How To Make a Product Recommendation Quiz (+3 Real Examples)
There’s one thing ecommerce shops don’t have that brick-and-mortar shops do: staff to help customers find the right products for their needs.
That’s where product recommendation quizzes can really make a difference by giving customers the personalized suggestions they crave. A 2021 McKinsey report found that 71% of consumers expect personalization when interacting with brands.
Plus, 72% of consumers say receiving personalized recommendations led them to purchase more products than originally planned, according to a 2022 Adobe Commerce study. It’s clear personalized product recommendation engines are a proven strategy for increasing customer engagement and conversions.
But is a product recommendation quiz right for your business? We’ll help you find the answer and learn how to create a recommendation quiz, as well as optimize your quiz landing page for conversions in this guide.
What is a product recommendation quiz?
A product recommendation quiz is an interactive, dynamic tool designed to personalize user experiences on your site.
The personalization aspect of a product quiz fosters a deeper connection between the brand and the customer, which increases engagement. Many ecommerce brands use quizzes to help their customers find the best products based on their unique tastes and requirements—and even upsell or cross-sell related products.
Overall, product recommendation quizzes provide multiple benefits to both your customer and your ecommerce store:
- Allow collection of customer data with consent
- Increase in customer engagement
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Boost conversion rates
- Educate customers on products and services
- Create an upselling opportunity
- Result in lower return rates
But before we get into how to create a product recommendation quiz, you first need to determine if it’s right for your shop.
Should you use a product recommendation quiz?
If you sell a single product or even a few products that serve distinct purposes, you probably don’t need a product recommendation quiz. Other forms of customer education, including your product pages, are likely a more cost-effective way to help customers be sure they’re getting the product they need.
For shops that offer dozens of products—especially products that are similar or difficult to choose between—a product recommendation quiz can reduce product return rates and improve customer satisfaction. Beauty products, fashion, and healthcare products are prime candidates for recommendation quizzes that help your customers discover the right products.
Even if your store falls into the latter category, though, don’t make the mistake of thinking that a product recommendation quiz will mean a guaranteed sales boost. That’s not always the case. And since these quizzes may require significant investments of time and money to create, running A/B tests is highly recommended to determine what works best for your audience.
3 product recommendation quiz examples
1. Stitch Fix personal styling service
Source: Stitch Fix
Stitch Fix’s online quiz helps you pinpoint your sizing and style, which then informs recommended products in the Stitch Fix store. Additionally, the brand’s stylists use your results to put together a personalized “Fix,” which is then mailed to you to try on.
Take note: The Stitch Fix quiz also asks customers what types of fashion they want to avoid. Asking what customers don’t like helps narrow down recommendations and improve satisfaction.
2. HUM Nutrition
Source: HUM Nutrition
Nutritional supplement company HUM knows it needs to build trust before users answer what could be viewed as invasive questions about their health goals. So the brand layers in social proof and expertise signals throughout the quiz to reassure users.
Take note: HUM offers users a bonus if they finish the quiz: a coupon for 30% off they can use on their recommended products. Incentives like this can motivate customers to make a purchase once they see your product recommendations.
3. Thunderworks
Source: Thunderworks
Knowing that stressed pets lead to stressed owners, Thunderworks, creator of the pet-calming Thundershirt, allows users to skip right to the results without providing an email address.
Of course, it takes a moment to calculate quiz results, but Thunderworks knows its target audience and includes an adorable GIF to entertain pet owners while they wait.
Take note: Thunderworks includes microcopy with its results pages to explain how the product works and why it’s effective—plus a photo of the product in action with specifications. The brand also links to additional related content like tips to help worried dog owners keep their pups calm during storms.
Discover more quiz inspiration: Check out our collection of landing page examples for ideas, tips, and inspiration.
How to make a product recommendation quiz
If a product recommendation quiz makes sense for your business and customer base, getting started may seem daunting. After all, quizzes need to be coded for an exponential number of choices.
