Tradimo's Sebastian Kuhnert Discusses Gamification and FX Compatibility

Forex Magnates sat down with Sebastian Kuhnert, co-founder and managing director of Tradimo, for his stance on gamification and its respective impact and future for the FX industry.

1. In what ways is gamification suited for FX or other trading instruments?

Gamification generally resonates well with the human mind since we are driven by seeking fulfillment and avoiding pain. When something is divided into small chunks and designed with user rewards in mind, it helps overcome the resistance to trying something new – a resistance which many people have out of fear of pain.

With these factors in mind, gamification is very well suited for the financial markets because many people are afraid of trading and therefore don’t learn more and don’t open trading accounts.

You could argue that leveraged trading is too risky or serious to be made more attractive through gamification. That’s why our approach to gamification in this area focuses on education - i.e. through our Online Trading school www.tradimo.com and our game www.tradimoplay.com.

2. You say that trading can be a scary prospect for many individuals. In what ways does Tradimo help alleviate these fears and enhance their market exposure?

On tradimo.com, our learn section emphasizes a strategic, analytical approach towards trading. Our users can increase their knowledge about trading money management, trading psychology and benefit from the recommendations we give on how to approach trading as a business.

In each of these lessons, people can test their knowledge via quizzes to ensure their understanding is correct before they apply their skills with a broker. This approach gives people a lot of confidence. In addition, we’ve got a community where users evaluate each other’s trades and get replies to their questions within 24 hours. This really helps to build trust.

3. Do you have any future plans to permeate the mobile trading market with your apps or development?

Yes, tradimo play has a mobile-first strategy. We believe that our target audience - which consists of people who haven’t yet made the conscious decision that they want to trade - spends the majority of their leisure time on their mobile phones. That’s the place where we need to reach them.

4. What makes Tradimo unique compared to other competitors, namely others who utilize gamification technology?

For tradimo.com, it’s the quality and extent of the learning materials. To produce the highest quality online training modules, an immense amount of focus and expertise is required. We have made a significant investment in our team, which has involved hedge fund and prop traders, instructional designers, writers, graphics and video designers as well as voice artists and translators. Together, we have created more than 800,000 words and over 250 videos, in addition to hundreds of recorded webinars we’re running on www.tradimo.com/tv.

For tradimo play, it’s the focus on the development of a high quality game instead of just a gamified demo account which gives us a competitive advantage. We believe this has the potential to reach a wider audience.

5. What role does education play for new traders or users?

Educating yourself about trading is the only alternative to a trial and error approach for self-traders. On a deeper level, it’s a great way to find your own trading style, get an overview over how different elements in the markets work together and gain an understanding of all of the options available to you in the world of trading.

As an absolute beginner, education can be what actually introduces you to the fact that online trading, forex, CFDs and leverage even exist.

For brokers, education and collaborations with sites such as tradimo is key to growing the pool of target customers. Brokers can reap significant benefits from educating traders, which is why we’re offering the ability to partner with us exclusively on the launch of new languages.

6. How does Tradimo disseminate information and preferences from prospective users or traders – does this process help foster new developments?

Firstly, there’s the forum, webinars and offline community events where we meet and interact with users on a personal level. These users tell us directly what they would like to learn more about and we identify any areas in which they are struggling so that we can provide additional support.

Secondly, we’re integrating feedback mechanisms into new developments. The tradimo play game will be released to a limited group of active testers and sharers first. It will be developed according to the lean start-up methodology where user feedback is a constant theme.

On tradimo.com, we gather user interest and preferences before we develop new content or schedule a webinar. Our Tradimo Tradipedia app inside Tradable provides the user with the ability to send us terms they would like an explanation for. Generally, you could say that user feedback gives the whole team a different kind of energy that sparks great developments.

7. In what capacity do you see gamification applications or platforms in 2015 and beyond?

I think it’s evolving into the new standard. As technology becomes more advanced, there’s no reason not to guide user behaviour through the application of what we know about human psychology. We are seeing significant interest in seeing demos of the tradimo play game from banks and brokers across the globe, who recognise what a powerful client acquisition tool it will be.