It’s no secret that online quiz’s are conversion machines. Who doesn’t want to take a test to learn more about themselves? Buzzfeed figured this out years ago. So when I first considered creating my Find Your Frequency quiz, I thought it would be a speedy, simple process. Write some questions, get a plugin, and bam! Rolling in the opt-ins.
This article is part 1 in a 2 part series, How To Launch A Profitable Online Quiz. (You can read part two here.)
It turned out to be a much more complicated process, and now that I’m on the other side of it, I’m sharing the 5 steps it takes to successfully launch an online quiz.
Begin with your end goal in mind
This is paramount. You need to know what the point of your quiz is. What do you want your quiz takers to get out of it? If you don’t know what realizations or insights you’re hoping they gain through taking your quiz and reading their results, it will be incredibly hard to write an effective quiz. If you’re considering creating a quiz, your first step is to consider the end result you want your participants to have.
Figure out what quiz plugin you are going to use, and write your quiz and questions to work with it
This lesson is hard won — I wrote my entire quiz, tested the questions (more on that in a minute), and when I handed my shiny, newly minted quiz to my designer to upload onto my site, I discovered that the way I wrote the quiz is not how any online quiz plugin works. Opps. I had to re-do my questions to work within the constraints of the plugin technology, and if I had paid attention to that in the beginning, I would have created content that was easy to integrate with a plug in, and saved myself about a month of revisions.
Viral Quiz Builder is what I ended up using, but there are many others. Make sure you’ve chosen yours and understand how it works before you craft your content.
Test your questions, and then test them again
This was the thing that took the most time. Creating a set of questions that filters your users into desired answers and outcomes is pretty tricky. All told, I have about 5 versions of the quiz before the final version was launched. Here’s the thing, when you’re testing quiz questions, it’s important to use the same test group, so you can see how your re-wording effects or doesn’t effect their answers. So when I asked for testers, I made it clear in the beginning that they’d need to help me a few times.
I tracked all their answers, so I could see what was working, and how question revisions effected their choices. Anything less than a methodical approach would have left me with tons of data and no clear conclusions.
I used a wufoo form to have them take the quiz drafts, so again, it was trackable and replicated the experience of taking an online quiz.
My biggest learning from the question testing process is that every time when I thought I had a genius, super clear question, my testers would surprise me and prove me wrong. Only through their insight and feedback was I able to create questions that were effective.
Know how your back-end will be effected
This was also a hard won lesson. My quiz has 5 potential results, and I was very clear I wanted 5 unique responses. 5 unique booklets that talked about your frequency, 5 unique email lists tracking each frequency, etc. What quickly happened was I outgrew my email provider. I was using Mailchimp and it was incredibly hard to not sent my readers double emails. Meaning if a current subscriber signed up as a Metal Frequency to get their quiz results, I had no way of segmenting and saying send this email to them only once.
In my attempt to have unique content and not double email my readers, I needed to upgrade my systems. Quickly I moved over to Convertkit, who makes it fairly simple to make sure that my readers only get one email from me. If they’re a frequency subscriber, they’ll get a deeper dive paragraph explaining how the article or content I’m sharing applies to them, and if they’re also on the general list, they won’t get the general email.
This enhances my reader experience, instead of frustrating them with double emails. It makes me feel way more confident sending out emails and not living in fear that I’m double emailing and thus alienating my most favorite people.
Be useful, be memorable
This is really where you can separate yourself. I see a lot of quizes re-packaging information. The quiz factor makes it enticing, and then there’s a let down when the generic information is provided. If you’re going to go through the trouble of creating and effective quiz, make sure that you’re providing useful and good information to your participants.
Part two, How To Make Money From Your Online Quiz is available here.
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