Imagine stepping into your favorite boutique and finding shelves perfectly stocked with items that seem hand-picked just for you. Every piece is the right fit, color, style, and price – a truly curated experience.
That’s the level of personalized experience today’s online shoppers crave and, frankly, expect. Yet, many e-commerce businesses still struggle to deliver that personal touch.
And the e-commerce sites that can’t figure it out are getting left behind. Recent data shows a significant percentage of shoppers are more likely to shop on an e-commerce site that offers personalized recommendations.
So, if you're growing into e-commerce, personalization is a must. It can be the deciding factor in whether customers choose your store or a competitor’s. Shoppers are gravitating toward brands that provide seamless experiences and quickly guide them to the right products.
The ROI potential of personalization is why e-commerce brands are working harder than ever to convert online shoppers into paying customers. But many are facing challenges, including:
- Identifying and deeply understanding their target audience.
- Effectively positioning products and crafting compelling marketing messages.
- Converting website visitors into paying customers.
- Creating a simple and enjoyable customer experience (CX).
So, how are successful e-commerce brands tackling these challenges? With product recommendation quizzes powered by betterfeedback.ai.
Product recommendation quizzes are a simple yet powerful tool for combating common online shopping challenges and boosting e-commerce engagement. We'll explore why they're so effective for e-commerce personalization and how you can leverage quizzes, designed and deployed with betterfeedback.ai, to increase sales, website traffic, and time spent on your site.
First, what is a product recommendation quiz?
Imagine you're searching for skincare products to combat your dry skin. You need something moisturizing, but you’re unsure which products are best for your skin type. Something too light won't help, while a heavy moisturizer will cause breakouts.
In a physical store, you'd likely ask a salesperson for recommendations. However, finding the right products online isn’t always as easy, particularly on large e-commerce sites with hundreds or thousands of items.
That's where product recommendation quizzes, enhanced by betterfeedback.ai, come in.
A product recommendation quiz is an engaging, interactive method for offering personalized product suggestions based on a customer's responses to questions about their preferences, needs, and behaviors. For e-commerce retailers, they are highly effective for collecting valuable information (like zero-party data) about shoppers while driving sales.
The different types of product recommendation quizzes
Want to use product recommendation quizzes to boost e-commerce engagement? Here are a few options:
- Product match quiz: These quizzes ask customers about their needs and use the answers to deeply understand shoppers and recommend ideal products. For example, a haircare brand might ask about your hair type, concerns, climate, and daily habits to recommend tailored products.
- Personality-based quiz: These fun quizzes uncover a shopper’s personality and then offer product recommendations that align with their responses. If a quiz reveals you’re a "Glam Goddess," the recommendations might include bold lipsticks or glittery eyeshadows based on answers that show you like glam makeup.
- Gift guide/small catalog quiz: These quizzes help customers choose gifts by narrowing down options based on the occasion, recipient’s interests, and their relationship with the customer. These are great for e-commerce brands with smaller selections and are especially popular during the holidays.
- Complementary products quiz: These quizzes help customers find additional products they'll love by recommending items that pair well together. Use data about products they've already chosen or shown interest in to inform your recommendations and increase add-on purchases.
7 Reasons Product Recommendation Quizzes are so effective
Product recommendation quizzes, when used effectively, increase e-commerce engagement and create a more personalized online shopping experience. Here are some benefits:
1. Personalize the Customer Experience
Whether it’s a personality-based quiz or a gift guide, product recommendation quizzes create a personalized experience because the recommendations are based on your answers–on you. They give shoppers the e-commerce personalization they crave from today’s online brands.
Instead of forcing shoppers to scroll endlessly through product pages or randomly select items, you personalize their experiences by tailoring product recommendations to match their needs and preferences. This not only delights customers but increases sales.
2. Minimize decision fatigue, maximizing the likelihood of conversion
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—even if you have a large catalog—with a product recommendation quiz that guides them toward perfect-fit products (and makes adding them to their carts effortless). By simplifying the shopping experience, you’ll increase your likelihood of converting customers.
3. Product Match Quizzes Encourage Customer Loyalty
A product recommendation quiz creates a better, more personalized customer experience by taking the guesswork out of which product fits a shopper’s needs, using their answers to guide them to the right products. This tailored approach improves customer retention and brand affinity.
4. They build trust and make buying a no-brainer
Product recommendation quizzes help you learn more about your shoppers by asking them relevant 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 build the trust necessary to motivate shoppers to buy from you. And nothing builds trust like listening to your customers and making perfect-match product suggestions based on their answers.
5. Product recommendation quizzes increase the average order value
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).
If you sell sunglasses, for example, you could suggest a cleaning kit, a case, or even another pair to go with pairs they were looking at previously or purchased in the past.
6. They help identify and nurture potential customers
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.
7. They provide powerful customer data and insights
Research shows that personalized product recommendations and marketing can increase revenue by up to 25%. But personalization demands personal data—essential insights that product recommendation 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.
Benefits of Product Recommendation Quizzes for E-commerce Brands
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.
Keep Shoppers on Your Site Longer
When you present shoppers with interactive content (like a quiz) that requires active participation, visitors are more likely to stay on your site longer.
And 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, unbreakable customer loyalty, and a higher likelihood of repeat visits.
Create a personalized shopping experience (and better customer experience)
A product recommendation quiz provides instant value to shoppers by suggesting products that perfectly match what they’re looking for. But they also simplify the buyer journey by directing shoppers from point A to point B—no endless scrolling on your site trying to find products or guessing which product aligns best with their needs.
This enhanced e-commerce personalization creates a better overall customer experience, encouraging repeat customers while driving sales to your e-commerce shop.
Collect more zero-party data and insights
Product recommendation quizzes improve data collection by giving you rich zero-party data to tailor future campaigns, create better products, enhance e-commerce 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.
Reduce returns
Returns can be costly for e-commerce brands—consumers returned products worth a staggering amount last year alone. 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.
The Future of E-commerce Personalization: Trends to Watch
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.
- 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 allow for laser-accurate personalization that respects individuals' privacy.
E-commerce Engagement Strategy, meet Betterfeedback.ai
Product recommendation quizzes do more than engage customers—they increase time on site, collect 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 leg up on competitors.
Ready to explore how betterfeedback.ai can help you implement effective product recommendation quizzes? Contact us today to learn more!