Online quizzes have exploded in popularity in recent years as a fun and effective way to engage audiences, capture leads, and gain valuable insights. According to a report by Demand Metric, interactive content like quizzes generates 2x more conversions than passive content.
In fact, the average quiz has a 31.6% lead capture rate, compared to just 3-5.5% for traditional landing pages (Ion Interactive). That‘s a massive opportunity for businesses looking to grow their email list and nurture leads.
However, not all online quizzes are created equal. To maximize the impact of your quiz, it‘s important to follow best practices and stay up-to-date with the latest trends. In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll break down everything you need to know to run a successful online quiz in 2024.
1. Choose the Right Type of Quiz for Your Goals
The first step is to determine what type of online quiz will best suit your needs. The main types are:
Personality Quizzes: Personality quizzes are highly engaging and shareable. They allow you to segment your audience based on their quiz outcomes and tailor your marketing accordingly. Example: "What Type of Entrepreneur Are You?"
Knowledge Quizzes: Knowledge quizzes test participants‘ understanding of a topic and can be used to educate them on your product or service. Example: "How Well Do You Know GDPR Compliance?
Trivia Quizzes: Trivia quizzes quiz participants on random fun facts, making them a great choice for lighter engagement and brand awareness. Example: "The Ultimate 90s Trivia Quiz"
Assessments: Assessments help qualify leads by determining their fit for your product or service based on a set of criteria. Example: "Is Your Website SEO-Friendly?"
Consider what you ultimately want to achieve with your quiz. Is it to grow your email list, learn more about your audience, or generate demand for your offer? Let your goals guide your quiz type selection.
For example, if you‘re a personal stylist looking to attract new clients, a personality quiz like "What‘s Your Fashion Archetype?" could be a great way to segment leads and tailor your pitch. The quiz outcomes could be linked to different style packages you offer.
2. Keep It Concise
While it may be tempting to ask numerous questions to gain as many insights as possible, longer quizzes have higher abandonment rates. Aim to keep the completion time under 2-3 minutes.
Studies show the ideal quiz length is 6-10 questions. According to Leadquizzes, 74% of users complete quizzes with 10 questions or less, but that drops to 50% for 15+ question quizzes.
Consider which questions are absolutely essential and cut out any filler. If you have a compelling incentive, like a valuable lead magnet or giveaway, you may be able to increase the question count without sacrificing completions.
Here are some tips for crafting concise quiz questions:
- Stick to one idea per question
- Use simple language and avoid jargon
- Provide clear, distinct answer options
- Use images or multimedia to convey ideas quickly
Remember, every extra question is a chance for users to drop off, so make each one count.
3. Minimize Barriers to Entry
Every "ask" you make of quiz takers, whether it‘s providing an email address or following you on social media to see their results, will decrease participation. Carefully weigh the value of each piece of information you request against the potential for losing quiz takers.
If collecting emails is a top priority, you may choose to make it mandatory in order to see quiz results. But if engagement is your main goal, consider showing results immediately upon completion, no strings attached.
One effective tactic is progressive profiling – collecting small bits of information at a time. For example, ask for just an email at the end of the quiz, then request another piece of info like job title or company size in the follow-up email.
Evaluate friction points and remove as many barriers as you can while still capturing critical data. Some common ways to reduce barriers include:
- Limiting form fields
- Using autofill and social sign-on
- Providing a guest completion option
- Saving partial data to avoid losing progress
Leadquizzes found that quizzes with 0-3 lead fields had a 37.5% conversion rate, while those with 4+ fields converted only 10.9% of the time. So keep your "asks" minimal and purposeful.
4. Nail the Difficulty Level
For knowledge and trivia quizzes, the difficulty level can affect the user experience and completion rate. Make it too easy and it‘s boring; make it too hard and people give up.
Aim for a balanced mix of easy and challenging questions that keep participants invested. For trivia quizzes, shoot for an average score of 60-80%.
In a study of over 1,000 online quizzes, content agency Fractl found the ideal difficulty distribution was:
- 30% easy questions
- 45% medium difficulty questions
- 25% hard questions
For knowledge quizzes, the sweet spot is a 50/50 split between familiar and new information. Give quiz takers quick wins while also introducing them to interesting insights about your industry or topic.
To determine difficulty level, consider your audience‘s background knowledge and test your questions on a sample group. You can also use adaptive difficulty that adjusts based on a user‘s answers, though this requires more advanced quiz logic.
5. Piggyback on Trending Topics
Want a surefire way to attract attention to your quiz? Tie it into a trending cultural phenomenon. People love to share their opinions on the latest buzz-worthy happenings.
