site. Challenges are primarily an Achievement mechanism, but also leverage Reward, Status and Competition.
Virtual Goods	When people create something, they love it, because it's uniquely theirs and it expresses their individuality. Virtual Goods enable your users to spend the points they earn to customize a Virtual Room/Canvas or an Avatar. This gives your users a place to spend their points, a reason to want to earn, and it becomes a great focal point for creativity, competition and self-expression in your community. Virtual Goods are primarily a Self Expression mechanism, but also leverage Reward, Status and Competition.
Leaderboards	Every game ever made has a high-score table. It's aspirational, it's fame, it's your name in lights. It's also a way to see how you're doing against your friends and against everyone else. Most games only have one because there's only one metric that they're measuring, which is score. Using Nitro, you can do leaderboards on any site activity that you like (ie Who has shared the most articles, Who has posted the most to the forums, Who has uploaded the most videos). Leaderboards are primarily a Competition mechanism, but also leverage Status and Achievement.
Gifting & Charity	In any community, the ability for individuals to give and receive gifts is an important one, with deep social implications. A powerful related mechanic is to "do good for others while I do something for myself". Examples of this include raising money for Breast Cancer research through eating Yoplait yogurt, as well as saving the rainforest by playing games on Facebook. Gifting & Charity are primarily Altruism mechanisms, but also leverage Status, Achievement and Competition.

Read about Driving Revenue with Nitro...