Quizzes have quietly become one of the most reliable tools in a marketer's kit. They feel like entertainment to the person taking them and like research to the brand running them. The numbers back this up: Interact's Quiz Conversion Rate Report found that the average lead-generation quiz converts at 40.1% once someone starts it, far ahead of a standard landing page.
But "use a quiz" is not a strategy. The brands that get real value from quiz marketing all designed their quiz to do a specific job. This post looks at seven of them, what makes each quiz work, and what you can borrow.
1. Warby Parker - the quiz as a shortcut through too much choice
Warby Parker's Frames quiz asks a handful of questions - face shape, the look you are going for, frame width, what you will use the glasses for - and uses branching logic so later questions adapt to earlier answers. It ends with a curated set of frames and a route into the Home Try-On programme.
The quiz works because it solves a specific problem: an enormous catalogue is overwhelming, and eyewear is hard to buy unseen. The lesson is that a good quiz removes friction from a decision the customer was already struggling to make.
2. Sephora - the quiz as a confidence builder
Sephora's Color IQ and skincare finders replace guesswork with a recommendation the customer trusts. Color IQ assigns a shade number. The skincare finder sorts people by skin type and concern. The result type does the heavy lifting - it gives the customer a label ("this is your shade") that makes the recommendation feel objective rather than salesy.
The lesson is that a well-named result type turns a recommendation into an identity the customer wants to act on.
3. ThirdLove - the quiz as the whole brand experience
ThirdLove's Fit Finder is the clearest example of a quiz carrying an entire brand. According to trade publication Glossy, nearly 18 million women have taken it, and the brand has said roughly 80 to 85% of its bra customers complete the quiz before buying. It asks about current size, fit problems and shape, then recommends a size - often a different one from what the customer normally buys.
The lesson is that when a quiz solves a genuinely hard problem, people will happily complete it and trust the output.
4. Function of Beauty - the quiz as product configuration
Function of Beauty's hair quiz is the product. You answer questions about hair type, structure, scalp moisture and your goals, and the brand mixes a formula to match. There is no "browse the range" - the quiz is the only way in.
The lesson is that a quiz can be more than a recommendation engine. It can be the configuration step that makes a personalised product possible in the first place.
5. Stitch Fix - the quiz as a data engine
Stitch Fix's Style Quiz is built to collect data, not just route a customer. As documented in a Harvard Digital Initiative case study, the quiz gathers around 90 data points per customer before a single item ships, covering size, fit, taste, lifestyle and even risk appetite. Every returned item adds more.
The lesson is that the quiz is not a one-off. It is the start of a profile that gets richer with every interaction, so design yours so the data compounds.
6. Care/of - the quiz as a trust-building diagnostic
Care/of's vitamin quiz earns trust before it sells anything. It asks about health goals, diet, lifestyle and concerns, then explains the reasoning behind each supplement it recommends. The quiz feels like a consultation, not a checkout.
The lesson is that when your product asks the customer to trust your judgement, use the quiz to show your reasoning, not just your result.
7. HubSpot - the quiz that proved this works in B2B too
Quiz marketing is not just for ecommerce. HubSpot's Website Grader - really an assessment quiz - asks for a URL and an email, then scores the site on SEO, performance and other factors. HubSpot's own blog reported it analysed millions of websites, and it became one of the company's most effective lead sources, generating qualified leads and thousands of inbound links.
The lesson is that in B2B, a quiz that diagnoses a problem the buyer already suspects they have is one of the highest-intent lead magnets you can build.
Lead-gen quizzes vs persona-building quizzes
Look closely and these seven quizzes are doing one of two jobs.
Most are recommendation or lead-generation quizzes. They exist to move one person towards one outcome - the right frames, the right shade, the right size, an email address. They are optimised for that individual's next step.
A persona-building quiz does something different. It is still useful to the person taking it, but its real value is in aggregate. Once a few hundred people have answered, patterns emerge: which segments dominate your audience, what they value, how they discover products, and what they are sceptical of. That is the layer Stitch Fix gets from its 90 data points - but you do not need its budget to get a version of it.
If you are weighing up which type you need, our post on quiz funnels vs lead magnets goes deeper, and our comparison of quiz makers for brands covers which tools are built for which job.
What this means for a smaller brand
You do not need a data science team or millions of responses. The principle behind every example above scales down: design the quiz to do a clear job, name the result types so they feel like an identity, and treat the answers as data, not just a routing step.
That last point is where most small brands leave value on the table. They build a quiz to recommend a product and never look at what the answers reveal about their audience as a whole. A persona-building quiz captures both - it helps the individual in front of you and it builds a picture of the segment behind them. For more on why those psychographic patterns matter, see what psychographic segmentation is and why it beats demographics.
Try Profyl
Profyl is built for the persona-building job. You create a short, branded quiz, share it where your customers are, and the Audience Snapshot turns the responses into a psychographic picture of your audience - the same kind of intelligence the brands above spent years and large budgets building.