How to Create a Quiz That Will Impress Your Audience (And Help Your Business Grow)

Have you heard a story of a million dollar quiz? You know, how a company spent a couple of days creating an online quiz that later brought them one million in revenue.

Cool, huh?

Also, very unlikely to happen to you.

Because the average conversion rate of an online quiz is 5%, 1 subscriber out of 20 people. And your small business has neither the traffic nor social followers, nor the money to get it in front of enough people to get the ball rolling.

Yet, if you use content marketing to grow your business, you absolutely should make your own interactive online quiz. Here’s why.

I created a 20-question online quiz that told people their websites suck

…and this is what happened next

They say the best quizzes are short, simple and positive.

Which makes sense. More people will finish a short and simple quiz, and more people will share the results if they are positive.

Unless you don’t want more people but the right people, and the right people won’t care for “What type of a blogger super-hero are you?” kind of stuff.

I write for business owners who are serious about improving their websites and appreciate straightforward actionable feedback.

That’s why I created an online quiz with 20 questions and results that could make you cry called “How good is your homepage?” (you can take this quiz here, if you dare).

What? I can’t tell you your website is great when it obviously isn’t, and it’s time you faced the truth.

How do you think it performed?

If I was into the typical “let’s stuff as many people as possible in a sales funnel” approach, I would say it failed miserably.

It didn’t go viral, and after 3 weeks it brought me whooping 9 new subscribers.

Good thing I’m more into reverse funnel paying individual attention to every single person who engages with me and my website.

From all my existing subscribers, 14% completed the quiz and 1 in 3 also downloaded the detailed results. They got ultra-actionable tips on improving their websites and I, a lot of detailed information about their pain points (hello, new shiny content ideas!).

The new subscribers also didn’t disappoint. They turned out to be serious people with serious websites who seem to be almost twice as engaged as my average subscriber (based on 4 newsletters they’ve got from me so far).

Some of them even took time to tell me in person they appreciate my advice.

Quiz feedback: Example 1
Aw, thank you, Ronell, my new business consultant subscriber!
Quiz feedback: Example 2
And here’s me talking to my new freelance writer subscriber Samar on Twitter.

The engagement from my existing subscribers and the positive feedback reassured me that the quiz was a good fit for my ideal audience, and that I just needed to up my promotion game.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about you.

What can an online quiz do for your business?

…and how to create one that does the magic

Setting your “quizpectations” right

You must have heard that quizzes are the best when it comes to growing your email list.

But you should take it with a grain of salt, because:

The average conversion rate of quizzes is poor.

An average conversion rate of an online quiz is 5%.

If someone tells you the conversion rate of their quiz is substantially more than that, ask them how many conversions they had in general and laugh at anything below 200 sing-ups.

Which means you’ll get 1 subscriber from 20 people who complete your quiz.

Which means you need 2000 quiz completions to get 100 new subscribers.

Which is a lot of people for your small business website, isn’t it?

Even if your quiz goes viral, it may attract many poor quality leads.

People who’ll give you their email address just because they are curious what blogger personality type the are, won’t be automatically interested in receiving your weekly emails. They may not even remember who you are when they get your newsletter next week and delete it without opening.

So, those 2000 people for 100 new subscribers?

Make it a couple of thousands more if you want 100 subscribers who’ll also open your emails.

“Well, this sucks! Why would I bother with a quiz at all then?”

For many reasons, these 5 being the main of them:

5 ways an online quiz could be better than a well-researched blog post

A quiz tailored for your target audience:

  • Is fast-to-create but still high-quality content for your blog and/or newsletter. You don’t even need to come up with new ideas. Just take an old post and create a quiz based on it.
  • Has a potential of higher engagement when shared on social (according to stats, 82% of people who see a quiz in their timeline will take it).
  • Gives you valuable insights on your ideal audience.
  • Gives you many new content ideas.
  • Is a long-term lead magnet attracting quality subscribers, although at a slower pace.

Just take my non-viral quiz, for example.

I now have about 100 answers around a small business website’s design, UX and copy. I know exactly how people are messing up their websites, and can offer ultra-specific and helpful advice.

Quiz answer: Example
Huh? People still have carousels on their websites? I’ll be mentioning this in my next blog post.

