A gift finder quiz for PrestaShop before the holidays: how to help shoppers who don’t know what to buy

In November and December a different kind of customer visits your shop. They are buying for someone else, they do not know the size, they are not sure what to look for, and they are short on time. Filters and search assume the shopper knows what they want – this one only knows who it is for. A gift finder, a short quiz with a few questions and a handful of matching products at the end, solves exactly that problem. Here is how to design one for a PrestaShop shop so that it sells, not just looks nice.

Why gift shoppers get lost

• They think in people and occasions, not product attributes. They look for “something for mum under €40”, not “40 denier tights in graphite”. A category tree does not answer that.
• They are afraid of getting it wrong. Size, colour, “will she like it” – every doubt is a reason to postpone the purchase or buy elsewhere.
• They have too much choice. A category with 400 products and no guidance is a wall. The longer they scroll, the more likely they are to leave.
• They will not come back tomorrow. In season, shoppers compare several shops at once. They buy where they first hear “this will work”.

Which questions to ask (and how many)

A good gift finder has 3 to 5 questions. The rule is simple: every question must change the result. If an answer does not affect which products the shopper sees, the question only lengthens the way to the cart – remove it.

Order matters too. Start with the easiest question (“who is it for”) and ask about the budget before style – so the shopper does not fall in love with a product they cannot afford.

The result: less is more

A quiz that ends with 40 products sends the shopper right back where they ran away from. A few rules for the results screen:

• 3 to 6 suggestions. That is how many can be compared at a glance.
• Only products that can be bought. Check combination stock, not just the parent product – recommending a sold-out size is the worst possible result.
• Always some result. When all conditions together return nothing, relax the last one (for example the budget by 20%) instead of showing “No products found”.
• Say why. A short reason (“for mum, under €40, elegant”) builds more trust than a match percentage.
• Let them reject. A “show me something else” button matters, and what the shopper rejected is valuable information: the next suggestions should go in a different direction instead of showing a similar product again.

Budget in a shop with low-priced products

An interesting case: a shop where most products cost a few dozen euros. The shopper picks a €60–80 budget and… gets nothing. Instead of lowering the budget, offer a set: two or three products that together fit the budget and make a sensible gift. The shopper gets what they were looking for, and you get a higher order value. PrestaShop has a native “pack of products” product type (Catalog › Products), so ready-made gift sets need no extra module.

Where to place the gift finder

• The home page in season – a banner like “Not sure what to buy? Answer 4 questions”.
• A “Gifts” category or page – the quiz at the top, the product list below.
• Empty search results – instead of a blank page: “Looking for a gift? We’ll help you choose”.
• Newsletters and campaigns – link straight to the quiz, not to the home page.

Launch the gift finder before Black Friday, not in mid-December. Many shoppers buy gifts in November, and you need a few days of traffic to see which questions work and fix them before the peak.

What to measure

1. How many people start the quiz and how many finish it. A big drop after one question means that question is unclear or unnecessary.
2. Clicks and add-to-carts from the results screen. This tells you whether the suggestions are relevant.
3. Conversion rate and average order value of quiz users compared with the rest of your traffic.
4. Rejected products. If one product is skipped all the time, the problem may be its photo or price, not the quiz.