Thankfully, there are quiz templates and builder tools available to help you—no code needed. You can also partner with an agency like SplitBase to create a quiz landing page, A/B test it against other types of landing pages, and help you optimize your conversion rate while delighting customers with personalized quiz results.
Let’s walk through what it takes to build a product recommendation quiz using one of these quiz design tools.
1. Define the purpose of your quiz
Your product recommendation quiz should tie into a business goal. For example, if your business goal is to improve customer conversion rates by the end of the quarter, your quiz should be designed with the purpose of converting customers in mind.
2. Segment your audience
Segmentation helps you recommend only products or services that resonate with different types of customers. Research your current customers to determine what behaviors, preferences, and other defining characteristics each segment has.
Once you’ve grouped and defined your audience segments, you can check to see what current customers within a segment have purchased. It’s highly likely that new customers who share characteristics with that segment will also be interested in those same products, making it easy to choose your recommendations.
This also helps you show quiz prompts to specific people. For example, you may decide to show only new site visitors a quiz pop-up, since new visitors likely don’t know as much about your products. This also means current customers don’t have to dismiss a pop-up.
3. Choose a quiz builder tool
Look for product recommendation quiz tools with no-code builders to make it easy to create your first quiz and update it later on. We’re fans of Jebbit and Octane AI.
Additionally, look for the following features in a quiz builder tool:
- Features an easy-to-use customer-facing interface
- Includes customizable colors and branding elements
- Ability to add calls to action (CTAs)
- Allows you to add images, videos, or GIFs
- Includes a progress indicator
- Allows you to customize results pages and lead gen forms
- Embeds easily into your website
- Uses a responsive design that’s optimized for mobile
These will improve your chances of engagement and conversion.
4. Write thoughtful questions
Your questions should be thoughtfully crafted to keep users engaged and avoid confusion. Additionally, providing options like “I’m not sure” or “Surprise me” can ease frustration if a user isn’t sure how to answer.
The number of questions you use in your quiz matters too. Quiz builder tool Octane AI recommends including five to 10 questions, otherwise, you’ll see a larger drop-off rate as customers get overwhelmed, distracted, or bored.
Keep in mind these additional tips when writing questions to avoid users abandoning your quiz:
- Keep questions short—around six to 10 words long—and use simple language.
- Start your quiz off with your most exciting question.
- Ensure questions that follow a sequence are placed logically.
- Keep difficult questions in the middle of the quiz.
- Make sure all your quiz questions have a purpose.
- Write questions that focus on one concept at a time.
Pro tip: Decide on quiz outcomes before you write questions. Knowing which outcome the questions are associated with makes crafting them easier.
5. Test and iterate
Your business is constantly evolving and so should your product recommendation quiz. Continuously refine your quiz based on new products, services, and features so customers get only the most relevant and available recommendations.
Additionally, user feedback and analytics may show a need to revisit your quiz to improve engagement and conversion. Interact found that ecommerce product recommendation quizzes saw a 37.6% average conversion rate if users got to the lead generation form—this jumps up to a 55.5% average conversion rate for those who fill out the form.
If your conversion and engagement rates are low, it’s time to take a look under the hood to A/B test and optimize your quiz landing page.
5 product recommendation quiz tools
1. Octane AI
Source: Octane AI
Using the power of AI to create conditional logic, Octane AI helps you build engaging quizzes that make scary-good product recommendations. Whether your customer needs a color match or needs help defining their style, the quiz builder’s toolkit makes it easy.
Octane AI also integrates with Klaviyo, Attentive, Zapier, Google Analytics, and more so you can create a seamless experience from your emails to your SMS marketing.
Pricing: Octane AI offers a free trial, and its plans start at $50 a month.
2. Typeform
Source: Typeform
Typeform is an online form platform that offers customizable templates for product recommendation quizzes. You can change fonts, colors, and background images or add your own content with Typeform’s no-code builder. It also features more than 20 question types, such as rankings and picture choices, to keep users engaged.
