Think about it.
There’s a reason that pub quizzes, TV shows like Jeopardy!, and apps like Kahoot have been popular for so long. People love testing their knowledge – and showing off a bit to their friends.
Creating a live online quiz is a proven way to grab your audience’s attention – plus grow your marketing list by collecting each constestant’s email address.
- Pick a topic, write any number of questions.
- Go beyond text – insert images or audio and video clips.
- Add a prize and you’ve got a ready made event to promote and run for your audience.
Check out our more in-depth blog post about using online quizzes for contests.
Ready to learn more about hosting your quiz live? Let’s crack on.
Create your live online quiz (real-time event)
The most common way to run a live online quiz is as a session using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or other video conferencing tool.
Live quiz events work like this:
- You’ll act as the MC and tell everyone when to click ‘start’ – so they can view question #1.
- Most importantly, you’ll need to tell everyone to answer questions at the same time.
- Then, when ready, they click ‘next’ and see the next question.
For more suspense, you can hide all the right/wrong answers – and even the ‘correct’/’wrong’ messages.
The advantage? The correct answers and scores will only be shown at the very end – after the live online quiz entry (lead generation) form.
Here’s how to get started:
- Create a quiz with Riddle – there’s no limit to questions, but we recommend 20 questions or so.
- In the quiz ‘answer description’ field – add an image and text ‘Thanks – please wait for the next question.’ This will show up after each answer – and will prevent the next question from automatically appearing.
- In the collect leads step, add a lead form – to collect names/emails from all entries.
- Choose how to save entries. We recommend saving to Google Sheets – so you can see an updated list of all entries and their question answers plus total results.
- In the customize step, add a question timer (e.g. “10 seconds”) – to minimize the opportunity to Google the right answer.
- Also in customize, go to ‘more+’ and turn on ‘hide all right/wrong indicators’, plus the ‘show answers at the end of the quiz’ options.
- Publish it – and tell your audience the date/time you’ll be running your live online quiz.
Make a quiz contest (non-live option)
Want to create a quiz contest – but not as a realtime quiz, but as a longer online event? You can easily do that as well with Riddle’s quiz maker.
The set up is similar as above.
But instead of a live online contest with a MC/moderator and all participants taking your quiz at once, you’ll post the quiz on your site – and leave it running for a certain time period.
You’ll just need to add a few steps to discourage cheating.
- Create a quiz with Riddle – again, there’s no limit to how many questions you can add. But we recommend 20 questions or so – with 3-4 answer options each.
- In the collect leads step:
- Add a lead form – to collect names/emails from all entries.
- Choose how to save entries. We recommend saving to Google Sheets – so you can see an updated list of all entries and their question answers plus total results.
- Turn on ‘double opt-in’ – so each contestant will need to click a link via email for their entry to count. (The option location varies depends on your ‘save’ or ‘connect’ choice – below is from our Google Sheets option.
- For the next few steps, go to the ‘Customize’ step in Riddle’s quiz maker:
- Add a question timer (e.g. “10 seconds”) – to minimize the chance to Google the answers.
- Go to our ‘more+’ tab. Activate the ‘hide all right/wrong indicators‘.
- You can show answers at the end of the quiz but we recommend not doing that. Users will just get their score – and potential cheaters won’t know the correct answers if they want another go.
- Turn on randomize questions and randomize answers (so potential cheaters can’t just remember the correct answer order)
- Publish and embed your quiz – and announce to your audience!
Add a quiz leaderboard
Now with our Pro and Team features, you can also add a quiz leaderboard to your Riddle live online quiz (or use our WordPress option).
- Easy to create – you simply embed this in your site.
- Each quiz taker will see the top X finishers (you decide how many) and their scores.
- Plus they’ll get a message showing how close they were to the top finishers – and how many people they beat, so they’ll be itching a rematch!
Cheating in a live online quiz
Now, let’s face it. If you’re running any sort of live online quiz, it’s going to be possible to cheat. After all, Google is just a click away for each quiz taker.
However, by following our above tips, such as hiding quiz answers, adding double opt-ins, and the like, you can make it more difficult. Most cheaters are lazy – and just want a quick win.
You can also do a sort/filter in Google Sheet – to make sure there are no double entries.
Of course, people can come up with ways around this – such as using multiple different email addresses to take the quiz. a
But these steps just add a bit of friction and pain for would-be cheaters – meaning your quiz will still be fun for everyone else.
And don’t forget – you can use our quiz leaderboard feature to automatically show and rank the top finishers who took the quiz, for extra bragging rights.
Live quiz contests – example
We’re always amazed at how creative our quiz maker community is – especially when they create a live quiz for promotions or contests.
Let’s show you a favorite example by the NBA’s Chicago Bulls.
They’re keen users of engaging their fans with quizzes – and regularly create sponsored content or promotions that challenge their fans’ knowledge of their team like this ‘How well do you know Zach Levine?’ quiz.
This isn’t a live quiz per se – but by adding a specific time and date, it could easily be converted into one.
Can we help?
And we’re not stopping – we’re always adding new features to our quiz maker. So if you’re running a live online quiz, and have ideas how we can make Riddle better, please give us a shout at hello@riddle.com or on Riddle’s support chat.
We’re (frankly) ridiculously fast at replying to every message – everyone from our CEO Boris on down races each other to respond first.
Put us to the test – we look forward to hearing from you!
