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Business 2.0 - July 25, 2000

Game for Stickiness

A Bedford, Mass.-based startup called e-tractions is betting its games will promote Website stickiness.

The year-old company creates customized games that sit on client sites. On Freescholarships.com, a financial aid information site for college students, for example, e-tractions created "Propaganda," a perpetual trivia game with subjects ranging from Greek mythology to pop culture. On the site WebHire, a service site for human resource professionals, the e-tractions game questions players' knowledge about human-resource issues.

In an additional marketing twist, e-tractions' technology allows the game-hosting Website to mine game results, in real time, to determine the interests of players and push them toward special offers. Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst of new media for Cahners In-Stat Group, said the power of the e-tractions business model is innovative technology. "The biggest problem facing all ecommerce businesses today is the inability to keep customers on their sites," Kaufhold says. "e-tractions is unique in that it's the only company able to customize games with tracking capabilities that run on host sites-enabling owners to sense from players' answers what they really want. e-tractions' combination of technology and profiling ability is both unique and powerful."

Depending upon complexity, Websites pay from a few thousand dollars to $100,000 for customized games, which take about a week to create.