The "Get a Free Quote" button on the average contractor website opens a form with five fields: name, email, phone, address, project description. The conversion rate on that form is somewhere between 1% and 2% of visitors who click the button.
That same visitor, when handed a 4-step interactive quiz that asks the right questions in the right order, converts at 5-8%. We have run this experiment across our own painting business and several SJ Tech client sites. The numbers are consistent.
Here is why the quiz works, what the right questions are, and how to set one up.
Why forms fail
A contact form puts five fields on a single screen. The visitor sees five blanks to fill in, mentally calculates the effort, and ~98% bounce. The two who actually fill it out are either highly motivated (price-shoppers comparing 5 contractors) or had already decided to contact you (in which case they would have called).
The form's UX is also designed for the contractor's convenience, not the customer's. The contractor wants name + phone + project. The customer is thinking about their kitchen. The two never meet.
Why quizzes work
A quiz inverts the relationship. Instead of asking the customer to summarize their project in a "describe your project" textarea, you ask them one targeted question at a time:
- What type of project? (Interior paint / Exterior / Drywall / Other)
- What rooms? (Bedroom / Kitchen / Whole house / Specific selection)
- Roughly when? (Within 2 weeks / This month / Next 1-3 months / Just exploring)
- How do you prefer we follow up? (Call / Text / Email)
The fifth screen is the contact-info ask — by the time the customer hits it, they have already answered four questions and feel committed. Drop-off at the contact step is lower because of the sunk-cost effect.
You also learn more from a quiz than from a form. "Describe your project: kitchen" tells you almost nothing. "Interior, Kitchen, Within 2 weeks, Text" tells you exactly how to follow up and roughly what to expect.
The conversion math
Round numbers from our painting business over six months:
Before (contact form):
- 800 unique monthly visitors hit the "Get a Quote" page
- 12 form submissions
- 1.5% conversion
- 6 actual leads after spam filtering
- 2-3 booked estimates
After (quiz funnel):
- 800 unique monthly visitors hit the "Get a Quote" page
- 56 quiz completions
- 7.0% conversion
- 41 actual leads after spam filtering (the quiz pre-filters)
- 18-22 booked estimates
The conversion lift is real. The pre-filtering is the secret benefit — because the quiz asks "Roughly when?" the leads that come through are sorted by urgency before you ever talk to them. The "Just exploring" leads go into nurture. The "Within 2 weeks" leads go to the top of your callback list.
What the questions should ask
The temptation is to ask too much. Resist it.
Ask these:
- Project category (this lets you route within your business if you do multiple trades)
- Project size or scope (helps you guess price tier without asking price directly)
- Timeline (sort by urgency)
- Preferred contact method (so you do not text someone who prefers email)
Do not ask:
- Budget (puts the customer on the defensive; they will lie or bounce)
- "What is the most you would pay?" (you might as well stab them)
- Anything that requires them to upload photos (kills mobile conversion)
- Multiple addresses, multiple phone numbers, anything that feels like a tax form
Where to put the quiz
The "Contact" button on every page should link to the quiz, not a form. The hero of your homepage should have a "Get my estimate" CTA that opens the quiz inline.
Do not bury the quiz behind a "/contact" route only. Embed it on the homepage hero, on the services pages, and on the about page. Make it the lowest-friction next-step from every angle.
How to set one up
You can roll your own with Typeform, LeadQuizzes, or any quiz builder — expect $30-50/mo and the awkwardness of leads landing in two systems (the quiz tool and your contractor software).
Or you can use software where the quiz is part of the contractor platform itself. Senku's lead-capture quiz lives at /quiz/[your-slug] and is included on the Pro plan ($45/mo). The leads land directly in your dashboard with AI-parsed scope and a one-tap Convert-to-Estimate button.
We built it because we were paying $40/mo for Typeform plus $69/mo for Jobber and the two never talked to each other. The integration tax is real, and we got tired of paying it.
Try it
Set up the quiz, embed the share link on your website, and watch what happens over the next 30 days. The visitor count probably will not change much. The lead count will.
If you want to see the quiz in action, start a free Senku account — the Pro features (including the quiz) are available in the 15-day trial. Send the quiz link to yourself, walk through it as a customer, and decide whether your real customers would convert better through it than through whatever you are using today.