Typeform blog: Engage and win: How product quizzes transform e-commerce engagement

Imagine walking into your favorite boutique and seeing shelves stocked with products that are so on-point you feel like the shop owner personally handpicked them just for you. 

Each item is the perfect fit, color, style, and price—all curated to your style. That is the experience today’s online shoppers crave and, more importantly, expect. Yet many e-commerce brands struggle to deliver that personalized online shopping experience.

But, if you’re a brand expanding into e-commerce, personalization is a non-negotiable. With fierce competition and many e-commerce brands struggling to reach their audience, personalization can help consumers decide where to shop. 

Hint: they’ll choose the brands that deliver seamless shopping experiences and guide them to the right products faster.

Both new and established e-commerce brands are working harder than ever to convert online shoppers into paying customers. But they’re facing challenges like:

• Identifying and understanding their target audience

• Proper product positioning and effective marketing messages

• Converting visitors to buyers

• Creating a simple and pleasant customer experience

So, how are they overcoming these hurdles? Product recommendation quizzes.

Product recommendation quizzes are a simple yet powerful tool to not only combat common challenges in the online shopping arena but to boost e-commerce engagement, too. Find out what they are, why they’re so effective, and how to use quizzes to increase e-commerce sales, traffic, and time spent on your website.

Say you’re searching for skincare products for dry skin. You know you want moisturizing products, but you’re unsure which products to buy for your skin type. 

In a brick-and-mortar, you’d probably ask an employee for their recommendations or help finding items based on your needs. But with online shopping, finding the right products isn’t always so simple—especially on larger e-commerce websites with hundreds or thousands of items to choose from. 

That’s where product recommendation quizzes come in.

A product recommendation quiz is a fun, interactive way to offer personalized product suggestions to customers based on their responses to questions about their preferences, needs, and behaviors. And for e-commerce retailers, they’re one of the most effective ways to collect valuable information (zero-party data) about shoppers while driving sales.

There are a few types of quizzes you can engage customers with:

• Product match quiz. It asks customers what they’re searching for and uses their selections to deeply understand their shoppers and recommend ideal products based on specific needs or challenges. For example, a haircare brand might ask questions about your hair type, concerns, climate, and daily habits so they can recommend products tailored to you.

• Personality-based quiz. This quiz shares product recommendations that align with your customers’ personal traits, styles, or habits. They’re fun and work especially well for fashion, wellness, and beauty brands because they encourage customers to consider how products fit into their lifestyles.

• Gift guide/small catalog quiz. A gift guide quiz can help your customers choose gifts for others by narrowing down options based on the occasion, the recipient’s interests, and their relationship with the customer. They’re great for e-commerce brands with smaller selections and are especially popular during the holidays or key gift-giving seasons.

• Complementary products quiz: Help customers find additional products they’ll love by guiding them toward products that pair well together. You can use data about products they’ve already chosen or have shown interest in to inform your recommendations and increase the likelihood of add-on purchases

Now you know what product recommendation quizzes are. But what makes them so effective at boosting e-commerce engagement and converting shoppers into paying customers? Let’s find out!

Instead of forcing shoppers to scroll endlessly through product pages or randomly select items, you can personalize their experiences by tailoring product recommendations to match their needs and preferences. This not only delights customers but increases sales.

Studies show that too many choices can make decision-making harder, leading to decision paralysis—where customers abandon their cart or skip shopping on your website altogether. 

You can avoid overwhelming customers with options by using a product recommendation quiz to guide them toward products and make adding them to their cart effortless. By simplifying the shopping experience, you’ll increase your likelihood of converting and getting repeat customers.

A product recommendation quiz gives shoppers a better, more personalized customer experience—improving customer retention and brand affinity. 56% of online shoppers are more likely to return to an e-commerce website that recommends products. 

With quizzes, you learn more about shoppers by asking them questions… but you can also share more information about your brand and products to build that know-like-trust factor. 

By listening to customers’ challenges and explaining why certain products are ideal, you’ll motivate them to buy from you. And nothing builds trust like listening to your customers and making perfect-match product suggestions based on their answers.

By recommending complementary products, you can use a product recommendation quiz to increase your average order value. This approach encourages customers to purchase multiple items that work well together (and gives them a better brand experience overall).

Product recommendation quizzes provide a wealth of customer information that you can leverage over time to boost sales, drive repeat purchases, and more. Even if you don’t convert customers immediately, you can use your quiz data to nurture visitors.

Send automated follow-up emails that remind customers of recommended products, incentivize purchases with a special offer, or nudge shoppers to redeem an abandoned cart.

Research shows that personalized product recommendations and marketing messaging can increase revenue by up to 25%. But personalization demands personal data—essential insights that quiz responses can provide like shoppers’ individual preferences and needs.

You can then use this zero-party data to personalize the entire customer experience in the future. 

A product recommendation quiz doesn’t just benefit shoppers—it helps e-commerce brands and marketers, too. From increasing time on site to gathering valuable data, quizzes can increase customer acquisition, retention, and revenue. Here’s how.

When you present shoppers with interactive content (like a quiz) that requires active participation, visitors are more likely to stay on your website longer. 

Research shows buyers spend 2-3x more time on pages with interactive content than static content. This increased time can lead to higher conversion rates, stronger customer loyalty, and a higher likelihood of repeat visits. 

A product recommendation quiz instantly provides value to shoppers while simplifying their buyer journey. This enhanced e-commerce personalization creates a better overall customer experience, driving sales and repeat customers for your e-commerce shop.

Product recommendation quizzes improve data collection by giving you rich zero-party data to tailor future campaigns, create better products, improve personalization, and more. 

You can leverage these insights to craft more successful campaigns with targeted product recommendations and relevant marketing messages that nurture shoppers beyond their first purchase. 

Returns can be costly for e-commerce brands—consumers returned products worth a staggering $743 billion in 2023. A product recommendation quiz matches customers with products aligned with their tastes and needs, reducing the chances of returns. 

Instead of purchasing more items than they want or need and returning what doesn’t work, customers can hand-select the right products from the start. 

Online shopping is changing fast as innovative trends usher in a new era for e-commerce—and, no surprise, e-commerce personalization is at the forefront. Here’s what you can expect to see more of:

• AI-driven personalization. AI-powered personalization will overtake traditional e-commerce personalization tactics as more brands turn to AI to rapidly analyze customer data and offer tailored product recommendations. These hyper-personalized shopping experiences will help brands improve overall customer satisfaction, sales, and e-commerce engagement—but they’ll also set a new precedent for e-commerce brands, making the competition even more fierce.

• Privacy-focused personalization. With growing concerns over data privacy, businesses are adopting privacy-first personalization strategies, like gathering zero-party and first-party data. These types of data come directly from customers through interactive methods like product recommendation quizzes or surveys, which enable laser-accurate personalization that respects individuals’ privacy.   

Product recommendation quizzes do more than engage customers—they increase time on site, gather valuable zero-party data, reduce returns, and create a truly personalized shopping experience. And in an increasingly competitive e-commerce market, they can help give you a competitive edge. 

Need inspiration? Check out our free product recommendation quiz templates. You can customize them to engage customers, sell more, generate leads, and give your brand the best chance of success.