What is a personality test?

What is a personality test?

The most viral of our online quiz maker's formats - personality tests are all about discovery.

Personality tests aren't about right or wrong answers. Instead you make a quiz that gives each user an overall result based on how they responded.

Create a personality test with Riddle

(For example, in our "What's your management style?" personality test, your users would answer eight questions - and learn about their matching leadership style.)

You can use our personality quiz builder for a wide range of use cases:

  • Product recommendations ("Which car should I buy?")
  • Consultants, life coaches, therapists ("How stressed are you?")
  • Audience engagement ("What movie character are you?")

Why create a Riddle personality test for my site?

It's easy to use our personality quiz maker to:

  • Grow your audience - personality tests and quizzes are our quiz creator's most shared content.
  • Engage your visitors - on average, visitors who take a personality test stay 41% longer on your site.
  • Gather more (& better!) leads online - add a lead form to your personality test to qualify and segment each user based on their test results.

See below how the global restaurant chain Nando's used their "What kind of Nandoca are you?" personality test to get more applicants to join their team:

How to make a personality test?

We've made creating a personality test super easy with Riddle's online quiz maker. You don't need to be a programmer - there's no coding needed. You can go from quiz making to publish your first personality test on your site in just minutes.

  • Simply type in your questions and answer - then use Riddle to search and embed the perfect images, YouTube videos, animated GIFs and more.
  • Press 'publish' - then just copy and paste our embed code into any post or page within your site.
  • Fully responsive online quiz creator - your test will automatically resize to look great on any size screen from smartphone to desktop.

Read our guide about how to build a personality test - full of our tips and best practices around how to make a personality quiz bases on psychology.

Personality test builder best practices

Are you a Wordpress user? Our personality test maker's Wordpress plug-in lets you create, edit, and publish quizzes to your posts or pages.

See a personality test in action

Check out how the 'feel good' viral publishing wizards at Upworthy engaged their Facebook audience with their "What motivates you to be sweet and kind?" personality test:

Images, videos and animated GIFs - oh my!

Pictures and rich media can dramatically improve your personality test's effectiveness. You can use our personality quiz builder to easily find and use the perfect image, audio, or video clip from within our platform:

  • Google
  • Giphy
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
  • Instagram
  • Pexel images
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Upload your own photos or animated GIFs
  • Upload MP4 video files
  • Upload MP3 clips for an audio quiz

Collect emails and personality test responses with a lead form

  • Use our quiz creator's powerful drag/drop form builder to gather leads online - or use a form from your own CRM tool such as MailChimp or AWeber.
  • Display your form between the last question and the user's results - when they're most emotionally engaged, and most likely to complete the form. (Learn more)
  • Gather their name, email and other interesting data.
  • Insert videos, ads, or your own forms with our In-Quiz iFrame.
  • Double opt-in supported and a GDPR-compliant quiz maker.
  • Highly customizable - mandatory or optional forms, 16 field types.
  • Make a quiz, then copy/paste forms from any marketing tool using our In-Quiz iFrame.

Send custom personality test report to every quiz taker

Taking the quiz is just the start - when you build a personality test, you are starting a conversation with each quiz taker.

Email personality test reports to each user

Ask your audience - qualify your leads

  • Send leads and responses from Riddle's quiz maker to your marketing software tool.
  • One-click integration to your MailChimp, Blue State Digital, or AWeber accounts.
  • We support any CRM - seamlessly send all leads to Marketo, SalesForce, ConstantContact, MailChimp and all other providers through via our Zapier app or our webhook options.
  • Segment each lead according to their answers (ex. Anyone who gets result A is a 'hot lead'.)
  • Power your marketing funnel - send personalized follow up messages through your CRM based on each lead's personality test results.

Live personality quiz example from Choice Hotels

Take a look how Choice Hotels used our quiz maker to extensively customize their "What kind of travel boss are you?" personality test. From uploading their font to tweaking the CSS, this personality test fits perfectly with their branding:

Can I customize my personality test?

Absolutely - you can use our online quiz creator to seamlessly embed your personality test to your site. From colors to fonts to styles, choose the look and feel of your personality test to suit your brand.

Your personality test can be completely white labelled with our Pro or Team plans. Hide all Riddle branding, and add your own logo (or your clients').

All our test maker plans feature over 50+ customization features, including:

  • Boost start rates by hiding the start/title page - and display question 1 to every visitor.
  • Customize button text strings - Change everything from the 'Play again' button text to all the strings in the lead generation form - match your site's tone of voice.
  • Social sharing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitter, & more - Modify the share messages for each social network users will send after each quiz. Use different messages and hashtags for Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
  • Gate off answers - Using a lead form? A good way to boost conversions is to delay showing correct answers only after the user completes your lead form.

Want complete creative control?

The BBC love personality tests

The British Broadcasting Corporation regularly turns to Riddle's quiz maker to engage and inspire their audience. Take their "What's your Game of Thrones sport?" personality test - and see how it blends perfectly with their site:

Why are personality tests so effective?

Personality tests are the most viral and engaging option with our online quiz creator.

Why? People love to discover something new about themselves - then share that with their friends. The geeky term for this cycle of discovery and sharing is narrative psychology - we love to find out "Who am I? Who do others think I am? And who do I want to be?"

When making a quiz, the subject doesn't really matter - the process of guided discovery is irresistible. We've seen personality tests work for topics ranging from the serious "Should I become a coder?" to the lighthearted "Which cat is your feline soulmate?".