Note: This screenshot shows not all the answers but only the answers within a particular quiz version. Whenever I changed something in my quiz and published a new version, the quiz builder I used automatically created a new quiz version and collected the stats separately. All the past stats were preserved, of course.

I created my quiz using Interact quiz builder, and they capture many relevant stats (more on this in a minute).

I also sent the quiz as one of my weekly newsletters and am planing to include it in my welcome email sequences for the new subscribers who didn’t take the quiz yet.

Plus, it’s now my main lead magnet on the homepage (I needed something more fun than a free download).

How to make a quiz for your website that will attract your dream prospects

Ok, let’s talk concrete actionable steps. Follow these six steps to create your own online quiz your audience will love.

Step #1: Define your goals

Before you get to creating a quiz, you need to decide what you’d like to achieve with it.

In my case, I wanted a lead magnet that:

  • is more fun than yet another ebook or a free download
  • provides valuable insights about my audience that will help me create helpful content
  • puts only people on my email list who are serious about improving their websites.

So now you see why I needed the 20 quiz questions.

But you are not me, and if you are better off with a 5-question quiz with a sugar-sweet feedback, go for it.

Step #2: Select a type of quiz

If you create a quiz using Interact, it will offer you three different types of quizzes to choose from:

Interact: Types of Quizzes

Every quiz type comes with some templates and type-specific in-built features. For example, a possibility to display the correct answer on the spot in an assessment quiz or assigning grades to the possible answers in a scored quiz.

You can either start creating a quiz from scratch or select from a number of templates – a short ready-to-use quizzes sorted by industry that you can also customize.

Interact quiz templates by industry
Interact quiz templates by industry

But regardless of what types of quizzes a tool offers, here’s how you decide what kind of quiz will fit your goals best.

#1: Entertaining, reach oriented

In Interact: Personality quiz

“I’d like to entertain people with some light content around my topic. I hope the quiz will get lots of shares to help me get my name out and grow my email list.”
Benefits:
  • Higher chance of getting shared.
  • More people will take it in the short term.
  • If shared widely, will also give you many new subscribers.
Drawbacks:
  • Lower conversion rate than a helpful quiz.
  • Unless you’ve built your business around entertaining your readers, many of your new subscribers won’t engage with your emails.

Examples:

  • What type of blogger / copywriter / photographer are you?
  • What does your writing style / brand colors say about your personality?
  • What type of cake / marketing super-hero / extinct animal are you?
Tip: Keep your quiz between 5 and 10 questions. Use images as answer choices. Encourage people to spread the word by framing the results in a positive way and including sharing buttons on the result pages.

#2. Impressive, aiming for quality leads

In Interact: Assessment quiz or Scored quiz

“I’d like to get new subscribers who also fit my ideal audience profile. But even if someone doesn’t subscribe, they should receive helpful information from their quiz results (I’m hoping to at least make an impression)”.
Benefits:
  • High conversion rate.
  • Good quality subscribers who will also remember your name next time you send them an email.
  • Invaluable insights about your target audience.
  • Many new content ideas.
Drawbacks:
  • Not many people will take it immediately.
  • Most probably won’t be widely shared.
  • Most probably won’t get you many subscribers fast.

Examples:

  • How good is your homepage?
  • What should your brand’s colors be?
  • Is blogging right for your business?
Tip: Spend some time coming up with the questions. Make the quiz as long as you think you can keep people’s attention. Make sure all the results are truly helpful, even if you can’t phrase them in a positive way.

#3. Educational, helpful

In Interact: Assessment quiz or Scored quiz

“I don’t care if anyone subscribes. With my quiz, I want to give valuable advice to my existing subscribers / whoever comes across it”.
Benefits:
  • Is valuable for your readers but is way faster to create as an average quality post.
  • Makes people remember your name.
  • Starts building trust as you show off your expertise.
  • If you are using an opt-in on the results page (instead of an opt-in), will get you some new subscribers over time.
  • If you provide a link to a blog post on the results page, will get you new website visitors.
Drawbacks:
  • Not many people will subscribe (unless you offer an additional freebie).
  • If you aren’t going to ask for the email addresses, you aren’t going to get any subscribers.

Examples:

  • How much do you know about SEO / copywriting / content marketing?
  • How many of these common spelling mistakes do you make?
  • Do you know which of these vegetables contain protein?
Tip: Design your quiz in a form of a multiple choice knowledge quiz. Keep it between 7 and 10 questions. Show the final score, as in “You got 8 out of 10 right”. Encourage people to spread the word by including sharing buttons on the result pages.

