Your instincts are right: attention spans are getting shorter and e-commerce competition is getting fiercer. This makes getting and keeping customer attention in this industry all the more important – and all the more elusive. There is simply so much information out there vying for customer attention that creative, entertaining and ultimately engaging mediums are the only way to ensure customers come back for more.

This is the role that online quizzes play for the UK consumer choice body Which?, who leverage them to deliver the holy grail of online content: information which holds the user’s attention to deliver usable leads for future campaigns. In this age of multimedia and multi-million dollar content, sometimes it is the most interesting yet basic concept which piques customer attention. For Which?, quizzes successfully turned relatively dry and impenetrable topics into lead generation creators. Furthermore, they helped the organization to increase its shares, likes, and engagement. Let’s discuss the why and how of quizzes in the modern age.

A saturated market

Ads, ads everywhere. There are so many mediums and so many platforms that it is near impossible to avoid Marketing today. In fact, some estimates put daily advert exposure for the average modern person at 5,000 per day. That’s right, 5,000 adverts – each competing for space in the brains of consumers.

It should be no wonder that information overload is creating consumers who have less attention to give on any one topic. Perhaps one might have thought there are only anecdotal findings for shrinking attention spans, but now there is actual evidence to support this theory thanks to the Technical University of Denmark. Their 2019 study suggests the collective global attention span is narrowing due to the amount of information that is presented to the public.

So, consumers are constantly bombarded yet less susceptible to messaging – and this issue for the Marketing industry is only exacerbated by tools that remove adverts entirely. Internet adblockers are only on the rise, with studies suggesting that advertisers lose $40 billion in revenue every year thanks to the browser add-ons.

Meanwhile, e-commerce finds itself in an ever-increasing and ever-competitive market. More vendors mean fewer points of difference, resulting in “price wars” to attract eventual purchases. This can be a dangerous game for the industry as companies lower prices in a race to the bottom.

To gain sustainable traction, e-commerce and digital businesses must generate usable and organic leads for their campaigns- a major problem in today’s loud, crowded online marketplace.

Getting the leads

These market conditions translate into leads which are more expensive and difficult to generate than ever before. This was the challenge facing UK consumer choice body Which?, who turned to online quizzes to increase shares and lead generation for their campaigns and consumer rights content.

This may sound like a curious decision, but online quizzes actually achieve simultaneous outcomes for the user and creator. Quizzes make learning fun by offering entertaining yet informative questionnaires. Meanwhile, marketers can capture all these quiz data points which funnel back into better-targeted campaigns.

For example, the email opt-in rate, or the percentage of people who give their email through a specific campaign, is critical in Digital Marketing. Quizzes often receive a 40 percent email opt-in rate – a massive number considering that the average opt-in rate for all other campaigns is less than two percent.

So why are quizzes popular, anyway? Sherry Turkle, MIT Psychologist and Cultural Analyst, explains that it’s not so much taking the quiz that people enjoy – it’s sharing the results. This is another benefit for quiz tools as the results then spread to social media to extend coverage. For example, BuzzSumo found that 82% of users will take part in a quiz if they see it on their social newsfeed.

By partnering with online quiz maker Riddle, Which? chose to create and experiment with a number of options to ultimately increase on-page time and shareability of previously static content.

Quizzes, far and wide

There is no escaping that quizzes – while fun for the consumer – deliver valuable information for the creator in the form of shares, leads, and engagements. Quizzes provide quality information; from the name and email to the quiz responses from each lead. This data-rich stream is then funneled to the creator’s Marketing database for further segmentation and personalized follow-up Marketing messaging.

Which? turned to online quizzes to get the job done – and the results speak for themselves. The success of their interactive content led to a fundamental reconsideration of how the organization structures its pages, how they provoke engagement and interaction with what they say, and how they create longer journeys through content.

The power of the humble quiz is in its simplicity. People like to take them, share the results and engage with the content until the end. Data backs up the fact that interactive content is far more powerful than a regular, written guide. According to a CMI survey, 81 percent of respondents agreed that interactive content grabs attention more effectively than static content.

That means an estimated three of every four people are hooked to a quiz, and many of these people stay with the content until the very end. Remember, the underlying goal is for people to be able to share their results with family and friends on social media, so completion is key. And with quiz completion comes the additional user information that is Marketing gold to any company.

Getting and keeping readers is no mean feat in today’s crowded online marketplace. Quizzes are proven to do this well – it is no wonder that their success in e-commerce’s battle for eyeballs has prompted wider adoption by savvy marketers worldwide.

Read more: Way B2B E-Commerce Marketing is Winning over B2C