Typeform integrates with Salesforce, Google Analytics, Hubspot, Zapier, Slack, and Google Sheets so you can easily access your data.
Pricing: Typeform offers a free plan, and paid plans start at $25 a month when paid annually.
3. Jebbit
Source: Jebbit
Jebbit features a drag-and-drop builder for super simple quiz creation that includes automatically syncing products from your Shopify store.
It supports custom user experience flows that use a simple scoring system to assign quiz takers to the proper outcomes. Additionally, Jebbit comes with quiz-specific analytics that shows you the number of views, leads, mobile traffic, and more.
Jebbit also integrates with multiple apps ranging from Salesforce and Mailchimp to Braze and Hubspot.
Pricing: Jebbit allows you to get started for free, and you’ll need to book a demo to learn more about pricing.
4. RevenueHunt
Source: RevenueHunt
Known for shoppable quizzes built for Shopify and Shopify Plus, RevenueHunt also supports other ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, and BigCommerce. Its easy-to-use quiz builder allows you to write custom questions and results as well as match your brand identity with design options and custom CSS.
You’ll also be able to set up conditional logic with RevenueHunt’s free plan, which displays different questions based on a user’s previous answers. This further personalizes your recommendation quiz and keeps users engaged. RevenueHunt also integrates with Hubspot, Mailchimp, ReCharge, and more.
Pricing: RevenueHunt offers a free plan, and paid plans start at $29 per month when billed yearly.
5. Quizell
Source: Quizell
Quizell’s visual quiz designer is easy to use, and its analytics dashboard provides detailed insights on quiz views, starts, completion rate, and more. You can also set up conditional logic, or jump logic as Quizell calls it, to show different questions based on users’ previous answers.
Its quizzes integrate with Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, as well as Wix, Mailchimp, Malierlite, Omnisend, and more.
Pricing: Quizell offers a free plan, and paid plans start at $13 a month when billed yearly.
Product recommendation quiz best practices
1. Keep it short and sweet
Concision is the name of the game here. Keep users engaged with short questions and a short quiz.
2. Use images
It’s true that humans are visually driven. A study by Vero found that email marketing campaigns with images had a 42% higher click-through rate (CTR) than campaigns without images. And images aren’t just effective in email marketing—using images in your quiz makes choosing a response more fun and encourages users to complete your quiz.
3. Include a CTA
Once you’ve shared your product recommendations with users, give them a way to take immediate action with a CTA. Allow them to add the products to a cart, favorite them, and check out product pages for more information.
Additionally, adding a CTA for users who don’t finish the quiz can help you recoup lost conversions. By suggesting users check out your most popular or top-rated products, you may still end up with a sale even if they don’t finish the quiz and get a list of recommended products.
4. Add a progress bar
Let users know how long your quiz is by adding a progress bar or similar indicator. Additionally, copy that notes how many questions make up your quiz can encourage users to stick with it until the end knowing it’s not a huge time commitment.
5. Connect your CRM
Gather leads and important customer data by connecting your customer relationship management (CRM) platform to your quiz.
Additionally, connecting your CRM and other marketing platforms allows you to send follow-up messaging, such as a personalized email sequence, depending on how far the user gets, whether they complete the quiz, or whether they fill out the lead form.
6. Include an offer
Phil Kyprianou, founder of GothRider, saw lots of traction and conversion through quizzes on the GothRider site. One way the brand drove conversions was by including an offer at the top of the quiz results page.
“One thing we found out is getting the offer at the top of the answer (page) was better converting because people were seeing that first,” Kyprianou explains.
Engage and delight customers with optimized landing pages
Personalized recommendation quizzes are excellent for engaging both top-of-funnel and bottom-funnel traffic. But you’ll want to A/B test and optimize your quiz to find the best format, questions, and approach for these two different audiences.
It may take time, but figuring out how to optimize your quiz landing page for engagement and conversions can generate leads and sales for your business at a low cost.
To find out how we can help you optimize your ecommerce landing pages and quizzes and boost your conversion rates, contact us for a free CRO proposal today.