Some examples of trending quiz topics could be:
- "Which Wordle Starting Word Are You?"
- "Which Stranger Things Character Would Be Your Bestie?"
- "How Would You Fare in Squid Game?"
Quizzes related to current events, pop culture, and social media trends tend to attract more shares and go viral more quickly. BuzzSumo found that the most shared quiz in 2021 was "Which Bridgerton Character Are You?", with over 4.3 million engagements.
Evergreen topics can perform well over time, but jumping on fads and trending themes can lead to viral quiz success. Use tools like Google Trends, Buzzsumo, and social media analytics to discover popular topics in your niche.
Choose a topic that aligns with your brand to ensure it attracts relevant leads. You can also create a "newsjacking" quiz related to your industry, like "Which Marketing Trend Are You?" tied to current events.
6. Optimize for Mobile
A huge chunk of your quiz takers will access it from a mobile device. In fact, mobile accounts for 60-70% of all online traffic. If your quiz doesn‘t function smoothly on smartphones, you risk frustrating users and driving them away.
Choose a responsive quiz design that automatically adjusts to different screen sizes. Keep mobile best practices in mind, such as:
- Large, tap-friendly buttons
- Vertical scrolling
- Minimal typing
- Fast load times
- Compressed images and files
Always preview and test your quiz on multiple devices before launching. Use Google‘s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to see how your quiz stacks up.
Some specific mobile-friendly quiz elements to consider:
- Use a progress bar so users see how much is left
- Allow users to swipe through questions
- Break longer questions into bite-size chunks
- Include a sticky CTA button
With Google‘s mobile-first indexing, having a mobile-optimized quiz is also important for SEO. Slow load times and poor mobile usability can hurt your quiz‘s search rankings and visibility.
7. Follow Up With Quiz Takers
Your relationship with quiz takers shouldn‘t end as soon as they finish the last question. Following up is key to building a connection and converting leads into customers.
If you collected email addresses, send out the results along with a personalized message based on each person‘s outcome. Include recommended next steps or resources that tie into their quiz results.
For example, if you‘re a business coach and someone gets "Visionary" on your leadership style quiz, you could share your guide on crafting a magnetic mission statement. Or if they score as a "Collaborator", send tips on building strategic partnerships.
Personalizing your follow-up can lead to 18X more revenue than blast emails (MarketingSherpa). So it‘s worth taking the time to map content to each quiz outcome. You can also segment your email list by quiz results for future targeted campaigns.
Re-engage quiz takers on social media by asking them to share their results. Create a unique hashtag for your quiz to track shares and spark conversations. You could even run a contest for people who share their outcome.
Finally, don‘t forget to analyze the data you collected from the quiz. The aggregate results can yield valuable insights about your audience to inform your future content, product development, and marketing strategies.
8. Use Gated Results to Capture Leads
Want to maximize quiz completes while still collecting valuable lead information? Gated quiz results could be the answer. Instead of asking for an email address upfront, quiz takers only need to provide it at the end to see their results.
Unbounce found that this tactic increased conversions by 19-45% compared to gating the quiz itself. You still get the contact information, but only after participants are already invested in getting their outcome.
To boost conversions even more, consider incentivizing the email submit with bonus material or a special offer. For example, "Enter your email to see your quiz results PLUS get 20% off your first purchase!"
However, use gated content sparingly and strategically. Gating every piece of content can frustrate users and damage the user experience. Reserve it for high-value quizzes that provide genuine insights and results.
When implementing gated quiz results, keep these tips in mind:
- Communicate the value users will get for submitting their info
- Keep the form short – only ask for essential info like email and name
- Use a clear, compelling CTA on the email submit button
- Deliver what you promised – make sure the results and follow-up are valuable
With the right quiz topic and gating strategy, you can grow your email list with engaged, qualified leads eager to learn more from your brand.
9. Integrate Your Quiz With Your Marketing Stack
To seamlessly capture and nurture the leads from your quiz, integrate it with the rest of your marketing technologies. These may include:
- Email marketing platform
- CRM
- Marketing automation tools
- Analytics software
- Ecommerce platform
- Retargeting pixels
Integrating your quiz with your email service provider is especially crucial. This allows quiz leads to flow directly into your ESP for instant follow-up and segmentation. You can trigger personalized email sequences based on each user‘s quiz results.
For example, the popular quiz maker Interact integrates with ESPs like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, AWeber, and more. This lets you automatically add quiz takers to your email list and target them with relevant content.
