As a marketer, there’s always been a heavy emphasis on driving sales in e-commerce.
One of the best methods in increasing sales is personalization. Amazon and other retail giants use this method to provide product recommendations based on the interests of their customers.
Adding personalization to your e-commerce website as a means of tailoring products for each visitor can increase conversions by an astounding 30% or more.
Personalization software comes at a cost, and the time it takes to have it implemented might not fit your marketing schedule. Thankfully, quizzes offer a solution to personalization that’s both cost-effective and quick to implement.
Your typical two birds with one stone pitch.
We’ll go over three different ways to utilize quizzes as a personalization tool to increase e-commerce sales through product differentiation, as a means of launching a brand, and by generating leads at the same time. We’ll even avoid hurting any birds in the process.
How’s that sound?
- Making $7,260 While Using A Quiz to Differentiate Between Similar Product
I’m sure that dollar amount caught your attention, right? On-the-rise e-commerce site Birchbox created a quiz called “Find your facemask soulmate” that gives buyers a tour that ends with an irresistible product offering.
The quiz was integrated into Birchbox’s magazine, which runs on a simple CMS, so implementation was a breeze. It ended up being a popular March 2015 main feature.
As soon as prospective customers took the quiz, they were asked personal questions to gauge what the quiz-taker’s interests were. The reasoning behind the quiz was built up using research compiled from online studies for accuracy.
After completing the quiz, a facemask product was recommended with a link to purchase the mask on the spot as a part of the results. Now that’s clever marketing.
While quizzes offer a fun and interactive way to engage your audience, turning them into customers by offering them products tailored specifically to their preferences at the end is an amazing way to use personalization.
Here’s a good way to go about doing that:
- Describe the product in a warm way to encourage click-throughs to the purchasing page.
- Use honest and uplifting words. Be poignant but very kind at the same time.
- Include vivid images of the product you’re trying to sell. Make it look appealing.
- Adding a pricing point gives your customers an idea about your pricing.
The results? 11,000 people participated in taking the quiz with a 3% sales conversion rate that averaged a sale price of $22 with a total of $7,260 in new sales. Wow. The quiz was tremendously successful.
Not only did it drive sales, but it was an entertaining piece of content on its own that drove social traffic with over 400 shares. The quiz accomplished a rare combination of amusement and practicality as it delighted readers and drove sales at the same time.
This is how Birchbox used a quiz to help differentiate between similar products. For them, it was facemasks, but it could have very well been t-shirts, purses or even cell phones.
When you’re in a business that has a wide selection of a certain product, providing a level of personalization with a quiz is a great way to pierce through product confusion and increase sales.
- Using Personalization Through Quizzes to Successfully Launch an E-Commerce Site
A slightly bolder quiz comes from a The Elephant Pants, a startup that ran a Kickstarter campaign with the hopes of going big. Their quiz consisted of questions that would establish which kind of Elephant Pants you should get.
Their personalized quiz targeted people that would purchase products like Elephant Pants by referencing things like traveling, gourmet foods, and Friday night shenanigans.
After completing the quiz, a specific type of Elephant Pants were recommended as a form of personalization. The results page even included a link to the Kickstarter campaign to pre-order their recommended pair.
Their results? $8,426 was raised on Kickstarter. Since then, The Elephant Pants brand has become a successful company with a fully functional website outside of their original Kickstarter campaign, and with healthy sales to boot.
- Personalized Quizzes Don’t Just Drive Sales, They Generate Leads Too!
While your personalized quiz is driving sales, it’s also generating leads for you in the background. Gating quizzes with a lead capture form can help you collect email subscribers who may eventually become repeat purchasers. BioLite perfectly executed a delicate balancing act to pull this off.
BioLite created a quiz called “What would you do with 10 Watts?” that asked a series of questions with familiar objects and experiences that gauged the preparedness of their audience.
Like the previous examples, BioLite’s quiz results had a link to various products aimed at their audience. What sets them apart from the rest would be the way they gated their quiz with a lead capture form. Unlike most lead capture forms, they threw in an incentive to opt-in. Anyone who opted in was also entered in a giveaway for a Biolite Stove.
The results? BioLite was able to collect 4,936 leads with a 1.5% conversion rate in sales with an incredible $11,342 in sales from the quiz alone. Can you believe that?!
And Now Back to You
That wasn’t so bad now, was it? As a marketer, you need to find ways to generate sales within an e-commerce company. It isn’t easy, I know, but hopefully you’ll be able to walk away with a little more confidence in your step when it comes to driving sales.
Creating a personalized quiz is a great way to increase E-commerce sales. They’re a quick and easy way to personalize your online shop with personalized recommendations that increase sales by 30% or more without costing you an arm, a leg, or two birds.