Wine Quiz
Transforming PairAnything into a product recommender for e-commerce.
The PairAnything Wine Quiz invites shoppers to imagine how they’ll enjoy the wine, whether that’s during a weeknight dinner, or celebrating your friends’ birthday, and recommends wines that match the vibe. I wanted shoppers to feel confident buying wine they’d never tasted before, online. Following the Wine Quiz’s success and acquisition of 5+ customers, PairAnything expanded the product into a new vertical: an in-store retail tablet kiosk.
Role
Product Lead & Designer
Duration
2 months
Team
CEO, developer
Context
Reframing our product
In the original PairAnything app, users could search for any food or wine to get a pairing, but analytics showed that only 5% of visitors did so, meaning most never reached the product’s core value.
Through customer interviews, I found that wineries were not hiring us for our pairing database, but to simplify the decision-making process for online shoppers. These insights led me to reframe PairAnything as a personalized product recommender for wine, rather than a pairing search engine.
Before
The old PairAnything app required shoppers to type and search to get a wine pairing recommendation.
After
With the new Wine Quiz, shoppers answer a few short questions and receive 3 wine reccs and pairings.
Problem
Nobody buys new wine online.
I led a UX research team to learn how people currently shop for wine. Surveying 100+ individuals revealed that only 6% of wine sales occur online, and shoppers stick to buying wine they've tasted before. It was clear that people don't feel confident buying new wine online.
6%
of wine sales happen online, whereas 90% occurs in-person.
98%
of survey respondents only buy wines they’ve tasted before when shopping online.
Research findings
People trust people.
To understand why people don't buy new wine online, I interviewed shoppers and analyzed Reddit threads discussing buying wine in-person vs. online and the sentiment towards human and digital sommeliers. I kept hearing the same thing: people trust people. Winery owners echoed this pattern: their best sales occur during in-person interactions, and they struggle to sell when they aren’t physically present, making e-commerce particularly challenging.
Top: Redditor replying to: “I am a Newbie to wine. What are the most important things for me to know?”
Bottom: Redditor replying to: “Are Soms, critics and store recommendations in danger from generative AI?”
I wanted to know
How might we...
Help shoppers feel confident buying wine they've never tasted before, online?
Secondly, how can we recreate the trust of talking to a winemaker, but online?
I hypothesized that...
If we help shoppers imagine how a wine fits into their life, they’ll be more likely to purchase and enjoy it. A quiz lowers the barrier to entry by asking users simple questions, similar to how a winemaker converses with shoppers in-person.
More research
How are wines being recommended today?
I interviewed sommeliers and winemakers to understand how conversations with shoppers typically unfold. They focus first on context, such as the meal or desired mood, rather than the wine flavors itself.
“
Well… what are you having? What’s the vibe?
- The first thing a sommelier asks
What are our competitors doing?
We tested a competitor product, Tastry, which asks technical questions like, “Do you like bell pepper?” While this reflects how experts evaluate wine characteristics, user interviews showed that these questions didn’t resonate with casual wine drinkers.
“
These quizzes don’t account for the fact that sometimes I want chocolate and sometimes I want vanilla (flavors)… they should also account for mood and pairings.
- User, after taking the Tastry wine quiz
This user feedback reinforced my decision to focus on how shoppers want to enjoy wine and to design the quiz for repeat use. For example, someone might take it once for a birthday party and again for a casual weeknight meal.
In the PairAnything wine quiz, we ask how shoppers want to enjoy their wine and focus on the surrounding context, similar to how a conversation with a winemaker would go.
Final design
Meet the PairAnything Wine Quiz
In late August 2025, we launched the PairAnything Wine Quiz as a Shopify app on a Swiss winery’s online store. Shoppers answer a few quick questions about how they plan to enjoy the wine, and the quiz matches them with three wines and food pairings to fit the vibe. They can add all the wines to their cart in one click, get their results by email, and check out directly on the winery’s site.
We’ll consider the wine quiz successful if at least 10% of quiz-takers purchase a wine, validating that the product converts shoppers, and at least 20% save their results via phone or email, indicating that end-users found our recommendations helpful.
Results
Growing in retail and e-commerce
Since launch, PairAnything has signed 5+ winery customers to install the Wine Quiz on their online stores. A grocery retailer also noticed it and wanted an in-store tablet version, so I made a few tweaks based on insights from our first kiosk pilot.
Prioritizing accessibility
Triggering the tablet's native keyboard took up a majority of the screen, making it hard for users to navigate the quiz. To prevent this, I removed questions that required text-input, like "What's your name?", and changed the "Save your results" prompt from email to SMS, with a large, on-screen numpad for phone number input.
Designing for in-store edge cases
Since the quiz runs in a tablet browser, there was a possibility that users may navigate away from the quiz tab, requiring store staff to manually reset the kiosk. To avoid this, I replaced all external product links with modals to display wine information within the quiz experience. On top of that, I added an inactivity timer to automatically reset the quiz in between sessions.