Grote Speelgoed App for Bol.com

Agency

DEPT® (Freelance)

Client

Bol.com

Services

UI design

Summary

Bol.com is the largest online retailer in The Netherlands. Each year they publish the Grote Speelgoedboek. A book full with presents to celebrate the Dutch holiday Sinterklaas. Kids can explore everything Bol.com has to offer for this segment. To enrich this experience and to get kids even more excited for this holiday, Bol.com was looking for a way to bring this book even more to life. The result: Grote Speelboek App for Android and iOS, the biggest interactive Sinterklaas experience yet.

Challenge

One of the main challenges was to keep the engagement at a high level. To really entertain the kids. It should be fun and the kids should have a reason to come back to the app. Another big challenge was usability and accessibility. We needed to make sure that all the kids were able to use the app, from ages 4 to 12. There’s a big skill gap, with kids not being able to read yet and kids that don’t have the experience to use a digital product.

Solution

One of the main pillars to increase engagement was storytelling. We’ve created a main story in and even around the app, in the form of a campaign. This story is the core of the entire experience and closes the gap between the offline (the book) and online (the app) experience.

In short, the story is about Sinterklaas who needs help of the kids. He needs help to retrieve presents he lost during his trip from Spain to The Netherlands. Kids could help by playing tons of different games, which were all very educative and had small learning curves, to remain challenged. More than 6.5 million of these games were played during this holiday. On top of that, children were also able to scan toys from the book and create their wishlist, which was very convenient for parents.

Overall the kids had a lot of fun using the app. It was a big succes, with increased engagement and therefore also very beneficial for Bol.com. As an extra reward, the Grote Speelgoed App won a Dutch Interactive Award in 2022.

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