I have often often been asked, why webmasters should bother to have a quiz on their website, and if it isn't a bit old school. Well, it is maybe a bit old school in these Facebook and Twitter days, but the thing is, that you and your website can still benefit from quizzes in different ways:
1. Your visitors will get the chance to know you and your product better
2. Your visitors will have fun while visiting your website
3. You will get traffic and SEO-value because of more incoming links
So there is absolute no reason why you shouldn't consider having one or more quizzes on your website.
Have a look at the sub-sections below to learn more about having quizzes on your website, and learn how we can help you get them there.
One of the first things to decide is what quiz format to use. Should it be a Trivia quiz or Fun quizzes format?
Trivia quizzes
Trivia quizzes have proved to work for ages and everybody knows what to expect. Social surveys on the other hand are developing fast, especially with the rise of social networks, where they tend to spread like a virus.
On the left there is an example of a traditional multiple choice trivia quiz. It has been produced in flash, which I'll adress on the implementation-tab.
Another sort of multiple choice trivia is the one shown below. It has been made without the use of Flash. But I will get back to that later as well. The concepts are the same though. The user gets testet on his knowledge about a certain topic, and gets the chance to show off.
These trivia quizzes will be scored by a total point score after finishing the quiz. Some quizzes provides feedback to the user on each and every question as well.
Fun quizzes
Fun quizzes are a bit different. They can be of different types. One type is the "Which Superhero are you?" - type. Other types are All about me quizzes, Love quizzes and Personality quizzes. They are also known as social surveys.
Things to consider when choosing between trivia quizzes and Fun quizzes:
1. How old are your visitors? 2. How "serious" is your website and products in general - are there room for fun? 3. Should your quiz educate or just entertain?
You can find links to all kinds of quizzes on our sister website Quizindex.com - the best quiz directory online. A quick visit can give you some inspiration and help you make your choice.
There are different choices you have to make when you get to implementation of a quiz on your website. Questions you must ask:
1. What should the user experience be like?
2. How easy should it be to maintain? Are you going to do it your self or should some one else do it ie. in business department, external people etc.?
3. On what technology is your website based? Php, .net or something else? CMS?
Answering these questions is important, since the answers will point out and limit the number of choices in regards to tools and code.
Php quiz script
If you have a website developed in php, you may consider implementing a quiz script written in php in your website. You can write one on your own, but there are also some available for download out there. I have researched and testet quite a few, and I found that only a couple is worth mentioning:
Dodo's quiz script (linkware)
and xmlQuiz (very cheap shareware)
If you know of other nice quiz scripts, that I haven't mentioned, just let me know, and I will be happy to test them. If you are not capable of integrating these scripts in your website your self, you can make them work on a seperate webpage which opens in a new window. But of course that's not an elegant solution.
Quizzes in CMS
Most webmasters work with some kind of CMS these days. As mentioned above it can be a non-likeable solution to work with the php-scripts, so you might want to work with a cross-browser supported format. There are components for specific CMS:
Joomla Quiz de Luxe (component for Joomla CMS)
AceQuiz (component for Joomla CMS)
QuizFunnel - webapplikation (affiliate link, but it works very well, so I recoomend it:-) - in the applikation you generate a script to use in your CMS.
ASP
There are also ASP quiz-scripts for .net based websites. I haven't been able to find any that have been updated recently (2010-2011), but you may have a look at WebQuiz XP from SmartLite Software. I can generate quizzes either as Flash or ASP-code, which is what you need to integrate the quiz in your website or .net based CMS.
Contact 1st-Quiz to get more advice about how to implement your quiz.
Web and PC-Tools
There are several tools that you can use to create the quizzes. Create Quiz using Flash player Flash is also a cross browser compatible technology, as long as the user has a player plugin installed. So you may choose to create a quiz using Quiz software that allows to publish the quiz in Flash. I have tested a few of these software products myself:
Articulate Quizmaker
Wondershare QuizCreator
iSpring Quizmaker
Quiz Press
QuizFunnel
There are plenty more out there, but the above are the ones that I found most professional. Articulate is my absolute favorite, but it is also the most expensive.
Wondershare QuizCreator however, has fewer multimedia features and looks more simple standardized. So my advice is to consider your need for advanced multimedia effects before investing. QuizCreator is available for less the cost than Articulate, and it works fine for me. iSpring Quizmaker looks a lot like QuizCreator, and is prized at the same level.
The screenshot on the left shows the user interface in QuizCreator. Very intuitive interface, which makes it easy to create quizzes and questions and get them online fast.
Quiz press is latest application, that I discovered and tested, not that it is the newest, to my knowledge at least. Quiz Press is a very simple application to build quizzes with, and it is very cheap as well.
The only trouble I find is, that the output is a bit tricky to implement within a webpage. The easiest implementation is to let the quiz open in a new window.
Below is show a screenshot of the user interface in Quiz Press.
All solutions are availbale in a trial version, so do evaluate them before buying.
Consider QuizFunnel, if you don't want to have applications installed on your machine. It's web based, and you genereate a script to insert in your web page. It's easy to use, well documentet, nice designed, and I think it has been developed with the purpose of improving conversion rate on your website.
Try it out, monthly and lifetime plans available. Supported with a 100% money back guarantee.
Welcome to Webmasters Quiz section!
