I want to post a quiz on my Web site but most quizzes and surveys I see are boring and get very little response. I know a one-question could work, but I want more information than that. Any suggestions on how to create a killer quiz, Dave?
Sounds like you already know a lot of the nuances of creating compelling interactive content, most of which can be boiled down to a conundrum: make it complex enough but not too complex. If you want to make a quiz you’ll have to use the right tools – like Typeform – but you’ll still need to avoid the classic pitfalls of a bad quiz, including one of my pet peeves: asking too many questions.
I’m affiliated with one of the big movie studios and they do this all the time; they’ll ask for my opinion of a DVD box design, but there are so many darn questions with so many possible answers that by the second or third screen of questions, I’ve given up and leave the site. No surprise, there’s data to show that the more questions you ask, the lower the response rate will be. Makes sense.
And let’s face it, whether it’s a fun quiz about favorite ice cream flavors or a complex legal survey about work conditions, response rates are low to start out and just get lower lower: Most public surveys are typically in the 1-2% response rate.
Now let’s talk about the reality of social media follower numbers too. Twitter, for example, estimates that a maximum of 6% of your follower are online at any given moment, and there’s reason to believe Facebook and other sites are in the same ballpark. So your 2000 followers? If even 10% see your quiz, and an enthused 5-10% of them actually answer your questions, that’s a response rate of maybe 25 people.
You touch on a second key issue in your question too, however: is it boring? Seems like a somewhat daft consideration but if you want people to get enthused about your quiz, you definitely need to make it fun and lively. In the Information Age we’re always competing with dozens of other sources of entertainment, dozens of other attention drains: will your quiz stand out?
One suggestion that I see all too infrequently is to add pictures, clip art, or cartoons in the quiz. Don’t ask me to read words, show me pictures to click on! For an example of what I mean, check out the beautiful interactive photo-driven quiz examples at Typeform. Like their beautiful Game of Thrones fan quiz shown below:
Just as importantly, make sure that your questions aren’t hard to understand. It’s surprising to me just how often online quizzes and surveys have poorly worded questions or questions where the possible answers don’t quite fit and don’t quite make sense. Brevity is the soul of wit and heart of a good quiz both!
Finally, ask a few nit-picky friends to try out your quiz before you post it online to catch any typos, confusing phrases, images that don’t quite convey what you want, or similar. Oh, and make sure that the back end system is recording responses properly too. Better to fix all that before you go live than after it’s being discussed on social media!
Hope that helps you succeed with your online quiz. Now, how much of a Game of Thrones fan are you, what house are you aligned with and whom of the Stark clan do you most identify with? Hmm… that’d make a good quiz, wouldn’t it!
-ends