Other helpful integrations include:
- Hooking up your CRM to see quiz leads in your customer database
- Connecting to Google Analytics or other tools to track quiz metrics
- Adding Facebook and Google pixels to retarget quiz takers with ads
- Syncing quiz outcomes with relevant product recommendations on your ecommerce site
Look for a quiz platform that offers native integrations or use a service like Zapier to connect your quiz with 1,000+ apps. This will save you time, keep data in sync, and allow for more complex marketing automation.
10. Measure, Learn, and Optimize
Running an online quiz is an ongoing learning process. It‘s critical to track key metrics to gauge your quiz‘s performance and identify areas for improvement.
Some primary KPIs to track include:
- Number of quiz starts
- Quiz completion rate
- Average time spent on the quiz
- Results breakdown (what percentage of users got each outcome)
- Email sign-up rate
- Social shares
- Traffic sources
- Revenue or conversions attributed to the quiz
Based on these numbers, A/B test different elements of your quiz to optimize for higher engagement and conversions. Some variables to test:
- Quiz title and description
- Question and answer phrasing
- Images and visual elements
- CTA copy
- Number of questions
- Result headlines and explanations
For example, Women‘s Health found that changing their quiz title from "What‘s Your Yoga IQ?" to "What‘s Your Yoga Style?" increased starts by 18%. Tweaks in the number of questions and images used also significantly affected completions.
Don‘t forget about qualitative data, too. Collect feedback from quiz takers via a post-quiz survey or user testing to gain insights straight from your audience. You may uncover nuances that the numbers alone don‘t reveal.
Finally, keep an eye on quiz analytics over time to spot trends, drops, or spikes in engagement. Comparing current quiz data to past performance and industry benchmarks will help you understand what‘s working and what needs tweaking.
Embrace New Quiz Formats to Stand Out
Online quizzes continue to evolve, and it pays to stay ahead of the curve. Some of the latest quiz trends to try in 2024 include:
Video Quizzes: Incorporate video into your quiz for a more dynamic experience. You could display video questions, show clips as part of the answers, or create a quiz that feels like an interactive game or story. According to Wyzowl, 87% of marketers say video has increased traffic to their website.
Quiz Stacking: Quiz stacking involves taking users through a series of quizzes back-to-back to learn more about them and improve personalization. This could look like starting with a broad personality quiz, then drilling down into more specific recommendation quizzes based on those results.
Chatbot Quizzes: With the rise of AI chatbots, quizzes delivered via chat are becoming more prevalent. Chatbots can converse with users to administer the quiz in a more natural, engaging way. It feels like a one-on-one conversation rather than a static webpage. By 2024, Insider Intelligence predicts that consumer retail spend via chatbots worldwide will reach $142 billion—up from just $2.8 billion in 2019.
Multimedia Quizzes: Multimedia quizzes incorporate various content formats like images, text, audio, and video for an immersive experience. Users could be tasked with identifying songs or scenes, or expressing their responses in different ways. Buzzfeed‘s popular "Pick a Soulmate from Every Decade" quiz combined text and images in a multimedia slideshow format.
The online quiz space is ripe for innovation. Don‘t be afraid to think outside the box and test new features to keep your quizzes fresh, fun, and effective.
The Bottom Line: Quizzes Are a Powerful Marketing Tool
Online quizzes remain an incredibly versatile tool for audience engagement, lead generation, market research, and sales. Consider these stats:
- The average quiz has a 33.6% lead capture rate (Ion Interactive)
- Quizzes make up 8 out of 10 of the most engaging pieces of content (Contently)
- Marketers who use interactive content like quizzes see 2X more conversions than those who don‘t (Demand Metric)
- Adding a quiz to your website can boost revenue by 20% or more (Neil Patel)
But to reap these benefits, you can‘t just slap together a generic quiz and call it a day. Adhering to best practices and keeping your specific goals and audience in mind is crucial for quiz success.
To recap, an optimal quiz should:
- Align with your goals
- Be concise and focused
- Minimize participation barriers
- Strike the right difficulty balance
- Incorporate trending topics
- Work seamlessly on mobile
- Include robust follow-up
- Use gating strategically
- Integrate with your marketing stack
- Be data-driven and optimized
Above all, approach quizzes not as a one-off tactic, but as an integral part of your marketing strategy. They should support your brand, engage your ideal customers, and contribute to your overarching business objectives.
So what are you waiting for? Dive into the quiz maker of your choice and start creating interactive content your audience will love. The leads and insights you gain may just surprise you.
