History Extra is part of Immediate Media’s extensive portfolio of online brands, and is the digital home of BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed. Its passionate audience of history lovers turn to History Extra for in-depth articles, podcasts, quizzes, and video content.
Immediate Media has made Riddle a central part of their engagement strategy across their online brands, using quizzes, polls, and contests to enhance reader interaction and boost engagement on sites like History Extra.
Riddle has helped us enhance audience engagement and boost time on site by 20%.
History Extra’s audience click 15.5% more often on pages with a Riddle quiz.
Paul Thorpe, Senior Product Manager
A quiz-centric approach
Immediate Media’s History Extra regularly creates quizzes every week using Riddle to add an interactive element to posts and articles.
“Riddle has helped us enhance audience engagement and boost time on site by 20%,” says Paul Thorpe, Senior Product Manager. “The quizzes consistently encourage deeper interactions and make history more accessible and enjoyable for our readers.”
History Extra’s editorial teams create quizzes across several categories:
- Quiz of the week: History Extra’s editors know that creating quizzes on a regular, weekly basis work well for retention, as their readers come to expect each week’s installment. Each quiz features a series of multiple choice questions, based on that week’s history articles that the team shares in both a separate article and a dedicated quiz portal.
- Weekly topical quizzes: These have a broader focus, with History Extra’s editors creating quizzes that explore themes like famous quotes (‘Who said this?’) and iconic historical figures. These quiz variants let History Extra cover a wider range of topics that will appeal to their diverse audience.
- Innovative formats: History Extra continually experiments with new ways to engage their audience, such as ‘Place these events in order’ or picture-led quizzes (‘Who’s missing from this famous historic image?’), using Riddle’s rich library of content formats.
- Ultimate quizzes: Immediate Media places a lot of their sites’ interactive content beyond a paywall. Quizzes are popular – and ‘deep dive’ quizzes like the ‘Ultimate Windsors Quiz’ are a compelling reason for new users to consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
Boosting engagement and organic reach (SEO)
The data speaks for itself: quizzes have significantly outperformed History Extra’s site-wide averages across key engagement metrics.
- 20% more time on site: History Extra’s quizzes feature eight to ten questions, which means users spend more time on the site pondering and clicking. *)
- For example, their popular ‘First World War Quiz’ had a completion rate of 69.4% and an average engagement time of 2 minutes 7 seconds.
- “Our readers love the quizzes,” Paul continues. “They find them fun, challenging, and a great way to engage, spending more overall time on site.”
- Quizzes boost engagement: History Extra’s audience click 15.5% more often on pages with a Riddle quiz compared to ones without.
- 21% more clicks per user: Quizzes convert passive browsers to active participants – with 13.12 click events per user session, exceeding the site-wide average of 10.85. This engagement goes beyond taking a quiz – audience members that participate in a quiz click on more content, more often.
These metrics highlight how Riddle’s quizzes drive deeper interaction, encouraging users to spend more time exploring History Extra’s content.
Organic search success
All of this quiz interaction has had substantial knock-on benefits around improving History Extra’s SEO rankings. Quizzes have become a key driver of organic traffic. History Extra’s quiz landing portal is among the most popular pages on the site, with History Extra consistently ranking between first and third position for the popular search term “history quiz”.
Immediate results, lasting engagement
Immediate Media’s collaboration with Riddle has proven to be a resounding success. Leveraging the power of quizzes, Immediate has enhanced user engagement, expanded their organic reach, and delivered interactive and educational experiences that resonate across History Extra and their portfolio
Further Reading
*) Read more on time-on-site and how important it is for your Google ranking.
