Make a personality test with Riddle’s online quiz maker
Personality tests are one of the most powerful marketing tools around. Optimized to engage your target audience, a personality test can help qualify leads or serve product recommendations to potential customers based on how they answer your quiz questions.
Craft an engaging, nuanced, and accurate personality assessment for each user that takes your quiz. Best of all, there are no downloads or coding required.
It’s all possible with Riddle’s personality quiz maker software.
Easy to make interactive quizzes get exceptional engagement and lead generation opt-in rates
- A well-written personality test can get more than 80% quiz completions.
- Want to collect leads? You should get 35–45% of quiz takers to opt-in and give their email addresses. That’s 20X better than typical lead generation tools like ‘sign up for our newsletter’ pop-ups. Easily beef up your email list and create a killer marketing funnel.
Personality tests (and other types of quizzes) are everywhere. Heck, even you’ve probably taken one at some point — like this “Which Harry Potter character are you?” over on Buzzfeed.
Sure, personality tests might sound like they’re only appropriate for simple entertainment purposes, but we’ve seen many brands and businesses use personality quizzes as a serious email marketing tool.
Career counselors, life coaches, and other consultants also love them for their essential functions as diagnostic tools. That’s because a personality test automatically creates in-depth personality assessments for potential customers. Online quiz creators utilize Riddle to collect each quiz taker’s email with our quiz lead generation module and then follow up with a proposal to help with the quiz taker’s personal development.
Quiz marketing software has come a long way since BuzzFeed-style quizzes first appeared on the scene back in 2007.
Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Create the perfect title for your online personality quiz
The most important thing when you start is to pick a compelling title. Everything else flows from here.
The best titles have a clear subject and follow the most important rule for personality tests — “It’s all about ME.“
That’s not ‘me’ as in you, the author — it’s about the people who will be taking your personality test!
This is a core reason why personality tests are so popular and mega-viral. Humans are a bit narcissistic; we love to discover new things about ourselves — and then shout those results to our friends.
However, people have to really, really want to know how they compare to other people.
It could be any topic — from “What breed of dog are you?” to “What’s your management style?”. Our four-step process will help you craft irresistible and entertaining quizzes.
Writing a great online personality quiz title
As I touched on briefly before, your title needs to sum up your concept in an intriguing (and brief!) way to get users to click.
- Don’t just settle for your first idea.
- Brainstorm a few titles — write down 5–10, then pick the best.
- Short, to-the-point titles work better than long ones.
Titles that challenge users and use ‘you’ do 23% better. Consider “Anxiety stress test” versus “How anxious are you — really?”
The second grabs your attention and makes you want to find out more, doesn’t it?
Step 2: Create your personality types
Personality tests are a bit different than other quizzes in that you create the results first before you write the questions. It’s easier this way to craft questions that will collect the data you need to give accurate results to each quiz taker.
- How many result types? We recommend 3–6 different results. That’s enough so that each user gets a result that fits them, without making your job as a quiz maker incredibly complicated.
- Does each result fit your audience? Make sure each potential quiz taker will fit one of these types.
- Result explanations matter. It’s not enough for someone to discover they are a ‘Golden retriever”, they will want to know WHY they are a Golden retriever.
- 50/50 rule — spend as much time and creativity on your result explanations as your questions.
- Great results equal success — Since it’s the end of the experience, the results are a chance to show how much you understand their unique needs, and more importantly — how you can help them. The more insightful or funny the result, the more likely they’ll share your personality test with their friends.
Using the Big 5 model (OCEAN) to create personality types results
At Riddle, we’re big fans of using the classic ‘Big 5’ model (often called the OCEAN model) when creating a personality test.
The main idea is you’ll want each personality quiz result to reflect one of these major traits:
- Openness to experience
- Conscientiousness
- Extroversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
You don’t need to use these exact names or traits, but you’ll want to split your quiz results into different personality traits. For example, the results could be a leader, a rebel, a creative, a dreamer, an extrovert, a traveler, a homebody.
The great thing about this model is that you can craft a range of results that match basic personality traits.
There is a wide range of quiz takers whom your personality quiz will have to address.
For example, here’s our result for “You’re a Golden Retriever” from our “What breed of dog are you?”.
Woof woof! You’re a Golden Retriever!
No bones about it, you’re a popular, fun-loving Golden Retriever. Adored by all and too cool for school, you’re extroverted and enthusiastic. Your magnetic personality makes you the life of any bash.
Since you’re a true people-dog, you genuinely love all kinds of social gatherings. Going to parties, dinners, and other shindigs is the best way to add faces to your constantly growing circle of friends.
But besides being on the social A-list, you’re a confident, well-rounded pup who’s definitely something to bark about. Reasonably accomplished at anything you set your mind to, your sunny nature and winning ways make you one of everyone’s favorite dogs. Woof!
Notice how we crafted this ‘Golden Retriever’ result to be high in Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, while low in Neuroticism?
A chihuahua, by comparison, would be a different mix — higher in Extroversion and Neuroticism.
Choose your type of personality test:
You can put personality tests into two broad families.
You can make a personality quiz that asks:
- ‘Are you a …?’ (ex. ‘Are you a crazy cat lady?’) or
- ‘What type of … are you?’ (ex. ‘What breed of cat are you?’)
Don’t be too specific in result types
This is one of the most common mistakes we’ve seen when people create their personality test.
