(2) comments
Add Your Reply
Outgrow Review. Create Engaging Content.
Welcome back to another review, and today we are looking at Outgrow. As you hopefully know, this website is all about highlighting the best quiz making tools for marketers and website owners. But it is not only about quizzes, it's simply about creating engaging content that will convert (or at least warm up!) your audience. Outgrow has become very popular recently, so it was a no-brainer for me to take a look at!
Outgrow Review Overview
What is Outgrow?
When you look at the dictionary definition of outgrow, you will see that it is talking about growing too large and 'surpassing' in growing. Outgrow picked a good name, as this is what they are trying to help you to do in marketing terms.
Outgrow use the tagline 'Increase online sales' and call themselves an 'interactive marketing toolkit'. Basically, Outgrow is a way to create engaging and interactive content for your online audience. Yes, they let you build quizzes. but they also add many other interesting ways to do this, such as the ability to make calculators and polls.
These interactive tools are designed to get you customers by helping them first, not just exposing them to a cold, hard sales pitch.
Who is behind Outgrow?
Outgrow was founded by Pratham Mittal and Randy Rayess. Pratham seems to be quite the man when it comes to startups, having already founded VenturePact (a company that links companies with software developers) previously. He has also invested in several startups along the way, such as Alice App and Nooch. I assume Pratham and Rayess met at university, as they went to the same one. They have also founded and invested in similar companies along the way. They seem to have formed a real dream team here!
What does Outgrow offer?
As stated above, they offer interactive content. What exactly does that mean? Let's dive deeper.
Different Types of Content
As well as offering quizzes, Outgrow also offer these additional options for interactive content:
Can you imagine how much time a sales team would be saved, if you could put a cost calculator for a 'job cost' on your website. These extra options do have real value!
Having said all of that, pay attention to the later section on price, as some of these features are locked behind a pretty expensive paywall.
Website Based
Outgrow is a purely website based business, meaning that the whole design and publishing process is handled through their membership portal. This creates less stress on your own website or business resources, however this also means that you don't really own your content. If you stop your subscription, these things become inactive.
Shareable Content
As you might expect, Outgrow allow you to embed your interactive content online, pretty much anywhere that allows you to add a custom HTML code.
However, one feature I really like is the 'promotion checklist'. You get one with every piece of content, reminding you of all the different ways you could promote and share your content. You can tick each one off as you go. Great touch.
As you can see, each step on this checklist also comes with a link to an associated guide!
Help and Support
Outgrow give their members a wide range of templates and pre-made examples of their content. They have a chatbot feature on their website which says they 'usually answer in five minutes'. They also have comprehesive help articles available during your creation process. The chatbot also doubles as a place to search for these.
GDPR Compliancy
It was great to see a toggle in the settings of Outgrow to help you with making your content GDPR compliant. This is an important step for many companies operating in Europe.
Customization
Outgrow allows you to customize your interactive content using such things as logic branching. If you were making a quiz, you could ask certain questions based on the answers given. Or you could show different offers to people with different results.
Built In Integrations
Outgrow have a long list of integrations built right into their software. From Mailchimp to Google Sheets, they have you covered! They even include some smaller companies such as 'Emma'.
How is it implemented?
The first thing that happens when you sign up for Outgrow, is a YouTube video will pop up on the screen. Actually, it is THIS YouTube video.....
First impressions are not that great, as it sounds like a guy with a headset microphone talking! However, the content and introduction to the software is pretty good. And, at least they are making an effort. Thankfully, after this video my impressions started to go up significantly! You would be surprised how many people might be put off by this scratchy microphone though! Doesn't give that 'we're a big company, you can trust us' feel!
Just look at what you are presented with after the video above...
A real simple, clean UI that makes it really easy to see what to do. You have a list of content you can start to create, as well as the "trending premade templates' section that I particularly enjoyed looking through.
The amount of templates and pre-made examples Outgrow offer is exceptional. Even if you are a novice with creating this type of content, you have a lot of real examples to dabble with. Whether it be for inspiration, or poking around in the back end to see how it works.
What happens when you want to actually create content?
You will always see the tabs 'Dashboard' 'Analytics' and 'Performance' at the top of your screen. This will stay pretty similar throughout your time on Outgrow, meaning you will find it hard to get lost. No sets of massive menus here!
When you first select the content you want to make, you can go with a pre-build template (they have many for different industries) or a simpler 'build from scratch' style only template. Each template has a description of what it is exactly, and the associated image is a GIF that will scroll down to show you what it will look like. Now, this is attention to detail!
I went with a calculator and chose one of those style templates. Now the screen gets a bit more complex, but their clean UI helps to stop me feeling overwhelmed!
Build and configure tabs are added at the top. During the design process, you will mostly find yourself in the build tab. On the left side of your screen are the different sections of your content, along with the associated questions. Every time you click on something there, the right hand panel will change to show you the things you can edit.
It is really simple to make your questions and map them to certain outcomes of your quiz, and you have a wide choice of question types to choose from. There is also a function to add a value to each questions to determine it's weighting to the end result. If you want to get 'really deep in the weeds' you can add complex calculations to come up with your end results! Mathematicians rejoice!
My biggest gripe here is the way they have implemented the logic branching. You can see above that all of your questions are easy to see and change the order. But any logic branching requires you to start making text based rules to connect. It is pretty good for a text based system, but can still get confusing. Why oh why didn't they go for a drag and drop and 'connect the dots' style of logic system?? Would be a lot faster. Also, the logic branching (known as logic jump) is only available when you subscribe to the $95 essentials tier subscription.
I really like the preview functions build into the content building. You can easily click the preview option for either mobile or web view at any point during the build process. This is a valuable feature for quick checking your progress!
When you are done building, you can go to the 'configure' tab to define the finer details of your content. Below you can see the vast array of options you have.
Outgrow have really thought of everything! There are even options to help you with recent laws about cookies and GDPR (that new European law that all internet marketers LOVE!!!).
You will be able to link such tools as Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel to your content, setup your content for good SEO (they even have snippet previews built in). Also. you will have access to a list of integrations as long as your arm! You can link your content to social media automation software such as Buffer or Hootsuite too. The results page can even be turned into a custom PDF download for your users to download at the end!
I am not impressed with the A/B testing available in Outgrow. There is no way to directly compare your variables in the reporting and analytics. All you can do is duplicate a quiz, make some adjustments, and manually compare the results.
What happens AFTER you create your content?
If you thought you were done after creating that content, you couldn't be more wrong. After sharing this content you will hopefully get people interacting with it. Outgrow will then help you analyse these results and see how you could do better.
The Analytics tab is pretty crazy stuff, as you can see below.
You can see a wide range of information about your content in one easy to read page. How your content was accessed, where it was accessed from, the device used to access. Details about how far people got through your content, the conversions achieved.....I could go on. And the lead capture capabilities are amazing, allowing you the opportunity to get detailed information about your users who opted in.
In some ways, I like the 'Performance' tab even more, as it is something pretty unique to Outgrow. This tab will actually analyse your content and give you a score and tips on how to improve it. When I first saw this, my mind was literally blown!
What's the price?
Here we get to the only confusing part of Outgrow, the price! Just look at the pricing table below. I totally understand why they have done this, as they want a plan that can cater for the widest amount of possibilities. Whether you are a one man band or a massive company, there is a plan for you. However, it can seem daunting at first sight!
If you read this review and have an interest in Outgrow, take some time to peruse the prices and tiers they have. Each section can be clicked on to reveal more details. In the picture above I had expanded the 'type of content' section to show just that. Yes, this can be a costly and restrictive piece of software. However, if you are serious about using interactive content regularly on your websites, this product would actually represent good value. If you just want to make the occasional interactive quiz, go with something cheaper like Thrive Quiz Builder. If you consider Clickfunnels, the go to product for a lot of funnel builders these days. A lot of people are willingly paying $97 a month for that. Look at the similarly priced Outgrow essentials tier above. If people are willing to pay that amount for Clickfunnels, surely Outgrow is a no-brainer!
As with most of these services, you will be able to get Outgrow slightly cheaper if you agree to pay yearly rather than monthly.
What I like?
Top Quality User Interface
I was recently impressed by Leadquizzes updated UI, but this is another level again. The art of good UI is to take something complicated and make it look simple. This is exactly what Outgrow have done. Their UI designer needs a raise clearly!!
Well Thought Out Product
When working through this review, it is clear this product was made by marketers for marketers! A lot of finer details have been covered. You rarely find yourself saying 'I wish they had this feature' when it comes to Outgrow. They have taken their time to build a quality product.
A lot of Pre-made Content
The amount of style templates and pre-made example content is outstanding. It takes a lot of time to do this well, but this is exactly what they have managed. Even before you sign up, just go look at their examples page HERE. Other developers would learn a thing or two about this! There are a lot of business owners that aren't marketing or software experts, and need these examples to help them along.
All in one Experience
This is not just a quiz making platform. This is a platform for a wide variety of interactive content. I myself own many websites, and reviewing this product got me excited about all the possible use cases I could have for Outgrow. And everything you need is under one roof. Just hook it up to an autoresponder emailer and you are good.
Top End Analytics and Reporting
I have reviewed many products and seen many attempts at reporting and analytics in similar services. Outgrow have out done all of the ones that I have seen. Not only can you get detailed breakdowns about the users that interact with your content, but you have a built in way to check your content and see how it could be improved. And on top of all of this, it is presented in an easy to digest format. Not once did I feel overwhelmed, even though I am new to this service.
What I Don't like?
Poor A/B Testing
The only way you can A/B test in this software is to duplicate content and manually compare. As A/B testing is such as big thing these days, this is an area they should really address!
Logic Branching Could Be Better
Yes, you can easily see and drag your questions around when making quizzes. But, to connect with logic branching you can only do this by creating text rules. Crazily, the much cheaper Thrive Quiz Builder is still the top dog in this area!
Confusing Pricing
That pricing table has a lot of fine details to consider. There are a lot of restrictions and features missing from lower tiers. Make sure to study these carefully before you subscribe, to avoid dissapointment!
Website Based
When you have a website based service, you don't really own the content. As soon as you stop paying money, your ability to manage your content has gone. I know a lot of these services are going this way, but the fact remains that you are housing your content on someone else's servers.
Hard to remove Outgrow Branding
I know this is a great product, and deserves a high price. But you have to be on the highest $600 a month plan in order to have the option to take out the Outgrow branding. Making your smaller users essentially give you free advertising sucks! This should be optional, or at least only for the lower tiers.
Trial is highest tier
A lot of these service software companies will do this, and Outgrow is no different. When you take the free trial, you are getting the full $600 a month 'crazy' plan that is only really for larger companies! You get used to all that sweet goodness, and then you find out how much you have to pay to get this! They should clearly give you the option to choose a tier appropriate for you when signing up for your trial. Much less misleading. Can you imagine how many excited website users got seven days into their trial and had made and even published a ton of cool stuff. Only to find they can't afford the upkeep when they are asked to subscribe! I made this awesome chat bot........$95 a month please!
Aggressive Chatbot
When I was first on Outgrow, I loved the chat bot, as I could quickly ask a real human questions or find related articles easily. However, after a while the constant pop ups started annoying me! Even when logged into the members portal, all my tabs would quickly have the title 'Daphne says...' or 'Rose Says...', making it hard to find the content I am working on. I understand the need for a chat bot, but when you are already a member it shouldn't be so aggressive!
Is Outgrow your marketing savior?
I think it is clear from this review, that I am a massive fan of what Outgrow are doing. They are bringing amazing interactive content to the masses! They are not perfect, needing to upgrade their logic branching and A/B testing as a priority! But the features they do have far outweigh the mostly niggly problems I have with Outgrow.
It should be noted however, that this is a serious piece of software for a serious end user. This is only really for people who want to build their online presence around such interactive content. For those people, the high cost of Outgrow is totally worth it. I would peg this service up against something like Leadquizzes, not really the slightly lower end Thrive Quiz Builder (which is still a great product if you don't need so much content). In fact. I would recommend the Thrive option over Outgrow for the lowest tier 'freelancer' option!
I take my hat off to the co-founders of Outgrow. They have really built an amazing platform. If you are serious about quizzes and other interactive content, go check them out!!
What do you think? If you have used Outgrow, we would love to hear all about your opinions of the software below in the comments section!
If you want to see more quiz examples from Outgrow, you can read our article all about Outgrow quiz types.
