Blog
GUEST POST: 4 Ways That A Quizzes Can Address Your Buyer’s Psychology
This excellent guest post is by Gen Furukawa from PreHook, which is a Shopify quiz tool.
“The path of least resistance will never make you proud,” bellows Tony Robbins.
That is true for life in general, but not the case for converting website visitors into visitors.
The foundation of Conversion Rate Optimization is about removing objections and friction in the process of creating sales. Long live “Frictionless commerce”!
In order to understand what those objections are, it is imperative to understand the inner workings of the buyer–what are their questions, objections, desires, goals.
As Seth Godin writes in This Is Marketing, ““Marketing is the generous act of helping others become who they seek to become.”
The most direct and certain way to understand who your customers are and what they desire is to simply ask.
The quiz is the most versatile and underused tool to understand WHY your customers are on your site, and HOW you can help them realize their goals.
Radiant and glowing skin? Delicious and healthy food for their dog? The perfect golf ball for your swing?
In this post, we’ll dig in to quizzes to see how versatile and insightful they can be for all ecommerce brands.
Quizzes: A Brief Overview
Think about the last time that you had an amazing sales associate that guided you towards a purchase.
There was a brief exchange of what you were looking to buy, some of the problems you may be experiencing. And you were presented with a product that specifically addressed your needs.
There was an element of serendipity at play: “Serendipity is the art of using what we know about the user to make a connection,” notes Rishi Rawat.
With just a few thoughtful questions, a quiz can dramatically increase the likelihood of identifying the shoppers needs and recommending a product in the same way that the in-store associate did.
A quiz is scalable, affordable, and captures key data points in a manner that is fun and engaging for shoppers.
Let’s get into some examples of how a quiz can help you understand your buyer’s psychology.
(note that I am not affiliated with any of these examples below, but found them to be instructive examples)
Reciprocity
Reciprocity is the first principle of Robert Cialdini’s Influence. It states that humans feel obligated to return favors to those who have given them something. This is a common practice for digital marketers — exchange an email address for an eBook, webinar recording, or product demo.
Many eCommerce brands leverage this principle of reciprocity with discounts: “enter your email for a 40% discount”.
But what if instead of just an email in exchange for discount, the quid pro quo were reimagined?
So that instead of a massive 40% discount upfront, you are able to get intimate details about the customer’s goals.
Skincare brand Your Skin uses free shipping as an offer to get more shoppers to take the quiz. As a personalized skincare brand, every customer must go through the quiz in order to identify the products.
The interesting thing is that Free Shipping is included automatically for all orders regardless. But including “Free Shipping” in the Call To Action button adds an incentive to the quiz that makes the exchange of value more enticing for the shopper.
The quiz adds incredible detail about the customer profile, particularly in comparison to Fashion Nova which captures only gender information with their leads.
Imagine the personalized marketing campaigns that can be created when a lead is accompanied with details like customer goals:
Concerns:
Skin Type:
Immediately after entering my email address, I received a Skin Analysis that directly addressed the data I shared in the quiz:
Hubble Contacts leverages Reciprocity by offering a $1 box of contacts in exchange for taking the quiz (a $15 value).
With four simple questions, Hubble has quickly moved shoppers down the funnel towards completing billing and shipping information in order to claim the $1 offer.
For a product like contact lenses, that is a recurring product that customers could use for the rest of their life, the first offer of $1 contacts is a powerful offer to get customers to experience the convenience and value that Hubble promises.
There does not need to be a monetary value attached to reciprocity though. Skincare brand Soko Glam offers access to a Skin Care Expert in exchange for shoppers who take the quiz:
The Takeaway:
The key to Reciprocity as a tool to increase conversions is that there is a distinct exchange of value. The customer data gathered in the quiz is immensely valuable, and can lead to higher conversions immediately (by recommending the right product) or in the future (creating segments and campaigns based on the customer data gathered in the quiz).
What value can you offer shoppers (free shipping, discounted product, self-discovery), and what would be helpful to your conversion efforts in return?
Ease
One persistent challenge of eCommerce is guiding shoppers to the most appropriate product. Whether it is about finding the right size, filtering through hundreds of SKUs, or simply reordering products.
The everlasting promise of ecommerce is that it makes the shopping experience easier and more enjoyable.
Swimwear brand, Andie, uses a quiz to help shoppers navigate through their large catalog of styles, sizes, and collections.
“These questions help us identify the right Andie size for you. No two bodies are the same!”