Step #3: Maximize the chances for your quiz to succeed

Great, you’ve decided what you want to achieve with your quiz. This brings us to another important question:

How to make your quiz actually achieve these goals?

These three metrics will tell you how well is your quiz performing:

  • How many people started taking it?
  • How many people completed it?
  • How many people opted in (if you are collecting emails)?

The greater these numbers, the better. Here’s how you can maximize them:

  • Give your quiz an engaging title that also sets the expectations right from the start. More people will take your quiz with the right expectations, which will minimize the number of drop-offs.
  • Show progress once people start taking the quiz.
  • Include images that help understand what the quiz is about / hold people’s attention longer.
  • Keep the number of possible answers to the minimum.
  • Make the questions and answers succinct and to the point.
  • Make sure it’s fast and looks great on mobile (Interact took care of this one for me, as the speed and interface of their quizzes on mobile is superb).
  • Make the benefit of opting it crystal clear and valuable to your target audience.

Here’s an example of a question from my quiz:

Quiz Question Example
One of the questions from my quiz. The layout is all out-of-the-box Interact. The only things I had to do is to create the image and type in the text.
Pro tip: Before releasing your online quiz into the wild, send it as your newsletter to your existing subscribers. They will eagerly take it, and your quiz will get a test run that may uncover potential problems that you will be able to fix before creating the final version.

Step #4: Decide how to collect the emails

So, you plotted and designed your quiz. But we still have one ultra-important question unanswered:

How should you collect the email addresses?

On one hand, as a business owner, you’d like to grow your list. So, not showing any quiz results unless people subscribe seems like good option.

On the other hand, imagine yourself in your prospect’s shoes. You took time to go through a quiz only to find out you need to sign up to get you results.

How would you feel?

I decided to offer at least some helpful information openly and told people if their homepage did well or not right away. Additionally, I offered the detailed results and additional tips in exchange for an email address.

Quiz results: Example
Your homepage is not the best. Would you like to know how to fix it? Please sign up here.

And this approach seems to work, as the average conversion rate across all four result pages is currently 31.8% (based on 116 conversions).

I had to spend some extra effort on my result pages though.

I could have done the result pages within Interact interface integrating it with MailerLite with just a couple of clicks. But their built-in option doesn’t allow to partially display the results on the same page as the opt-in. I could only either completely gate the results or allow people to skip the opt-in entirely.

Luckily, Interact offers an option to manually add custom result pages. The only drawback was that now Interact couldn’t collect the opt-in statistics to put on their pretty graphs. I could still see the opt-in stats in MailerLite though.

Step #5: Get your quiz in front of as many people as possible

This is a tricky part. Remember the one million quiz story? It was a major company who used paid promotion to get the ball rolling.

Do you have extra cash? Then the paid promotion (Facebook ads, for example) is a great option.

Otherwise (or additionally):

  • Feature the quiz on your homepage.
  • Send it to your existing subscribers and ask them to share it.
  • Put it in your sidebar making sure it’s the only “sparkling thing” that draws your visitors’ attention (and isn’t buried among a gazillion of images and colorful elements).
  • Feature it at the end of the relevant blog posts.
  • Include it in your welcome email sequence (but make sure not to send it to the new subscribers that you got via the quiz).
  • Make it a pinned post on your social networks.
  • Share it regularly on social.
Pro tip: Want to get new subscribers from a guest post you are writing on another website? Create a quiz based on your post and link to it from your author’s bio or feature it directly in the post.

Step #6: Analyze results

It’s important to analyze your results from the start and improve your quiz if you notice a problem.

I absolutely adore Interact’s analytics feature (unfortunately, not available within a free plan).

Not only do they show you the general numbers for “started the quiz” / “completed the quiz” / “signed up*”,

Interact Quiz: General Statistics
Ah, statistics! Do they make your heart beat faster, too? ??

* –  only if you use the built-in results pages and not the custom results pages outside the quiz interface. Also “Views” is not accurate as you can’t exclude your IP and it will count your views as well.