The bonus? Engaging your audience and attracting their friends is just the beginning.

If you're looking to collect more leads online for your business, gathering emails via personality tests is a natural combination.

After all, each person naturally will give genuine responses as they take your quiz - so they can learn what the test means to them.

This gives you unique marketing insights to see if each person might be a potential customer for your business.

Imagine you run an adventure travel company. You make a quiz with a lead generation form called "What your travelling style?" that includes two questions:

  • How many times do you travel each year?
  • Would you rather stay in a luxury hotel or camp in a tent?
  • Every person who answers "3 times or more" and "camp in a tent" could be segmented as a good lead.

You can then use Riddle's quiz maker to power your marketing funnel - setting up automatic follow up marketing messages, centered around each person's responses.

For those adventure travel types, you could include a list of your upcoming expeditions, as well as an offer for a free one hour vacation consultation to help them decide on their next challenge.

Best of all? Starting with a fun quiz, the entire process seems natural and 'non-spammy' - so you have a better chance of adding them as a happy customer.

Got a question about personality tests?

Ask away - we're super fast to help out with any questions about our quiz creator.

We like to think we've created the best tool to create a personality assessment - and we're full of tips. Whether you're asking how to make a personality quiz based on psychology - or just need advice on crafting compelling quiz results, we're here to help.

And it's just not just hot air - you'll see our entire team at Riddle, from our CEO Boris down, race each other to answer your message first.

Contact us through support chat or email at hello@riddle.com. Look forward to chatting with you!

Riddle customer support by our founders

Personality tests are among the most viral and most effective of all online quiz types. The key to a successful online personality test is crafting compelling result outcomes. We recommend you create 3-5 personality results, following the OCEAN model (learn more: https://www.riddle.com/blog/create-big-five-personality-test/) - with each corresponding to either openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

You also want to follow our 50/50 rule with your personality test. Spend as much time on your different results as you do crafting your questions - you want your audience to feel that your personality test really ‘gets’ them and their unique personality.

Personality test results also need to be both positive and flexible enough to apply to a wide range of people.

Let’s suppose you created a “What kind of leader are you?” personality test. Having result A as “You’re an empathetic manager” is TOO specific, since some of your quiz takers might not be managers. However, they could be leaders in other parts of their lives. We’d recommend a broader “You’re an empathetic leader” - which almost everyone can relate to. Personality tests are among the most viral and most effective of all online quiz types. The key to a successful online personality test is crafting compelling result outcomes.

We recommend you create 3-5 personality results, following the OCEAN model - with each corresponding to either openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

You also want to follow our 50/50 rule with your personality test. Spend as much time on your different results as you do crafting your questions - you want your audience to feel that your personality test really ‘gets’ them and their unique personality.

Personality test results also need to be both positive and flexible enough to apply to a wide range of people.

Let’s suppose you created a “What kind of leader are you?” personality test. Having result A as “You’re an empathetic manager” is TOO specific, since some of your quiz takers might not be managers. However, they could be leaders in other parts of their lives. We’d recommend a broader “You’re an empathetic leader” - which almost everyone can relate to.

We recommend 3-5 different result types for most personality tests. That’s enough to provide variety to your quiz takers, crafting result types that align to the OCEAN personality test model - while keeping the creation process manageable.

It’s tempting to get carried away and create dozens of personality test results. However, too many personality results will make it difficult to decide how each choice applies to each result. For example, imagine you had 20 personality test results for your “Are you ready for a new job?” quiz.

You might ask “How often do you get stressed out at work?”, and give quiz takers four answers.

The tricky part about 20 personality test results? You’ll need to figure out how these four choices would apply to each and every result. That’s 80 things to configure for each question. Multiply that by 6-10 questions - and you’re looking at a very complicated process.

The best personality tests range from 6-10 questions with 3-5 choices each for straightforward use cases (such as product recommendations (“What phone should you buy - Android or iPhone?”) or entertainment (“Which Harry Potter character are you?”).

For more detailed assessments, we recommend 12-20 questions, such as “Are you ready for a career change?” or “What kind of leader are you?”, in order to get enough insights into each quiz taker. Read our in-depth guide about creating an effective personality quiz.

Personality results aren’t black and white - you’ll want to use a subtle points-based weighting system when assigning each choice to a result.

For example, suppose you asked “What do you value most in your smartphone?” in your Android or iPhone personality test.

You’d want to assign quiz takers who selected ‘Low price’ and ‘Customization’ to Android - however, ‘Low price’ is a much more specific Android feature. That could be worth 20 points - while ‘Customization’ could be worth 10.

At the end of your personality test, the quiz taker will be shown the result with the most points - that’s far more accurate than counting all responses as the same.

Getting the perfect title for your personality test is super important - think of your test's title as the cover of a book. It’s what catches your audience’s interest - and gets them to take your personality test.

The right title should be short, with a clear subject, and (most importantly) - make sure it’s all about the quiz taker.

We recommend these three steps:

  • Create 4-8 possible titles - don’t just use the first title you think of - think of several options, then pick the best one.
  • Make it personal - personality test titles do 23% better if they have ‘you’ in the title (e.g. “What type of leader are you?” vs. “The leadership test”).
  • Short and punchy titles work best - try and limit your personality test title to 6-8 words.

Need inspiration? Check out these 143 quiz titles for quiz ideas across a wide range of topics and verticals.

Absolutely - today’s personality test takers expect a more multimedia experience than just text.

We recommend a 50% / 25% / 25% breakdown between images/text/video questions: