Results of Our Puzzle Bomb Survey!

Hey Puzzle Bomb Fam!

About a month ago, we invited y'all to participate in a customer survey. I suppose it's a bit odd for a company to share the results this transparently, but if you're anything like me, seeing the results is the most fun part of any test or survey, so I wanted to share the fun with you as well!

Why a Survey?

The primary goal of this survey was to better understand:

a) Who is buying our puzzles.
b) Why people who buy are buying.

I could have taken a stab at what I thought about these things, but nothing beats data. This knowledge helps us immensely, as it helps us focus our marketing efforts and messaging, helping us to set our puzzles in front of the right folks, and to communicate the right thing about the puzzles to those folks.

Survey Participation

In order to have a statistically relevant survey, we needed about 100 responses.

You all smashed that out of the park, meaning we got results we can put a high degree of confidence in! Thanks so much!

The Leading Question

We started by asking some reasons why folks might choose to buy Puzzle Bomb puzzles. This helps us to know what overall messaging is most resonating with folks. Here's what we found, with higher numbers indicating a higher resonance.

Stress Reduction vs. Mental Stimulation

We were curious about these two sides of the coin, as the assumption was that folks do puzzles for one of these two reasons. It turned out folks responded equally strongly to both sides of this coin! Some more data later with interesting findings regarding this...

Customizable Difficulty

We weren't sure if the customizable difficulty was a strong marketing ploy, or just a nice feature. This scored pretty middling, meaning it probably won't be a focus of our marketing efforts, but that it is an appreciated feature.

Extremely Challenging

Sometimes marketing is a challenge of perception vs. reality. When we did some in person shows, a frequent comment was "those look so hard!". So, we thought maybe folks buying our puzzles were attracted to perceived difficulty, and that doubling down on the challenge might be effective. This low result rejected that theory, suggesting that difficulty is not what folks are after when buying our puzzles. Good to know!

Faith-based

This question was more for us personally, and we were relieved to find this scored low. While we're extremely open about our faith in Jesus, and do use this business to preach the good news of Jesus and the amazing things He's done in our lives, I would never want to use the name of Jesus as a marketing tool of sorts. Our communication about Jesus isn't a marketing decision on our part, but rather is core to who we are as a family. I'm thrilled to see that, while we frequently talk about Jesus, it's not the reason folks are deciding to buy from us.

Children and Grandchildren

There was one particular aspect of customer feedback I've received over the years, and that's how someone's gifted or neurodivergent children/grandchildren love our puzzles. We wanted to see if this was isolated, or more widespread.

These results confirmed what we were thinking: that we have an area of opportunity to more strongly market to these segments. Not merely as a marketing ploy, but as a particular area that we're legitimately making a difference in peoples' lives and adding value.

Y'all Buy a Lot of Puzzles!

This wasn't super surprising, as most folks willing to spend $50 on a puzzle are likely really into puzzling.

Over 40% of you are buying at least 8 puzzles per year, which is massive compared to the general population! And for those who are only buying a handful of puzzles per year, we're honored we're one of those chosen few!

How You Describe Us

Perhaps one of the most fun sections to read through was how you describe us in your own words. Here's the zoomed out overview of common themes:

Typically, in these surveys, 30% of folks saying the same thing is considered very strong, so the fact that folks blow this away with some of the descriptions means we've built a strong brand around those descriptions. Unique, intricate, and non-traditional were incredibly common themes!

One side-note I just want to touch on that was revealed with this open-ended question: a handful of folks' description of Puzzle Bomb was that it's a company run by hateful religious bigots. This doesn't upset me personally, but it does grieve my heart that so many folks have been hurt by people claiming to follow Jesus, that they see His message as hateful. "Christianity" can mean so many things to so many people depending on their life experience, and I'm so incredibly sorry to those who have been hurt by either professing Christians, or the church at large.

Here at Puzzle Bomb, we're not MAGA Christian nationalists with a political affiliation. We're not out picketing that folks need to change or rot in hell. We're simply folks who have had their lives radically changed by Jesus, and participate in the mission statement Jesus gave in His first public message in Luke 4:18:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Before Jesus, I was addicted, prideful, insecure, and all kinds of other junk. Jesus has healed me and given me an entirely new life and identity, free of all that junk, and He continues to lead me daily! That's the only message we have. Wherever you are in life, Jesus has answers and ability to set you completely free, reconciled to God both now, and for eternity, which is a long time!

