Building an AI skincare quiz after 7 merchant interviews

[Nemanja_Janjic]

Hi everyone,

I’m a Shopify app founder, and before building my latest Shopify app, I decided to do something different: I spent two weeks talking directly to 7 skincare and wellness merchants on Shopify.

I wanted to know their biggest day-to-day headache. The answer was almost unanimous, and it usually sounded like this:

“Customers come to my site, get overwhelmed by the options, and leave. My DMs are flooded with ‘Is this serum right for oily skin?’ or ‘Which moisturizer should I pair with this exfoliator?’ I physically don’t have the time to answer everyone, and I know I’m losing sales because of it.”

The core problem isn’t that customers don’t want to buy; it’s a lack of confidence. In skincare, if a user isn’t 100% sure a product matches their specific skin type, they hit the back button.

What I Built: Ritual (AI Skincare Quiz)

To bridge this gap, I spent the last 30 days building Ritual—an AI-powered skin consultation tool that acts as an in-store expert for your brand.

I designed it to be minimalist and completely native to the Shopify ecosystem, so it doesn’t slow down the storefront or ruin the brand’s aesthetic.

How it works:

• 60-Second Consultation: The customer takes a clean, intuitive quiz about their skin type, concerns, and goals.

• Smart Catalog Matching: The AI doesn’t give generic advice. It scans your specific Shopify catalog to recommend products.

• Full AM/PM Routines: It dynamically builds a tailored morning and evening routine, explaining why each product was selected to build immediate trust.

The “Hidden” Pain Point: Influencer ROI

During my interviews, merchants brought up another huge issue: they were spending thousands on beauty influencers but had zero data on who actually drove sales versus just sending vanity traffic.

Because of that feedback, I added an Influencer Attribution layer. Ritual tracks which creator’s link brought the user to the quiz, and maps that entire journey directly to the checkout. You get to see the exact ROI of your influencer campaigns.

Early Beta Insights (Data from 3 stores)

We’ve been running a small beta with three skincare merchants, and the initial data has been incredibly encouraging:

• ~64% quiz completion rate (shoppers actually love talking about their skin).

• 2.1x higher conversion rate for users who finished the quiz compared to standard site traffic.

• +35% increase in return visit rate (customers coming back to check their routines).

Why I’m Posting Here (And I need your feedback)

I don’t want to build in a silo.

I want to build with the Shopify community.

Whether you try the app or not, I’d love to get your insights:

1. If you run a beauty/cosmetics store, how do you currently handle product education and customer hesitations?

2. Have you tried traditional product finders or quizzes before? What was your biggest frustration with them?

If you do want to test it out on your storefront, Ritual has a 14-day free trial.

I’ll be hanging out in the comments below. I’d deeply appreciate any feedback, feature requests, or even brutal honesty on the landing page/concept!

Cheers!

[lumine]

The interview-first approach is the right instinct, most app founders skip straight to building. One thing I’d pressure-test from the merchant side: a quiz only kills those DMs if the result is trusted enough that the customer doesn’t then message to double-check it. The failure mode I’d watch is “the quiz said the oily-skin serum but I also get dry patches, is that still ok?” which is the same DM with extra steps in front of it. So the number that tells you it’s actually working isn’t quiz completion rate, it’s DM volume after launch.

Did any of the 7 mention what they do as a stopgap today, a manual reply, a static “which serum is right for you” page, a Linktree? That stopgap is the real baseline you have to beat, and it also tells you how good the recommendation has to feel before a merchant trusts it over answering by hand. What were they using before?