How to Create a Quiz for Your Audience

I am an affiliate with Interact Quiz Builder and I may receive compensation

if you choose to purchase one of their plans. All opinions are my own.

I revert back to my middle school days whenever I’m presented with an opportunity to complete a quiz. Judge if you will, but it’s really fun to learn something new or be affirmed in your own story.

Gamification works: quizzes make getting to know each other – and ourselves – fun.

When we first moved out to the East coast, I applied for a job via a nationwide recruiting agency. They asked me to complete an assessment to determine my personality and working competencies. The results would help them match me with a company, but it also offered me new insights into my work style and strengths.

More recently, I reached out to a local entrepreneur to volunteer with her digital literacy non-profit. She asked me to complete not one, but two personality profiles to see how well we’d mesh. (Turns out we do – and I loved that she shared her results with me, too!)

Then there’s the classic clickbait we’ve all fallen prey to. Who hasn’t wondered which House the Sorting Hat would place us in?

Getting Started with Interact Quiz Builder

When Interact reached out to me with an offer to give the platform a go, I knew a Gryffindor (but almost Ravenclaw) would be up for the challenge!

My foremost goal in creating the quiz is to provide value. As my target audience is entrepreneurs and small business owners who’d rather be outside, I decided to offer inspiration to step away from the desk. I decided to use the quiz to define what being outdoors meant to my audience. Their answers would also provide me valuable feedback for future blog posts and services.

Creating the quiz took, altogether, about two full days of work. I spent an afternoon of pure research, determining questions and how I wanted them answered. I watched the [fantastic] tutorial video Interact offers. I wrote out the results I wanted to offer my audience.

Plugging in my data was fairly intuitive. I simply moved down the list, exploring my options. Interact allowed me to use my own branding colours and *BONUS* had a full list of fonts – my brand font included.

There’s plenty of options to add images throughout the quiz. This is important as we are a highly visual society.

Another *BONUS* – Interact integrates with Pixabay, making it easy to find free brand- and question-appropriate images. Alas, there’s only room for one basic image. I used Photoshop to create collages for my quiz. Also, Pixabay only displays a few images, with no opportunity to turn pages or refresh for more. Do your homework before you begin to ensure you have the imagery you need.

Each quiz allows you to create questions with only one answer. I had hoped to add a ‘check all that apply’, but no such luck. This also makes it really important to have clearly defined answers. Some of my respondents were torn between two or more answers. I want my audience to step away feeling like I know them, not discontent.

Interact does the math for you. In the quiz I created, I tagged which responses matched which results. In their tutorial, Interact explains how they add up the scores, but it’s done for you. Easy as pie.

I did run into trouble with my results. First, the formatting was troublesome. I wanted to bold and italicize some of the text, but it wouldn’t work. I’m sure Interact will work this bug out as it’s pretty minor.

Second, I originally chose to show multiple results. Respondents would see a bar graph with their percentage of each. The respondent would have to click ‘More Details’ to, well, learn more. But they didn’t.

My test audience said, “Uh… thanks.” They thought the quiz itself was cool, but, of course, without the visible results, they weren’t sure what to do next or what the point was.

Once I switched to show only their result, respondents saw my message and my call-to-action.

Building Your List with a Quiz

Interact integrates with Mailchimp, as well as a host of other email marketing services. If you’re creating a new list, do that first in Mailchimp before you head over to Interact. 

Once you integrate, you’ll be able to choose your list from a drop-down menu. Side note: make sure to disable the double opt-in so that folks who create the list are automatically added.

This isn’t completely kosher with Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation. I suggest creating an automation welcoming these new members to your audience, reminding them of why they’re on the list, and how they can unsubscribe if it isn’t a good fit.

I’ll Share and Then You Can Share and the More Shares the Better

You can share your quiz with a direct link, by embedding it in page on your website or directly from the Interact dashboard.

When you share the direct link, the social preview will show Interact’s URL. Avoid this by embedding the quiz code on a page on your website. You can find the html code in the quiz dashboard. Don’t forget to set your excerpt and featured image!

*BONUS* when you update the quiz in Interact, it automatically updates on your website, too. No need to re-add the code.

Another side note: I downloaded the Interact plugin so I could use a shortcode for this. It tells me to find my quiz ID in the dashboard. The dashboard says to download the plugin. After going back and forth seven times, I left it at the long form of code copied to my page. Short story: don’t bother downloading the plugin. Interact allows you to optimize your social sharing within your dashboard. This means you can choose the picture and excerpt that displays when you enter the URL to your social post.

Interact allows you to optimize your social sharing within your dashboard. This means you can choose the picture and excerpt that displays when you enter the URL to your social post. PLUS respondents are encouraged to share their results. Interact even allows you to customize that message. And we all win when we share!

Important note! After you save and exit from your quiz, click on ‘Share & Embed’ to make sure all your changes are published. Just saving won’t push those changes out to the links you’ve shared around the Internet. You must click ‘Share & Embed’ and publish your changes.

Getting results from quizzes is like a coffee date where you actually drink Red Bull.

When Interact reached out, offering to let me try Interact, that middle schooler in me squealed. But when I sat down to plan out my quiz, I got first date jitters, wondering what to even talk about.

Now that I ventured forward, I see that Interact offers pre-made quizzes, with all the questions, answers and results broken out for me. Building my own quiz from scratch was fairly simple and straightforward, too.

I love how Interact takes that getting-to-know-each-other process and makes it fun, fast and easy. Generating leads becomes more energetic with audience research and gamification.

And I do know so much more about my audience now! I know how many chose each answer, how many received each result. I’ve increased my list substantially within the first few hours of making it live.

AND I see that Interact also offers polls and giveaways! I’ll definitely be exploring those options next!