Quiz forms on contractor websites: what to ask, and where the answers go

A contractor's website usually has one contact form with a text area labelled "Describe your project". The owner gets messages like "need a quote for the basement" and spends the first call asking the questions the form should have asked. A quiz form is the same form broken into four or five screens, each with buttons instead of free text, and it changes two things: more people finish it, and the answers arrive structured enough to price the job before the call.

What a quiz asks

Build the screens from the questions the estimator asks on every first call. For a renovation contractor the sequence is usually:

1. What are we working on? Kitchen, bathroom, basement, flooring, exterior, other.
2. What stage is it at? Just looking, have a plan, have a permit, ready to start this month.
3. Roughly how big? Small (one room), medium (two rooms or a full floor), large (whole house or addition).
4. When? This month, within three months, later this year.
5. Where? City or postal code, so the estimator knows the drive.

The last screen asks for name and phone, and says what happens next: "We call back within one business day with a price range." Each screen has three to five options, written in the customer's words rather than the trade's.

Why it converts better

A text area asks the visitor to write; buttons ask them to choose. Choosing takes two seconds per screen and gives a sense of progress. Visitors who would have closed the long form finish the quiz, and the ones who leave halfway still tell you something: if most people abandon at the "stage" screen, the options are confusing or the audience is earlier in the process than the ads assume.

Where the answers go

The quiz is only useful if every answer lands in a place the business reads. The minimum is three destinations:

• The CRM, as a lead with every answer in its own field, so the estimator sees "bathroom, has a plan, medium, this month, Kanata" before calling.
• An email or messenger notification to the person who calls back, with the same fields.
• Analytics, as a key event with the answers as parameters, so the ad campaigns can be judged by qualified leads rather than form submits.

The CRM write must be server-side with validation and bot protection; a form that posts straight from the browser to a third-party endpoint will fill the CRM with spam within a week. This is part of why we treat lead capture as a build requirement on corporate sites rather than a plugin added at the end.

Three quizzes on one site

A contractor site often needs more than one quiz, because the audiences differ: a homeowner planning a kitchen, a property manager with a repair list, a developer looking for a trade partner. One quiz per audience, each starting from its own service page, keeps the questions relevant and the lead routing simple. On the marketing side, each quiz becomes its own landing page for ads, which is the structure we use for construction companies.

What to measure in the first month

• Start rate: visitors who click the first button divided by page views.
• Completion rate: visitors who submit the last screen divided by starts.
• Drop-off by screen.
• Qualified share: leads the estimator was willing to price, divided by submissions.

If completion is high and qualified share is low, the quiz is too easy to finish and needs a budget or timing question. If completion is low, there is one screen that confuses people; the drop-off report will show which.

A note on bilingual sites

In Ontario and Quebec, the quiz needs a French version with the same fields mapped to the same CRM columns. Build the field names once in English for the CRM, and translate the labels only.

Tatiana Koval, Marketing MIX (Ottawa, since 2012)