Riddle now features branching logic – with our ‘journey’ quiz format!
UPDATE: Riddle now features branching logic in Riddle 2 – in all our quiz, personality test, survey, and poll formats.
Do you remember those classic ‘Choose your own adventure’ books when you were a kid?
Image credit: cyoa.com
You’d read a page, and then have to choose what happens next. For example, “a door stands before you, but you hear loud breathing. Do you:
- open it (go to page 87)
- leave it alone (go to page 56)
Our community kept asking: “Can we show different questions to each user, based on how they respond to each question?”
Our journey (AKA ‘interactive story’) quiz now makes that easy.
(You can watch our video walkthrough – or embedded at the bottom of this post.)
Questions won’t have ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers – instead, each response leads to either another question or a final quiz result, along with an explanation.
Branching logic quiz – live example
Here’s a sample of the type of content you create. Imagine you run a careers advice site – with tips and best practices about landing the perfect job.
Instead of a bland list of do’s and don’ts, you create this interactive story – around the many pitfalls facing the interviewee.
Journey: suggested use cases
The range of use cases for the ‘journey’ is limited only by your imagination.
But here are some of our favorites:
- Product recommendations – clever marketers know that quizzes can help guide potential customers to the right product for their needs. Our journey quiz uses branching logic to ask relevant follow up questions, based around their previous answers.
- Scenarios or role playing – our previous job interview example shows how powerful branching logic can be. It puts quiz takers in control – and creates unique experience for each.
- Health checker – just asking a few questions will let you know identify if a user is at risk (e.g. depressed, anxious, etc.). For example, we created this COVID symptom checker at the onset of the pandemic as a guide for our audience.
Create your journey quiz
Step 1: Map out the journey flow
Riddle’s quiz creator is super intuitive.
However, before you start making your interactive story, we recommend you go a little ‘old school’ and map out on paper the flow of your journey quiz.
It helps to have an idea of how each question will lead to the next – and on until the user’s results.
Here’s my initial sketch for my ‘job interview’ quiz example:
Step 2: Set the stage
Give your journey quiz a good title and compelling image. This will get people interested to click and start your story.
Step 3: Questions and results
Create your first question – with at least two answer options.
Each answer can lead to:
- another question
- a result (which ends the journey for that user)
Step 4: Complete one journey branch first
Each journey quiz can be a little complicated to start.
We recommend finishing one ‘branch’ of your story first.
- Follow a potential user’s journey, all the way to a final result.
- For example, go from their question #1 answer and create a good question #2 (or result)
- Then go from that answer and create a question #3 and so on.
- Once you’re at a final result, go back to question #1 and complete the question/results for anyone who answers the 2nd option.
- PRO TIP: save time, and link to existing questions or results whenever possible.
Step 5: Look for orphans
The last step? You want to make sure that each response leads somewhere – to a question or a result.
You can easily spot these ‘orphans’.
If you see a white tab under any question that means one or more responses doesn’t have a follow up question or result assigned.
Step 6: (Optional) Add a lead generation form
Just like all of our quiz types, you can add a lead generation form to our journey quiz.
Ask each user for their email and other info before displaying their results – then send this information along with their answers to:
Copy journey branches to save time
We’ve added a ‘copy branch’ option as a big time saver for the journey quiz.
Sometimes, you’ll want to duplicate a series of questions from one branch to another.
Instead of having to type them all out, now you can copy/paste a question (and all the questions below it in that branch).
This also is helpful when you want to delete a question – but keep the other questions in that branch.
(While we recommend mapping your quiz out on paper first before creating your quiz, sometimes you’ll want to make changes.)
Here’s how you do use the ‘copy branch’ feature
- Go to the ‘overview’ step of the Riddle creation process
- Click on the paired rectangle icon in any question.
- Now, click on any grey tab below any other question – that shows there’s a slot available to paste in your branch of questions.
- We also recommend making a copy of your quiz first as a backup – just in case you’d like to revert to your original version.
Journey quiz: video walkthrough
Redirect with call to action buttons
Journey are also great for redirecting users at the end of the quiz.
You can use our call to action buttons to continue the conversation:
- Targeted discounts – present specific codes for their product recommendation by their journey (e.g. “Save 25% off <their suggested product>”).
- Suggest additional content – the quiz is just the start of the experience. Show them targeted content that will help their unique needs. For example, in our job interview journey, you could show new job seekers your ‘Basic guide to interviews’ while giving more experienced people ‘Advanced interview secrets’.
Any questions about our journey quiz?
Did we miss anything? This is a new tool – and we’d love to hear how we can make it better.
Please drop us a note on support chat or at hello@riddle.com – our cofounders Boris and Mike read and respond to every message, often in two minutes or less!