The search for the perfect WordPress Quiz Plugin
This post was written as I was designing my first quiz...
Which means that when you get beyond this intro, the rest is in chronological order. You can find the end result at:
Food Safety Quiz
This is my journey to get there…
My Quiz Needs
I wanted to create a Food Safety Supervisor quiz. My criteria was relatively simple I thought. I wanted:
- To ask multiple choice questions: They all do this. It is the only thing common between “quiz” and “poll” applications.
- With images to look good: Most of them do that, but not all.
- The ability to have multiple selection in answers: That’s a problem for many, and likely to be dropped as a requirement.
- The ability to mix both quiz (right and wrong answers) with polls (just get information). An alternative is to have the ability to collect more information on the user than just their name and email.
- At the end of the quiz, the user can share the quiz on social media: Some do, but not all. It also has to be very obvious and a desirable call to action.
- The correct and incorrect answers are revealed: Most do, but not necessarily in a nice way.
- Access to the answers by the users so I could analyse them: This is where most fell down. Anything that was a good “quiz” would summarise the results, while good “polls” failed to make interesting quizzes.
My ideal
What I really wanted was to make a quiz that felt like one of those clickbait type quizzes, but with some true substance to the questions. I then wanted people to be able to challenge others.
It had to feel easy and friendly to use, and the type of thing that someone would actually want to share.
The big issue, however, was I needed to be able to ask one magical question “are you a qualified Food Safety Supervisor?” and be able to analyse the other answers based on this one question. I wanted to know how well Food Safety Supervisors knew their stuff.
My searchÂ
I started with what others had used – Survey Monkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/dashboard/). The only problem is that survey monkey failed the social media share big time. It is great as a data gathering tool, but not as a gimmicky quiz tool. There is the ability to share on social media, but it just wasn’t obvious. And it felt like a survey, not a quiz. It had one feature that I absolutely loved and that was the option on each question to say if it was part of the quiz.
A quick google of “WordPress Quiz” and you quickly discover that there are dozens (hundreds?) on offer.
Thrive Quiz Builder (https://thrivethemes.com/) was my first attempt at what looked like an exceptional solution. The only problems were that I could not actually see the individual results and it could not mix poll and quiz. Everything had to be a quiz. That was a short lived solution.
Opinion Stage (https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-polls-by-opinionstage/) had a solution that looked very interesting. I installed it and went to make my first quiz, and suddenly discovered that while the “plug-in” was “free”, I quickly needed to upgrade my Opinion Stage account, and at $19/month that was a bit steep. What I really needed, however, were in their mega-expensive plans ($65/month and $199/month).
WP-Pro-Quiz (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-pro-quiz/) looked promising until I saw that it had not been updated for 3 years. Pity.
Modal surveys (http://modalsurvey.pantherius.com/) were next cab of the rank. This one is probably the weirdest of the lot. The others basically do it all for you with a bit of tweaking. This one leaves a lot more work up to you, but I can see how it could really be customised. I’m still undecided because the result page requires you to almost manually build it up based on logic rules. Awesome but time consuming. The other drawback is that it doesn’t allow multiple-answer questions.
ARI Stream Quiz (https://wordpress.org/plugins/ari-stream-quiz) was a long shot. My expectations weren’t high, and I was right. It was actually surprisingly easy to make a great looking quiz, but failed the poll question requirement and didn’t provide access to the user’s results in an easily accessible format.
Quiz and Survey Master (https://quizandsurveymaster.com/ ) was getting closer. It had more question types and the collection of user data was great. The only problem is that the result was really BORING. It was a glorified WordPress form. For example, questions could have images but not the answers.
WP Viral Quiz (https://www.ohmyquiz.io/) looked great and is one of the easiest to use. Unfortunately I could not ask the “Food Safety Supervisor” question, and it only supports single answer multiple choice.
Survey Funnel (https://club.wpeka.com/product/survey-funnel/) was a nuisance. They have an annual fee and buying online meant automatically signing up for renewal. Not impressed.
Interact (https://www.tryinteract.com/) has potential, but once again has a monthly fee. Cheaper than Opinion Stage at $17 / $53 / $125 per month I will try it when I get desperate. That’s rapidly approaching.
WP Quiz (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-quiz/) is a free quiz plugin, so at least I’m not losing money on something that won’t work. Oh look, it did virtually nothing, but there is the WP-Quiz-Pro.
WP Quiz Pro (https://mythemeshop.com/plugins/wp-quiz-pro/ ), not to be mistaken for WP Pro Quiz, has the prize for the longest long copy that manages to repeat itself a dozen times without giving away too much information. They have the longest long copy that manages to repeat itself a dozen times without giving away too much information. Without giving away too much information, they have the longest copy. It turns out that they didn’t have much to give away. Waste of money for my cause.
HD Quiz was just a non-event. I can’t even be bothered finding the link for it.
Watu Pro (http://calendarscripts.info/watupro/features.html) is designed primarily for educational quizzes and tests, and looks like an awesome tool for it. The focus is on functionality, not on looks. I could not find a decent looking sample quiz (and they do have lots of reference sites) so I never purchased it. If I was doing online training with tests, this is probably a must have.
WP-EKA SurveyFunnel (https://club.wpeka.com/product/survey-funnel/) in theory had more functionality than the quiz, including quiz features, but is so light on in descriptions that I had to buy it. I paid my money and it turns out that it has absolutely no quiz functionality at all. I am feeling totally ripped off.
Stalling
I’m stalling. There is no perfect solution.
I’m happy to drop the multiple selection type questions.
But it must look good, and have a great share option.
Take 2
Modal Survey could potentially do what I needed, but it would take a lot of manual effort to get it right. My web guy would need to be heavily involved to modify the css style. It would also take a large amount of effort to customise the result page into anything that would even look remotely decent. I had a semi reasonable demo working but it was going to take other help to get it across the line.
I would need to be customising the button. The images need to be manually sized before saving (which is common for a number of quiz plugins). The emphasis would be on me and the team to get it right. We could, however, absolutely nail some of the messages on the last page.
Given that my team is already too busy, it wasn’t a good final solution.
ARI Stream was revisited. It is missing the poll functionality, and that’s a show stopper for me. The individual results aren’t easily accessed, but I an get to them through a database tool. Not great for the general public as a solution, but it will be fine for me. I am now contacting them to try and get them to modify it for me. Alternatively I will have to do it inhouse.
Final result - ARI Stream Won
In the end ARI Stream won. It took my tech guys a bit of work to try and embed the questions at the end, but they did it without changing the plugin. That was a big win.
You can try the final quiz here:
Food Safety Quiz
What I won’t be revealing here is how we embedded the poll type questions at the end. If you want the answer to that one then contact me.
