The best quizzes pinpoint one thing for the quiz taker. One simple thing that is meaningful to the quiz taker. Whether it’s something about their personality, an issue, a suggestion, a status. Whatever angle the quiz takes, it helps the quiz taker find one thing that is of substance for their lives.
This principle has stayed the same for 13 years now that we’ve been running Interact. The messaging and tone of the quizzes has shifted as customer sentiment has changed over the years. Ranging from exuberant to practical. But the concept of highlighting one thing has not changed.
In practicality, this means getting thoughtful with how you formulate your quiz. Almost always, I’d say 90% of the time, businesses come to us at Interact with quizzes that do not highlight one thing. Their initial quiz ideas usually highlight multiple things for the quiz taker. This is driven by a desire to be the most helpful, and most of the quizzes come in trying to highlight multiple things in multiple areas for the quiz taker to take note of.
The only problem with this, is that the human brain does not like seeing multiple things at once. The Jame Study, first run in the year 2000, and then re-iterated in 2024, shows that when you offer people fewer options, you get less initial interest, but more follow-through. And the same is true for quizzes.
Yes it is true, if you narrow your quiz down to focus on highlighting one thing for the quiz taker, it will eliminate some people who could be interested. Because naturally you’ll have to narrow the scope of your quiz to make it highlight just one thing. However, when people do click on the quiz and take it, they are much more likely to connect with the recommendation, opt-in as a lead, and follow through with an action.
There’s no good in getting 1,000 eyeballs if none of them convert. And there’s no good in piquing people’s interest, if you then give them too many things to think about and they do not take action.
By focusing in on one thing for the quiz to highlight, recommend, suggest, target, whatever you want to call it. You give people just enough information for the quiz to be helpful and encourage them to take action. Any more than one thing and you start to split hairs, people don’t know which thing to do first, and the vast majority of the time they end up doing nothing, which means you lose them in the ether of the internet, never to be seen again.
Now to clarify, one outcome could mean one suggestion, one plan, one routine, one personality type. The key is that the focus is on just one thing, not ranking people in different areas or giving score in different areas. While those types of quizzes are great for existing customers and more depth, they are too complicated for top of funnel customer acquisition.