An e-commerce quiz personalizes the shopping experience and guides customers toward purchases with product recommendations based on their preferences.
Follow these best practices to design a quiz that website users find, understand, and choose to complete.
E-commerce quiz best practices
Maximize the user experience and collect zero-party data with these e-commerce quiz best practices.
1. Keep the quiz short
Keep the e-commerce quiz short to increase the completion rate. Six to eight questions is optimal for most categories.
Cellcosmet’s Regimen Finder asks seven questions before providing product recommendations, while One Seed Perfumes asks just four.

However, some categories — where users are receptive to longer consultations, like medical-grade products or consumables — require longer e-commerce quizzes. Customers willingly answer more questions because the stakes are higher and trust recommendations after an in-depth consultation.
Vitapack’s supplement quiz, for example, starts with top level questions about your health concerns (e.g. poor sleep), before asking more specific questions about their potential causes (e.g. screen time, exercise) to recommend optimal products.
2. Personalize, personalize, personalize
Personalize the quiz by asking for their name and addressing them directly using phrases like “Nice to meet you [Name]” and “Here are your results [Name].”
SKOON, a South African skincare brand, starts its quiz by asking for a user’s name, while TeamDog, a dog food, treats, and supplements brand, asks for the name of the user’s dog. This instantly makes the quiz more relevant to the user.

Similarly, Function of Beauty's haircare quiz asks for the user's name and writes it on their unique shampoo bottle, creating not just a personal online experience but a customized product they can keep.

Next, personalize the quiz using branching logic. Reference previous answers, show different slides, and ask questions based on user responses. Finally, personalize the results page using dynamic headings and display calculations specific to each user. Use meta-fields to highlight ingredients or why you’re recommending a product.
3. Make the questions easily understandable
Product recommendation quiz questions should be direct and specific. While incorporating brand personality is important, ensure all questions are easy to understand. Users won’t complete the quiz if questions are too tricky.
Plum Design’s quiz helps users find their perfect blend of tea. Its questions are clear and concise, using just four to seven words.

Here are other ways to ensure users understand what you’re asking them:
If working with a quiz design partner — like Visual Quiz Builder — leverage their knowledge and experience when writing quiz questions.
Before launch, ask a test group to take the quiz and confirm the questions are easy to understand and answer.
Once live, use A/B testing to assess which version of a question performs best. Use your quiz analytics to find and edit underperforming questions.
4. Provide guiding information
Offer additional information to help users complete the quiz when needed. This can be done with pop-ups within questions or content slides.
Skincare brand Mario Badescu offers tips on assessing skin type, while Semaine Health, a hormonal wellness brand, explains why questions are relevant. For example, they ask for a user’s age because hormones change with age.

5. Don’t give too many answer options
Users may be overwhelmed by too many answer options. Long answer lists can also cause the page to scroll, particularly on mobile devices, impacting user experience.
When choosing answer options, avoid repetitive or overly similar choices. Ensure each answer is distinctive and use images to illustrate complex ideas. Visual options and sliders can be very helpful with communicating answer options in a more intuitive and visually appealing way.

6. Keep it in on brand
The best e-commerce quiz designs align seamlessly with a website’s look and branding for a more memorable user experience. Apply the same colors, fonts, and visual elements used on other pages.
Poseidon, an online bike store, does this particularly well in its e-commerce quiz, as does rug store Double. These on-brand visuals help improve user comprehension, highlight featured products, and reinforce brand identity.

When working on quiz branding, incorporate your brand voice for a greater impact and customer experience. Function of Beauty’s quiz uses succinct and conversational language. It also includes fun fragrance names, like Pearfection and Takes Two to Mango.
Similarly, Thigh Society uses colloquialisms and reassuring comments like “Well, that works out perfectly” to sound more playful and informal.

7. Build anticipation with a holding page
After completing the quiz, customers wait a few seconds for their product recommendations to appear. Use this time to build anticipation with a strong holding page.
CUUP’s quiz holding page says, “We’re calculating your perfect fit.” Visuals change and fun facts about bras and bra sizing appear on the page. They added these branded and customized loading messages to their quiz results loading page with Visual Quiz Builder.

8. Design with mobile in mind
Two-thirds of online shopping orders were made on smartphones in 2024, ensuring your e-commerce quiz is mobile friendly is critical. Without a seamless mobile experience, you could miss out on significant sales.
Face Club offers the same features and functionality across different device layouts to provide a seamless user experience on both desktop and mobile.

9. Place the quiz prominently on your site
Your website should feature your quiz start button prominently, grabbing users’ attention with a clear call to action and bold design. Stix Golf’s prompt to “Find my Fit” is a menu option at the top of their homepage. When users click this link, they’re taken directly to the quiz start page.

The quiz format is important, too. Embedded quizzes within a store’s header or footer look great and allow users to navigate back and forth. Avoid partial screen pop-up quizzes unless launching a short, simple quiz. This style can hide content on mobile devices, creating a poor user experience.
10. Incentivize participation
Offer a discount or free sample upon quiz completion to encourage users to take the e-commerce quiz.
Mario Badescu’s quiz results page offers users free samples of every product in their suggested skincare regimen, while Nudea’s e-commerce quiz offers 15% off. To create an even better user experience, automatically apply the discount at checkout to reduce friction.

11. Personalize marketing with zero-party data
E-commerce quizzes collect zero-party data that fuel your marketing efforts.
Use this data to segment users, then personalize follow-up email and SMS marketing with integrated apps like Klaviyo or Omnisend. Face Club, for example, segment customers by skin type and skin concern to create personalized email flows for them.

Build your custom e-commerce quiz
Following e-commerce quiz design best practices ensures a high quiz completion rate and great customer experience, leading to higher conversions.
Put these best practices into action with Visual Quiz Builder. Select the questions, answer options, and product recommendations, then edit the look and feel to align with your branding. Use rich zero-party data to segment quiz takers and retarget them with personalized marketing emails.
Start building your quiz today. Sign up for a free 14-day trial with Visual Quiz Builder.
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