Before we start, take a look at these two images, from two different quizzes asking the same question:

What do you notice between the two of them? Does one quiz look particularly higher-quality or more interesting than the other? If you think so, you’re on the right track to identifying what makes high-quality quizzes so… well, high-quality.

If you are looking for ways to make your online quizzes better quality, these tips should provide you with easy steps to do so:

Use Good Grammar.

This one’s a simple one. You don’t have to have perfect grammar skills, but at least some correct grammar/spelling can make a quiz look professional and easy-to-read. This can be as simple as:

• Correct common mix-up errors, including “your/you’re”, “their/they’re/there” and “a/an”.
• Use apostrophes in your contractions. For example, write “don’t” instead of “dont”.
• End your sentences in whatever is appropriate. Questions should end in question marks, interjections end in exclamation marks and pretty much everything else ends with a full stop/period.

Keep Answers Open-Ended

Try and keep the answers to a question broad and ambiguous, so that everyone can have a chance to accurately answer.

If I were to ask you what your favourite type of food were, would it be one of the following:

• Chocolate cupcake with sprinkles
• Ham, tomato and cheese sandwich
• Steak
• Pancakes
• Mint Choc Chip Ice Cream

Is your favourite food in that list? The chances are slim that any of these answers describe your favourite food in an accurate way. Most people upon seeing this question would be forced to click whatever sounds the best to them, even if it isn’t anything close their actual favourite food. You could put an “Other” option for good measure, but that doesn’t look as professional as making the answers more simple and open-ended.

A better way to word this would be:

• Desserts
• Fruit/Vegetables
• Meat/Proteins
• Dairy
• Grains/Breads
• Other

This lists the different types of food. The answers are more simple and broad, and could be interpreted many ways. Almost any type of food could fit into one of these answers, thus leading to a more even, accurate result.

Be the right amount of descriptive

How descriptive you need to be depends on what part of the quiz. For example, the description of a quiz needs to be… well, descriptive and detailed, while answers should be kept more simple, broad and open-ended.

• A quiz title should be short-to-moderate length. It depends on the type of title/quiz you’re going for, and what the quiz is about. Try and keep it brief. A good rule-of-thumb is to try and be as descriptive as possible in as few words as possible.
• Generally, titles are usually written with every single word capitalised.

Good title examples:

• What Mario Character Are You?
• What Breed Of Dog Is Right For You?
• What Type Of Dragon Are You?
• What Colour Should You Dye Your Hair?

Bad title examples:

• Mario Quiz
• What dog should you get if you are new to owning a dog?
• what type of dragon are u
• What colour should u dye ur hair???

The question itself can be simple or detailed, depending on the question being asked, and the nature of the quiz.

Results and the quiz description should be descriptive. They don’t have to be super-long, as long as they are descriptive enough.

Use Images To Engage Audience (if it suits the question)

This is really easy, and a lot of people already to this. There isn’t much to be said about this, except for:

• Images that relate to the context, at least somehow. For example, like I did above, posting a bizarre, attention-grabbing image to demonstrate the effects an image in the midst of plain text can have on readers.
• So if you’re asking a question about someone’s favourite animal, don’t put some random picture of a pizza slice (unless that’s somehow relevant to the context of your quiz).
• Images are pretty much optional, and you don’t have to use them a lot – only where you think an image could be used.

Do your research

If your quiz is a Star Wars trivia, no matter how much of a Star Wars pro you are, make sure you do some quick Googles to make sure your quiz is accurate.

This one’s self-explanatory.

Don’t put blatant dialogue in answers or question.

This is common in quizzes about fictional franchises, such as video games or cartoons, but it’s particularly annoying to see in general quizzes.

It can be annoying to see someone else’s opinions and conversations in the answers, especially if the quiz isn’t supposed to be about that sort of thing.

What I mean by this is:

Me: Hey guys its kittygamer2009 here. So first question…
Mario: Whats your favourite colour.

• Red (Me: Thats Marios favourite colour! Mario: Yes it is)
• Orange (Me: Meh)
• Yellow (Me: Yellows a bit bright but its okay)
• Green (Mario: My brother Luigi likes that colour.)
• Blue (Me: My second favourite colour!)
• Purple (Me: Thats my favourite colour too.)
• Pink (Me: Pinks kinda gross)
• Black (Me: like my soul)
• White (Me: Whites okay)

Like, nobody wants to hear Sans’ and Papyrus’ opinions on outdoors weather and candy bars in a quiz about cats. (If it’s a “story/roleplay” quiz or something that involves Undertale characters “speaking” to the quiz-takers, however, it would be different)

It’s even worse when the fictional character(s) or quiz-creator(s) opinion is longer than the answer itself. Example:

First question: Bendy: What type of ice cream do u like out of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry?

• Vanilla (Bendy: Vanilla is kinda bland but I guess its okay. Boris: I like all ice cream so i’ll take any flavour. Alice: Vanilla is ok but I like chocolate best.)
• Chocolate (Bendy: Yes! Chocolate is the best flavour there is! Boris: I dont like chocolate as much as others but its still yummy. Alice: My favourite flavour!)
• Strawberry (Bendy: Not a big fan. Boris: Its ice cream. Yum yum, I love strawberry. Alice: Yuck i hate strawberry ice cream)

I’ve seen this sort of thing before, and believe me, it’s tacky.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton