Win Report: How highlighting a simple quiz boosted subscriptions by 34%

Published: February 2025

Win Reports help you to grow your business by showing our methodology at work. Each article highlights a real-world test, sharing the research, insights, and techniques that led to the win.

In the next three minutes, we’ll show you how promoting a quiz increased subscriptions by 34% for one of our clients.

Seamwork is a one-stop shop for everything sewing. Its 12-person team provides patterns and classes for a thriving online community of over 20,000 members.

The original and variation screens for this test.

Research: Following the Psychogram

We began Seamwork’s engagement with a deep and targeted program of research focused on answering two critical questions:

What successfully pulled customers through their funnel (and should be leveraged)?
What stopped prospects from converting (and should be removed or countered)?

We invest hundreds of hours into research, then distill the biggest and most urgent insights into a Psychogram—the conversion roadmap we create for every client.

The Psychogram helps us identify what stops visitors from converting (Detractors) and what motivates them to buy (Attractors). By removing friction points and amplifying persuasive elements, we can align our messaging with their decision-making process, making it easier for them to say yes.

While we can’t share all the details of Seamwork’s Psychogram, we can reveal the detractor and attractor that inspired this specific test:

Detractor: Visitors disliked Seamwork’s subscription model (especially when it was introduced too early in the user journey).
Attractor: User testing identified Seamwork’s 5-question quiz as a strong, engaging mechanic.

The quiz’s popularity suggested an opportunity to engage with visitors in a less transactional way. It was easy to complete and gave visitors tailored sewing advice in return for a name and email address. Here’s a typical comment from one of our user tests:

“I would like to take the quiz. I do love taking quizzes.”

This user is not alone. Personal quizzes tap into deep human needs—our curiosity about ourselves, the satisfaction of tailored recommendations, and the psychological pull to complete what we’ve started (a mix of the Curiosity Gap, the Commitment & Consistency principle, and, to some extent, the Zeigarnik Effect).

We added the quiz to the Psychogram and prioritized a test that would make it more prominent.

The original page (or control)

Here’s the top of Seamwork’s original homepage—one of the most-viewed areas of any website. The copy leads with the benefits of membership—something that our research revealed jarred with first-time visitors.

The original screen for this test showing Build Skills As You Sew headline and a Learn More call-to-action. — The Control: Benefits of membership and some social proof.

The tested page (or variation)

Following the research, we replaced the hero copy with the quiz. Here’s what the variation looked like:

The variation homepage puts Seamwork’s quiz front and center. — The Variation: The quiz is now the first piece of content that new visitors encounter.

Result: Highlighting the quiz increased memberships by 34%

In this case, the quiz engaged more visitors, providing an easy path forward (as opposed to a pitch for membership). During the test, we observed an increase of 34% in memberships (and a 56% increase in overall revenue per visitor via memberships and pattern sales).

What content do you already have that could increase your lead generation if more people saw it? As we say on page 233 of our book, Making Websites Win:

“It’s easy to forget that some visitors aren’t ready to buy. You hear marketers say that they ‘want to make visitors reach for their credit cards.’ But pushy selling is usually thrashed by sophisticated relationship building.”

Seamwork’s quiz captured more leads because it started the critical work of building a relationship, translating to more sales.

For more on this idea, see our article: A template to help you design unbeatable multi-step conversion funnels.

What next?

As usual, we added the test to our proprietary Wins Database, then looked for ways to apply its lessons to other parts of Seamwork’s business and then to other clients.

If you want us to grow your profits—quickly and efficiently—check if you qualify for a free one-on-one strategy session with one of our CRO consultants.

We’ll only work with you if we believe we can get amazing results together. Our success has come entirely from positive word of mouth, and we plan to keep it that way.

A few words from Sarai Mitnick, founder and CEO of Seamwork

Watch the full testimonial below, or read a transcript.

“As soon as we started working with CRE, things started to go up,” says Sarai Mitnick, Founder and CEO of Seamwork.

Thanks to Seamwork for letting us share these insights (and for being such a great team to work with).

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