…but you can also see where people are dropping off:

Interact Quiz: Drop-off Statistics
Every version of my quiz showed people dropping off before question 5. But everybody who made it to question 6 also made it till the end. I’m still thinking what to do with this info, to be honest ??

Plus, you can see the stats for every answer:

Quiz answer: Example
This is like spying on people’s websites but legit!

…and the results overview:

Interact Quiz Statistics: Results Overview
Hm. Looks like many website owners could use some help. Good thing I offer them concrete improvement suggestions on the spot. All they need is to opt in. ?? #winwin

I’m happy with my 20-questions quiz. I’m now running a couple of A/B tests to figure out the best way to feature it on my website and will up my promotion game.

I also have a couple of older posts that are a perfect quiz material and may even create a quiz library my readers can use for self-evaluation.

Final words of wisdom

Every bloody article on the topic will tell you you need to stand out to win the content marketing game.

Yet, you don’t need to start a video channel or a podcast, or God know what else that only the businesses owners with extra cash, time or corresponding levels of extroversion can do to cut through the noise.

Just make a quiz.

Not many people do it, and even fewer do it properly.

I used Interact (they also have a free plan), but you can use any other quiz maker. Many of them are easy to use, don’t require any coding skills and allow you to embed your quiz on your website using a plugin.

It’s fast to make, it stands out on a website and on social, and you can even base it on an older blog post.

If you make it helpful, you’ll impress your prospects and gain new subscribers who will remember your name.

And if you design your quiz questions strategically, it will give you invaluable insights on your target audience and many new content ideas.

Or do you know any other content type that can help you achieve all of these things at once?

Exactly!

Leave a Comment

17 thoughts on “How to Create a Quiz That Will Impress Your Audience (And Help Your Business Grow)”

  1. What do you think of offering a quiz in place of every blog post (for the relevant ones only, of course)?
    I was thinking a custom quiz for the blog post, with an option to read the full post instead/as well.

    Reply
    • Hi Ajinkya. An unusual idea. Difficult to say how your audience will receive it. The only way to know for sure is to go for it and see what happens 🙂

      Reply
  2. I like Interact. Tried to make a quiz, works fine. Looks good. But if I only need one quiz ever – which I do in this case – it’s a bit steep to pay 17 dollars a month forever just to be able to catch a few email adresses. So I am going to look for a better fit.

    Reply
    • I agree! I found a perfect quiz on that site, but want to use it as a lead magnet. Are there other options for that than Interact? Are there built-in email marketing options with email sites (i.e. Constant Contact/AWeber)? I noticed AWeber intergrates with Interact, but you still have to pay with Interact. I am a small, newish blogger.

      Reply
      • Hi Julie. No idea, to be honest. I use it together with MailerLite. But if you use their quiz you’ll always have to pay them, regardless of what email system you connect it to.

        Reply
  3. Good thinking. I love the reverse funnel-concept. I read Chestnut’s post as well, and I love his ideas too. (It would almost make me go back to Mailchimp). I think both of you are right. It is all about the quality of the interaction.

    As usual, your post is so detailed I need to keep it for when I really need it – next week, as it happens 😉

    Reply
    • Glad you found this post useful, Kitty! 🙂 So you are thinking of making a quiz? Looking forward to it! If you have any questions or get stuck, let me know.

      Reply
  4. Hey Gill!

    Quizzes are the best thing you can do to better understand your target audience. I use something like this to learn more about my subscribers.

    I like to survey my list, which is not a quiz but it also gives me helpful data. I have not heard about tryinteract.com – I’m going to be using that too. I appreciate the recommendation and the tips!

    thank you!

    Best regards! 😀

    Reply
    • Hi Freddy,

      Glad you found this post useful. My experience with a survey was not the best. I got way more information with this quiz. No wonder, as a survey sounds like something boring and like people are doing it for me, but a quiz sounds like fun and promises something for those who take it. This was certainly not my last quiz, and I’m looking forward to creating more.

      Thanks for stopping by! 🙂

      Reply
    • Hi Chuck. You mean how you add a quiz into your WordPress website?

      They have a plugin that allows you to embed your quizzes using a short code. After you install it on your website, you can then copy-paste the short code from their quiz editor into your page.

      This is how the interface looks:
      Interact and WordPress integration

      But you can also embed a quiz using iFrame or JavaScript.

      Does this help? If you have other questions, let me know.

      Reply
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