Product quiz vs recommendation engine: what each one knows
Most wellness stores personalise with a quiz. Eight questions, a scoring table, a bundle at the end. It is everywhere because it works well enough. It also has one limit you cannot write your way out of.
- A quiz learns what a shopper says. A connected tracker shows what their last six months were.
- Shoppers answer questions about sleep and training generously. They are accurate about diet, budget and allergies.
- A tracker knows nothing about what someone wants or cannot have. That is still a question.
- Use both. Read the device where there is one, then ask only what the device cannot answer.
A quiz collects self-report. That is reliable for some questions and not others.
| Question type | How reliable | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Diet, budget, allergies, what they have tried | Good | They chose it, so they know it |
| "How did you sleep last week?" | Weak | Rounded in the flattering direction |
| "How stressed are you, 1–5?" | Weak | No baseline to answer against |
| Anything after question six | Weaker | Answered to finish, not to be right |
None of that makes quizzes bad. It makes them good at learning what someone wants and poor at learning what is going on.
A shopper who connects the device they already wear gives you measurements nobody was performing for. Humotron reads daily summaries: sleep, resting heart rate, overnight heart-rate variability and activity. It compares each one to that person’s own earlier readings, not to an average.
So instead of "I sometimes sleep badly", you have a sleep pattern that has drifted later for a month. Instead of "I train a lot", training that rose while recovery did not.
It still knows nothing about budget, diet, pregnancy, medication, or the magnesium they tried and hated. Ask those.
Three cases, and they are common.
- No device. Many of your shoppers wear nothing. Personalising only for tracker owners leaves everyone else with a grid.
- Constraints. Allergies, diet, pregnancy, medication, budget. Getting one of these wrong is worse than not personalising.
- Gifting and known intent. Asking is faster than inferring.
The prompt sits on your product or cart page. A shopper connects their tracker in two steps, signing in with their provider, never with you. They answer a short set of questions about what they want and cannot have. They get a ranked shortlist from your catalogue with a plain reason beside each product.
You never receive their readings. Only the ranking and the reason.
Can we keep our existing quiz?
Yes. A quiz tuned on your own catalogue is worth keeping. Most stores shorten it, dropping the questions a device answers better.
What about shoppers with no tracker?
They close the prompt and the store behaves as it does today. Nothing is withheld from them.
Do we receive health data?
No. The shopper consents to us directly and we stay the controller of it. You get ranked product IDs and a short non-clinical reason.
Which trackers?
Eleven providers, covering the ones most people already own. The current list is on the app’s setup screen.