In the process of identifying ideal swimsuit type:
Body type, preferences, and sizing:
Users are presented with the perfect fit:
That was simple and fun! Andie has hundred of options, which would be tiresome and overwhelming to navigate through (particularly when considering two piece options).
The quiz simplifies the path to purchase by surfacing the perfect item with just 12 questions.
Golf equipment company Titleist guides shoppers to the best golf ball for your game, based on the play style and experience. Finding the right ball leads to lower scores (and happier customers). Their quiz.
Women’s beauty brand Billie incorporates a simple interactive quiz into their purchase process. Because Billie’s product line is relatively straightforward, the quiz guides users through color:
Frequency:
And an upsell offer, then directly to the check out page :
This process could be accomplished with a more traditional process on a single Product Page, like Shick’s, where you choose type of blade, color, and quantity:
However, the quiz allows for greater user engagement, and simplifies the cognitive processing required by the user in order to complete their purchase.
The Takeaway:
The primary goal of your ecommerce website is to compel shoppers to add an item to their cart and complete the purchase. A quiz is a useful tool to capture the preferences of shoppers and sift through your inventory to surface the most relevant product based on these stated needs.
Authority
A quiz, by nature, is an educational tool. So it can be extremely effective to bring shoppers through the customer journey by educating them as they complete the quiz. This is true at a high level, in educating about the problem itself, and also more specifically about how the product can solve problems.
Weight loss app Noom peppers some statistics and education throughout their quiz.
These are interstitials, which require the user to engage with to move on to the next question.
The benefit here is two-fold:
- The user is learning more about the problem, and solution, in achieving their health goals.
- The user sees Noom as the source of expertise and knowledge that can usher them towards their goal.
Achieving health-related goals is one of the most impactful avenues to helping people become the person they hope to become.
Subscription coffee company Trade incorporates short educational snippets throughout their quiz. The goal of the quiz is to identify the taste preferences of the customer, to pair them with the perfect bag of beans. And with over 350 varieties of beans from coffee roasters across the US, the choice can be overwhelming.
But in just seven short questions, the quiz hones in on how the customer likes their coffee (light vs. dark roast, sugar or no?), their expertise, regular vs. decaf, and a few more relevant questions.
As the user goes through these questions, they answer questions that they may answer subconsciously when they purchase coffee. However, by answering them in the quiz, the customer internalizes that Trade has expertise and authority in the coffee. Establishing expertise and authority is a powerful tactic of persuasion.
The Takeaway:
Authority and expertise are important pillars of persuasion. It creates trust, and we like to buy from brands that we trust. As shoppers move through a quiz experience, there are many opportunities to educate: about the problem, the solution, and the overall benefits.
Personalization
One of the main benefits of a quiz is that it provides a path towards personalization.
Once the merchant understands what customer problem they are solving for, the subsequent personalized marketing becomes much more powerful.
There are obviously different levels of personalization, so let’s explore how the information from a quiz can dictate personalized marketing.
Kids clothing brand, Rockets Of Awesome, personalizes their user experience by starting out asking the basics: name, age, and gender:
From here, Rockets of Awesome can personalize the experience with, as Dale Carnegie calls it, the “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language” — the person’s name.
Skincare brand Skinsei takes a different approach with personalization. They have created a proprietary skin assessment, which aggregates data points of everything from skin type to exercise routine to climate to create a personalized skin care routine.
Although there are a fixed number of products in their collection, it is the combination of products based on the quiz results that is unique to the customer’s needs. In fact, there are over one million combinations of a skin care routine that can result from the quiz.
The most sophisticated and interesting way that ecommerce brands personalize the experience from a quiz is to create a completely unique product.
This can range from shampoo (Prose) to protein powder (Gainful) to dog food (The Farmer’s Dog) to deodorant and more.
Regardless of the product, it is the personalization that has a direct impact on conversion rate and revenue.
80% of shoppers are more likely to purchase from a brand that offers personalized experiences, and 93% of organizations who had an advanced personalization program grew revenue.
The Takeaway:
The personalized experience–whether it is incorporating a customer’s name or creating a product specifically tailored to the customer’s profile–drives an increased conversion rate and more revenue.
In Closing
These are just a few examples of how a quiz can tap into the critical nodes of a buyer’s psychology to impact your customer’s experience.
At its core, a quiz is a bridge to help brands better understand their customers: their goals, preferences, challenges.
As the competitive landscape intensifies and acquisition costs rise in tandem, it is this strength of customer relationship that will differentiate a brand. And as you can elevate a conversation from a one-way campaign to a dynamic relationship built around the customer’s specific goals and targets, the value you deliver is increased manifold.