Remember — you won’t know who your quiz takers will be, so each result needs to be accurate yet applicable to a wide range of users.
- Bad: Don’t say ‘You’re the perfect line manager because you understand how people think’. The user might not be a manager — if so, they’ll instantly think this quiz doesn’t describe them.
- Better: Try something like ‘You’re an empathetic leader. That’s more general and can accurately describe people both in and out of the workplace.
Be positive
People don’t mind a bit of attitude in their results, but no quiz taker likes to hear they’re a bad person.
Focus on positive traits that they will recognize in themselves.
Choosing the questions
Now you can be a little sneaky.
Your quiz questions will be multiple choice questions and need to link to the result types.
However, don’t make them too obvious. If you ask ‘How quickly do you make friends?’ in a ‘What kind of cat are you?’ — a user who answers ‘I’m comfortable on my own’ is not going to be surprised to find they are a Siamese.
You want your users to be amazed that the quiz figured them out. Obvious questions are too obvious!
How to create personality quiz questions
Try and craft most of your personality question types around situations or social behavior.
Here are some examples of questions centered around social or career situations:
- How do you respond in a particular social situation?
- How do you prefer to socialize? In large groups, small groups, one-on-one?
- Your boss shouts at you in the office, how do you react? Shout back, say nothing but get revenge later or cry?
If you’re struggling to find questions, go sit on a bench and look at people. Observe all the different types and try to get a feel for the emotions.
How many questions in a personality test?
Here are some of our top tips:
- Eight to ten questions tend to be the ideal length.
- Each question should have 3–5 answer options.
- That’s long enough for the scoring system to work well, without users (especially those playing on their smartphones) getting bored.
- Four answers per question — so they appear on a smartphone without scrolling.
- Don’t be afraid to switch to three choices or five for variety.
Check our ‘9 reasons your quiz sucks — and how to fix it’ post — full of easy fixes to most common quiz or personality test issues.
Step 3: Scoring your quiz questions
Riddle’s personality test maker lets you give different weights to each answer (none, weak, normal, and strong), with a range of 21 options for maximum flexibility.
- 0: No association
- 1–7: Weak association
- 8–14: Medium association
- 15–20: Strong association
At the end of the personality quiz, our system tallies up the points for each result type — then assigns the user the result with the most points associated to it.
Think of them as points — the more strongly you associate an answer with a particular result of your personality test, the more likely the user will get that personality result at the end.
Here’s a cool tip: Don’t be afraid to have a question associated with no result types. It’s good for keeping users guessing — personality tests that are too predictable are boring. Plus, people will figure out how to ‘game’ your personality test — if they can predict which answers will give them a certain result the quiz isn’t any fun.
Asking slightly random questions also keeps things interesting.
For example, in our “What color is your personality?” quiz, we ask “If you were given a free car, what type would you choose?”.
We left the scoring blank — because the fact that someone prefers an SUV to a convertible doesn’t really apply to our quiz. But — and here’s the kicker — the audience doesn’t know that!
Now, we know that it can be a challenge to think of questions and answers that can apply to the whole range of result types.
It sometimes helps to think of people you know — or even pop culture characters — who fit the result type.
For example, in our ‘What’s your management style?’ example — you could turn to the classic TV sitcom ‘Friends’ and think of each character — and what type of manager they were on the show:
- Monica — obviously is ‘Authoritarian’, with her leadership style both at work and at her apartment.
- Rachel would be more ‘Collaborative’ — she’s very good at working with people to get the job done.
Jump into their heads and imagine what they’d be like!
Try a quiz timer with your personality test
One other idea is to put your personality test audience under time constraints. You don’t want quiz takers to agonize over every question and answer. Force them to make a choice quickly.
Personality tests work best when people give their honest, gut answers. With Riddle, you can customize a timer for however long or short you, per question, or applicable to the entire quiz.
Step 4: Use stats to optimize & improve your personality test
So, you’ve finished your quiz masterpiece. Now what?
Riddle’s online quiz maker has powerful statistical tools so you can see what’s working well with your personality quiz — and what’s not. All quiz responses are also easily exportable via Google Sheets.
Want to see an example personality quiz?
Our partners are always creating great personality tests. If you’re in need of a bit of inspiration, these can serve as quiz templates.
Here are some of the most creative uses we’ve seen for a personality test:
- BBC Sport teamed up with the Game of Thrones for their Get Inspired campaign in their “What’s your Game of Thrones sport?”.
- Shopify powers their blog with interactive content, like the “What Type of Entrepreneur Are You?”.
- Choice Hotels uses quizzes like “What city should be your next travel getaway?” to help their customers discover new holiday options.
How to publish your personality test?
You can use Riddle’s quiz maker to quickly create and publish your personality test — with or without a lead generation form.
- Embed it on your WordPress site (or use our handy WordPress plugin)
- Copy/paste the code into any CMS (like Squarespace, Wix, and any others)
Any questions?
The only thing left is to just get out there and start building your own online personality quiz!
But if you have any questions about this or one of our many other types of quizzes, just give us a shout at our email address — hello@riddle.com. Every one of our team of quiz maker experts (including our CEO Boris) race each other to respond to every message. (Seriously — there’s a beer prize involved every month.)
Want to make a quiz with right and wrong answers, instead of a personality test? Check out our tips on creating effective and engaging quizzes.
Oh, and finally, and most importantly… have fun. 🙂
