Why does it seem like every big skincare brand has a quiz on their homepage? Sephora, Glossier, Fenty are just a few of the examples. 

Traditionally, skincare and cosmetics brands relied on brick-and-mortar for distribution and sales (only 10% of sales came from ecommerce, in 2019). 

Nearly half of consumers want to see beauty products in person, and 1 in 5 want advice from an in-store expert. 

Well, then 2020 happened, and the pandemic made in-person shopping impossible.  

And ecommerce became every more important. 

There are a few reasons why quizzes are invaluable to skincare brands: 

1. Personalize The Customer Experience: Consumers want personalized experiences, and 71% are frustrated when an experience is not personalized. 
2. Reduce overwhelm: There are many options to choose from, a quiz can quickly reduce shopping anxiety and confusion. 
3. Find the right product: Identifying the right product based on skin needs and goals is challenging
4. Ensure customer satisfaction: Creating a happy customer is imperative to drive repeat purchases and lifetime customers. 

A quiz can quickly surface key insights that create a better customer experience.

Which is why 65% of major cosmetics retailers offer interactive quizzes.  

Things Are Changing, Fast: The Skincare Industry Overview

The changes from the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted trends that were already in progress: reduced in-store shopping, growing ecommerce sales, and the emergence of upstart brands that target narrow niches.

Online sales of self-care products performed well at the start of the pandemic in 1Q 2020, up 24% from 2019, according to market research firm NDP Group, with double-digit increases for makeup, skincare, fragrance and hair products. 

Notes Tula CEO Savannah Sachs: “Because more people are shopping from home during the pandemic, DTC beauty brands are enjoying a healthy spike in sales. Even at the height of the pandemic in April, DTC wellness and skincare brand Tula experienced a 400% YoY increase in sales.”

This drives an increased reliance on customer data to better understand customers and target audiences. 

This impacts the strategy to acquire and retain customers, as well as creating the strategy to get relevant content in front of the right audience. 

3 Pillars Of Value: How Quizzes Unlock Critical Insights

Personalized Experience – As Jasmin Chang notes, the “skincare quiz is helping a lot of people connect with dermatology providers, giving every patient the individual care they need without appointments or waiting rooms.”

Comprehensive Customer Insights: A quiz naturally creates a fun interactive experience for the user. And while they answer straight forward questions, merchant gathers important information about the customer’s current condition, desired end state, and current routines and preferences. This is invaluable information that can not be inferred or gathered from any data source except when asked directly of the customer. 

Product Recommendation: The quiz can piece together the goals of the customer, and compare against the inventory of products to surface the ideal recommended product. This reduces friction in the purchase process–leading the customer right to the product that addresses their need. 

Quiz Funnels

Here are some of the brands that use quizzes as a cornerstone of their marketing strategy. 

• Skinsei
• Glossier 
• YOURskin
• Tula
• Soko Glam
• WinkyLux
• Cos Bar

Quizzes And the 4 Steps To Solving Customer Needs

The best quizzes follow a four step process: 

1. Identify: the problem
2. Learn: more context and existing alternatives
3. Capture: contact information (email or phone number)
4. Solve: with a recommendation based on the information gathered. 

Along the way, there are simple questions that provide a view into granular details of what customers are actually looking for. This includes: 

Gather General Customer Data

What are some demographic data points that help you identify your customers? This can include skin type, age, race, location and other lifestyle activities that affect skin. 

Learn Preferences in product and routine

“Personalization” is just another way of saying that the website experience has high relevance to the customer: in messaging, offer, and visuals. 

The details that allow for such relevance are captured these specific questions, that ask about preferences in the product, how the products will fit into the customer’s routine, and general lifestyle. in questions that 

• What are the product priorities – price, vegan, fragrance?
• Commitment to skincare routine?
• How often do you wash your face?
• Urgency of solution – how soon does this problem need remedies?

The Recommendation 

The most powerful recommendations include the following a compelling pitch about the product, its benefits, the reasons why it is a personalized recommendation, and of course how the customer can purchase it. 

Skinsei does a comprehensive job of this in their review: 

• What is the product recommendation?
• Why is the product recommended? 
• What are the benefits that come with it? 
• How to purchase it

The Alternative Of Not Using A Quiz

The traditional strategy can be a static, one-size-fits-all approach to capturing emails and creating a shopping experience. Users are incentivized to share an email for a discount or access to a VIP list.  

The merchant captures emails (most likely at a lower opt-in rate than an interactive quiz), but the emails do not have details about the actual customer: 

• What problem does your customer have? 
• What problem are you solving for? 
• What type of product 

Strategies That The Best Quizzes Use

Know The Problem You Are Solving For 

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”― Albert Einstein

Customers want to buy a better version of themselves. This is definitely true for skincare products. So the entire foundation of your marketing comes down to identifying what problem you are solving for. 

The quiz is the best way to capture this. 

Segment Customers Appropriately

Customers have different product needs and preferences. Men and women are an obvious way to group customers. But going a level deeper–is the customer looking to reduce wrinkles, acne, or dark spots? What solutions have they already tried? 

The answers to these questions will identify the needs and wants of customers, and create specific messaging for smaller, tightly defined groups. This helps positioning of the product, the offers, and the language and imagery used. 

Simplify The Shopping Experience

Customers look to skincare brands for the expertise of knowing the problem, and solution. 

The customer just spent time going through the quiz and answering questions–the exchange of value for sharing the information is a recommended product or routine. The in-person shopping experience allows for the customer to ask questions and get a recommendation in return. 

The quiz is one way to replicate the experience. 

Offer A Low Risk Trial

Online purchases leave some fear or doubt that a product will work for the customer. There is the factor of cost–”will this product be worth the money? And will it work for the problem I am trying to solve?” 

To reduce fear of committing to the purchase that may not work, a brand can offer a low-cost option, like a free trial: 

Examples of Quiz Successes: Bambu Earth

Skincare brand Bambu Earth use a quiz to create custom product recommendations, and ensure customer satisfaction–and repeat purchases.

The quiz captures skin health, lifestyle, and goals, before capturing an email and recommending a product. 

The team at Bambu Earth (and holding company Common Thread Co) are dedicated to testing and iterative improvement. This includes the quiz questions, the landing page, the ads, and the emails. 

Says Andrew Faris, “Ultimately, it’s about developing a full-funnel approach to acquisition and retention … as opposed to just an ad strategy. It allows Bambu Earth to (at-scale) walk people into the best product for them and then sets the brand up to address that.” 

And the results are impressive: 

• 25x revenue YoY (and is now a profitable business).
• Customers who purchase through the quiz 2x value within 90 days and 2.5x AOV within 90 days.
• For the month of February 2020, Bambu Earth had earned as much revenue from returning customers only as it did in total customer revenue overall for 2018.

The quiz powers this personalized experience, that gets customers to the product that is customized to their needs. This ensures happier customers, and higher retention. 

Takeaways: 

Skincare brands like Bambu Earth rely on a significant portion of revenue to come from repeat visitors. 

And once customers find a product that works–one that they trust and enjoy–they will repurchase and have opportunities for cross-sell with other products. 

Brand recognition is less important for skincare brands than the actual impact that the product can have on the consumer. Skincare products are not inherently a product that is shared with others. 

Thus, uncovering the personal challenges, and goals, that consumers are aiming to solve is more important for skincare brands than many others. 

The most efficient and direct path to understanding such customer needs is by asking directly.