Going into the 2023 holiday season, we made a few updates to our gift guide and experimented with an anonymous gift scouting method. I’m a few months behind reporting on the topic, but better late than never!
Before I jump in, why do we even care about gift guides? Just as we want to serve our customers, we also want to serve those who are serving our customers. If someone wants to buy a Stonemaier game for a friend, family member, coworker, or stranger, we’re here for them too.
Originally, we had an ever-expanding image that displayed our recommendations for different personality types. Our web designer, Dave, updated the image whenever we released a new game or expansion. Eventually the updates became too cumbersome and the image too big for people to effectively use, so Dave proposed an interactive gift guide instead.
Here’s how it works:
On the gift guide, you’ll select the type of gamer for whom you’re buying a gift (new, intermediate, or experienced):
A few personality types will then appear. There are, of course, other ways to approach this type of filter–some that are more specific for those who know hobby games–but we’re focusing on serving the gift buyer who wants to make a quick choice about someone they know (even if they don’t know that person’s gaming preferences).
After you select the personality type and click “see the game,” a resulting game appears:
If our suggestion isn’t a good fit, the results also include a few other options, along with a way to restart the gift guide:
The secondary benefit of this gift guide is that someone could use it simply to discover our games for themselves.
With the interactive gift guide running smoothly, there was one other experiment I wanted to try. It stemmed from a key problem I’ve encountered when giving gifts in general: I want to give the person something they want, but without them feeling like they just placed an order with a friend.
So with some clever programming from Dave, we tried something new (new to us, at least): In our November update to Stonemaier Ambassadors, we offered each of them a way to anonymously ask 1 person which Stonemaier products they are interested in. If the recipient opted to indicate their preferences, the gift giver would receive a message featuring the results, along with a limited-time free-shipping discount code to purchase any of those products for the recipient.
We carefully crafted the text and made sure we weren’t violating any spam laws, and then I sent the invitation to 700 Stonemaier Ambassadors. I was really excited–I thought this was going to be a huge success.
Not so much.
Here are the results:
- Invitation Form Submissions: 44
- Response Form Submissions: 24
- Free Shipping Code Uses: 2
I learned from some ambassadors that they were hesitant for a message they didn’t compose to be sent in their name to someone they know. Also, while it’s neat to see that over 50% of recipients replied, some of them were ambassadors who sent the form to themselves. And even then, only 2 gift givers actually used the code to buy a gift with free shipping.
This is why we experiment! Not everything is a success, and I’m glad we tried. Plus, we still have the interactive gift guide.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on gift guides and gift buying in general. What’s your experience with giving or receiving gifts? It’s a tricky aspect of business for me to navigate, as gifts are at the bottom of my love language list, so I’d happy to learn more from those who enjoy receiving or giving gifts.
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4 Comments on “Interactive Gift Guides and Anonymous Gift Scouting”
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I love to see this sort of experimentation! Too often we only focus on the successes. And as you noted, this isn’t even a failure; it’s just gathering useful information about how your site will be used. Thanks for sharing!
As gift giving is definitely one of my love languages, I’m happy to see that you’re supporting this sort of activity for people. I’m not sure if it would be worthwhile, but maybe the gift giver could give access to your interactive gift guide, and then at the end, the recipient actually gets the game (or they can pick a different game)? Maybe the gift giver can select a max price and then the interactive gift guide would automatically filter out games above that limit (and you could set a minimum for the gift giver, so there are a decent number of choices still in the gift guide)?
Thanks Ira! I like both of those ideas.
I really like using an Amazon wish list to both assist others with shopping for me as well as getting gifts for other people.
I don’t have to worry about getting someone a gift that’s already been purchased as gifts are removed from the list if they have been purchased directly from the list. It gives me a high-level of confidence that it’s something they want and do not already own. It will also keep it a secret/anonymous unless they explicitly go out of their way to “spoil the surprise”.
Unfortunately, this approach isn’t perfect. It limits me to Amazon when I may prefer to support a local board game store. It takes away from some of the “magic” or thoughtfulness when we all know that we’re just shopping directly off each others’ lists. It’s also entirely possible that I reference the wish list, purchase the item elsewhere, and forget to delete the item from the list resulting in duplicate gifts.
I toyed with Stonemaier’s interactive gift guide and I really like the concept of it. My biggest concern is that I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself an “outdoor observer” or even a “wine enthusiast” (I actually dreaded bird watching and identification when I was in Scouts), but I really enjoy Wingspan and Viticulture. Have you considered polling more on mechanics as well as theme? Or what if I could check a list of Stonemaier games that the person already owns and the gift guide could generate a list of other games they’d also enjoy and/or expansions and upgraded components for the games they already have?
Thanks for sharing that, Austin! I agree about the pros and cons of the Amazon wish lists.
You’re right that we could expand the “personality type” labels with more information about the games. I think the other idea you mentioned would be awesome (just a bit technically complex to implement).