Puzzle Buyers and Subscription Model Interest

One thing that might not have seemed like a focus, but actually was of huge interest to us was interest in a subscription model, which we're strongly considering pivoting to in the somewhat near future.

It was a bit surprising how many folks who have never bought from us participated in the survey, as 25% of respondents aren't yet customers. You crazy folks must just really like taking surveys, and I hope you'll give us a try soon!  :D

The above image also mention that subscription model, which we dug into a bit further here:

Everything in green is where subscription model fans resonate higher than the average respondent; in same cases way higher. Basically, among those of you who would love subscriptions, you highly resonate with pretty much all of the potential messaging, but particularly loving the puzzles as a peaceful puzzling escape. It makes sense why you'd want this on a monthly basis!

The results here did give us confidence that a subscription model is likely our next step, moving away from crowdfunding to a model that just drops a puzzle a month in the mail to you. Crowdfunding has been wonderful for us so far, but I hate the clunkiness and confusion of certain aspects of it. We do believe the key to reducing confusion while serving our fans well (what could beat effortlessly receiving a brand new puzzle each month?) is moving to a monthly puzzle club model. We'll keep you posted on details!

More on That Stress Reduction vs. Mental Stimulation Message

Way back at the beginning, we saw that both of these messages seemed equally valuable. Here's where that data becomes much clearer!

When we segment this data by age, we see the younger puzzlers highly identify with the stress reduction aspects, whereas the older end of the spectrum identifies with the mental sharpness aspects. Both are very valid reasons for puzzling, but it's super helpful information for us to know what to communicate about our puzzles depending on who we're talking to.

High Satisfaction

It may be confirmation bias, as folks who respond to a survey are more likely your fans, but it was wonderful to see how thoroughly satisfied folks have been with our puzzles and service.

As always, if you happen to be in that small percentage of folks who have had an issue, we'll make every effort to make things right. We recently even posted a Puzzle Bomb Guarantee, detailing the uncommon lengths we'll go to to ensure you have a good experience!

Some of Our Favorite and Most Meaningful Comments

We'll close this post out with our favorite part: those open-ended responses we covered at a higher level earlier! As a company and creator, you usually just hear the negative feedback or take care of any problems, as it's just human nature to only speak up when we don't like something, or when something is wrong. This was a real treat to hear some wonderful feedback:

"Fabulous puzzles that are works of art! Each piece is so beautiful that you totally enjoy putting it together! You’ll want to keep it on display!"

"A jigsaw puzzle if it's been squeezed through a dream black hole."

"Very cool high quality laser cut wooden puzzles that incorporates original art that is fun and very challenging. It is hard to think of it as puzzles because the designs and nuance in each puzzle is woven in so it adds to the layer of intrigue. Very cool designs that create memories and yet seem like collectibles too."

"An organically grown small business that designs and produces one-of-a-kind, wildly fun (with a smidge of serious) quality puzzles."

"Truly unique! An experience for the senses, and stimulating for the brain! Putting these wooden puzzles together beats the common cardboard puzzle."

"The creator and marketer of complex all wooden jigsaw puzzles the decidedly do not follow jigsaw traditions in a very very good way."

"The coolest free-form puzzles out there, which combine extreme precision with mind-grinding interlocking shapes and whimsical themes. Take it one level higher? Then there’s the multi-level puzzles, each with a unique style and a common theme."

A Humble Request!

After seeing all the wonderful things you had to say in that freeform section, I launched a new review system on the Puzzle Bomb website. Since it didn't make a lot of sense to have reviews at the product level, as so much of our stuff is quickly discontinued, I decided to start a company-level review system.

Your participation here is super helpful to us, as it makes a big impact when new folks arrive to the site to see an army of folks who are having a great experience! You can see the new review system on our home page:

To leave your own short testimonial or review, you can either click that "Leave a Review" button on the home page, or leave a review here:

https://reputon.com/testimonial/puzzlebomb

I hope you enjoyed seeing the results of the survey as much as we did! So many interesting insights, and we look forward to continuing to serve you all as we continue this Puzzle Bomb pathway!

Love and blessings,
Chad